Map Your
Nervous System
A workshop for widening your window of capacity to let in more experience, creativity, connection and growth.
Live & Recorded
2 Hour Workshop
We all have a fluctuating window of nervous system capacity that can be widened and shaped to allow us to have a more expansive palette and array of choices to work with.
Trauma and chronic stress can make everything feel black and white. Our choices exist within a very narrow space between safety and survival.
When we work with rather than against the wisdom of the nervous system, we create lasting change through meeting ourselves right where we are while at the same time setting ourselves up in the direction we want to grow towards.
Nervous System Mapping helps you visualize, feel and name the invisible architecture of your embodied experience—transforming unconscious reactions into conscious choices while creating a personalized roadmap for regulation, authentic expression, and deeper connection.
“Nervous System Mapping with Marissa was revelatory—both expansive and clarifying.”
What is Nervous System Mapping?
Nervous System Mapping is a guided practice of actually making a drawn map of your nervous system based on Polyvagal Theory. According to Polyvagal Theory we have 3 main nervous states that we move through: rest and connection, fight or flight and shut-down.
In this workshop I will guide you through each of these states, so that you can get a sense of your own experience and felt-sense of them, translating that to your map through words, colors and shapes.
In the end, you will leave with an intimate understanding of your nervous system, why you do what you do, and what you need in order to do things differently.
Nervous System Mapping is a tool that can be returned to again and again. I make a new map every time I teach this workshop and I gain a new insight every time.
“With the ability to recognize a moment of distress and notice the autonomic state, we move into a moment of awareness instead of simply being swept deeper into dysregulation.”
In this workshop, you will learn about:
🫀 Your Wandering Nerve
The Vagus Nerve is the biggest nerve in the body and is the main parasympathetic pathway of your autonomic nervous system, which means it plays a big role in how you feel. We will track the anatomy of the Vagus Nerve as well as learn about its function and tangible tools for supporting it.
🎼 Polyvagal Theory
We will move beyond the buzzword and the biohacking to engage a holistic, integrative, relational and compassionate understanding of this emergent theory which complicates our previously simplistic understanding of the nervous system as parasympathetic=good and sympathetic=bad.
🦦 The Neuroception of Safety
Neuroception is our invisible sense or radar system that constantly scans our inner and outer environments for signs of danger and safety. This is incredibly important, as Stephen Porges’ says, “everything we cherish as humans comes from the evolutionary transition that allowed us to detect not just danger—but also safety.”
🫂 The Social Nervous System
Our nervous systems cannot be understood in isolation, we are formed in relationship. The Social Nervous System or Ventral Vagal Complex regulates our face-heart connection (Controls muscles in the face, neck, and head for expression and listening), supports co-regulation and facilitates healthy bonding.
Side Effects of Nervous System Mapping
💫 Responding to old feelings in new ways.
💫 Catching yourself before spiraling into overwhelm or shutdown.
💫 Responding to conflict with coherence rather than reactivity.
💫 Softening of your inner critic and speaking to yourself with more compassion.
💫 Bouncing back from stress more quickly and with less impact.
💫 Making decisions from grounded knowing rather than fear or urgency.
💫 Finding more moment of presence, joy and pleasure in your day.
💫 Nurturing a nervous system that can hold both rest and expansion.
💫 Feeling less stuck and more in flow with your natural rhythm.
The point of this workshop is:
✨ Nurturing understanding to increase your capacity for awareness and grow your access to choice.
✨ Working with rather than against the innate evolutionary intelligence of your nervous system.
✨ Compassionate understanding to foster an internal environment of safety and allow your nervous system to move towards its natural state of thriving.
✨ Becoming more emotionally intelligent and embodied.
✨ Feeling empowered, even when you are triggered.
✨ Transforming a lifetime of feeling out of control and overwhelmed by your feelings.
✨ Getting to make choices in alignment with growth rather than protection.
✨ Deepening into relationship with ourselves so that we can deepen into relationship with others.
✨ Staying in connection with ourselves when we feel activated.
The point of this workshop is not:
🚫 Being perfectly calm or “regulated” all of the time.
🚫 Controlling our nervous systems through “mind over matter”.
🚫 Criticizing our natural nervous system states.
🚫 Depersonalized and disconnected understanding of the nervous system.
🚫 Valuing certain nervous system states over others.
🚫 Learning abstract theory without practical application.
🚫 Increasing alienation from our own bodies through putting ourself into static boxes and categories.
“I just finished the recording of your workshop and wanted to share with you how incredibly interesting and profound it was! I’ve learned so much not only through all the detailed and on point information but also through your embodiment of what you’re sharing and my own experience with the mapping part. Thank you SO MUCH for this gift! I’m truly grateful and wish you all the best.”
Next Workshop: Summer 2026
DATE TBA · Join the waitlist to be the first to hear!