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For centuries, doctors both traditional and alternative have asked the question: is there a universal or shared understanding of the nature of disease and human suffering? Scientific discovery shows that the human Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) may provide the answer to that question. The ANS has a far greater influence on our health and happiness than anyone could have possibly imagined. Recent breakthroughs in research suggest “most illness and injuries cause or result from an imbalance between the branches of the Autonomic Nervous System.”1
Your Autonomic Nervous System is the part of your nervous system that functions to maintain and balance your life. It controls your heart, lungs, digestive system, blood pressure, immune system, temperature, hormones, sexual function, muscle tension, posture, state of mind, and most importantly the rate of healing and repair in your body.
Your Autonomic Nervous System has three branches, or parts. The two major branches are the Sympathetic branch and the Parasympathetic branch. A lesser-known branch is the Enteric Brain, or gut brain, which is located in the abdomen.
The Sympathetic branch is more in control when you are stressed, exercising, injured, angry, fearful, sick, or in “fight or flight” mode.
The Parasympathetic branch is more in control when your body is healing, sleeping, digesting, coordinating immune responses, recovering after exercise, or meditating.
The Parasympathetic branch is electrically twice as fast as the Sympathetic branch, and quickly begins to counter any activation of the stress response by the Sympathetic branch.2 The general action of each of the branches of the ANS is to oppose the other, working in unison to maintain homeostasis (balance). Persistently elevated levels of tone in one or the other branch of the ANS are not healthy.3 These elevated levels eventually create dysregulation.
The Enteric Brain, or gut brain, makes dozens of chemicals, including 95% of the body’s Serotonin,4 the anti-anxiety and antidepressant neurotransmitter. It also produces innate relaxants, like Valium® and Xanax® without any side effects.
The Vagus nerve is the largest nerve in the body, and part of the ANS. It wanders throughout the major organs in the abdomen. The Vagus nerve has a major influence on the ANS, connecting the Enteric Brain to the higher brain. The Vagus can positively influence Parasympathetic activity, and ANS balance.5
This nerve has a major affect on the immune system. Imbalances can result in various symptoms such as gastritis, chronic fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome and even autoimmune diseases. It has been discovered that the brain can control the immune system via the Vagus Nerve, i.e. the “inflammatory reflex.” 6
Studies show that the negative effects on the ANS can also be cumulative.
That means every stress, trauma, illness and injury not dissipated and integrated can add up over years.7
Levone said:
Common occurrences can produce traumatic after-effects that are just as debilitating as those experienced by veterans of combat or survivors of childhood abuse. Traumatic effects are not always apparent immediately following the incidents that caused them. Symptoms remain dormant, accumulating over years or even decades. Then, during a stressful period, or as the result of another incident, they can show up without warning. There may also be no indication of the original cause. Thus, a seemingly minor event can give rise to a sudden breakdown, similar to one that might be caused by a single catastrophic event.
-Peter Levine, PhD 8
These stored-up energies force the ANS dangerously out of balance, a state called Dysautonomia, or Autonomic Dystonia.9 There is significant scientific research that shows that
an imbalance in your Autonomic Nervous System can result in problems anywhere in the body—10.11 including neck and back pain, TMJ headaches, sleep loss, post traumatic stress, high blood pressure and heart disease, anxiety and panic attacks, stomach and bowel disease, depression, sexual problems, and immune system weakness and disease
Your Autonomic Nervous System and Your Health
The ANS can hold on to stress, trauma, injury and loss, keeping us stuck in what is referred to as Survival Mode (See the EHI hand-out on Survival Mode). Survival Mode sets in when your nervous system is overwhelmed by a traumatic or stressful physical injury, illness, emotional pain, or trauma of any kind. Our ANS often becomes frozen with this non-dissipated energy and acts as if the stressor is still going on. This phenomenon of imbalanced ANS is very common, but unfortunately most people treat only the symptoms and not the root cause. For example, a
stressed and traumatized ANS is why a soldier’s nervous system often develops post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), or why an infant who is deprived of human touch can go through life physically ill. [...]
ANS balance is a key to health and happiness. Every single cell in the body is affected by the Autonomic Nervous System... This is why it is important to have your ANS checked and balanced on a regular basis.
The ANS acts like a gateway of our humanness. That is, every loving act, word of compassion or sensitive touch gets downloaded into the nervous system in a positive, cell-nurturing way. Yet the opposite is also true, that humans in all their unconsciousness hurt themselves and others. This is not cell-nurturing; this process creates pain, disease, and suffering from generation to generation... Disease and illness can result from the numbing response to overwhelming pain, which we automatically impose (both physically and emotionally) in order to move ahead in life. This in turn causes the brain to lose feedback with the body, allowing disease to start up unnoticed. There is also a process called somatization and conversion in which our emotions, thoughts, feelings, and traumas internalize through the ANS into real-time physical pain and disease. This condition may be the most unrecognized diagnosis in all of medicine.13.14.15.16
In conversion disorder physical symptoms that are caused by psychological conflict are unconsciously converted to resemble that of a neurological disorder.
-Merck Manual, Home Edition
If you are not balancing the ANS you may be burning the ANS out by creating what is called Dysregulation.17 By constantly reactivating un-dissipated life stress, fear, anger and unresolved traumas, it can lead to chronic pain, depression, anxiety, or even worse, a heart that's beating 200 beats per minute on its way to a heart attack.
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The Prayer got me finally so far in communion that your advice seems realizable. For long i sought a resolution and my stubbornness blinded me. If i had past lives, one memory of being a priest resonates especially strong inside. Permeates my life. Should have been done so long ago that i only rage and fume thinking about why the delay?! 
Maybe now i can effect my absolution.
