Being a member of Cohort 8 in Butler University’s Applied Educational Neuroscience (AEN) Certificate Program was not at all what I expected.
I have been a fan of Dr. Lori Desautels on Social Media for some time. I even had a chance to interact with her as part of the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint’s Book Study for her book, “Intentional Neuroplasticity: Moving Our Nervous Systems and Educational System Toward Post-Traumatic Growth.” I had also read her book “Connections Over Compliance: Rewiring Our Perceptions of Discipline.” I was inspired by her hopeful message about how developing an awareness of our nervous systems can help us to rewire them through intentional and positive experiences.
I expected to learn about the brain (science has never been my thing!). I expected to meet other educators on the same path to changing “the system.” I expected to learn new ways to support my two neurodivergent children.
What I did not expect was that this program would change my life.
Our first semester began during our family’s annual vacation to upstate Pennsylvania. We typically camped, which is not the best situation for a week of online classes over Zoom.
My make-it-happen mom quickly switched gears and rented a luxurious cabin with reliable internet. (Thank you, Mom!) The plan was set. While I was in class, my parents and husband would manage the kids’ outdoor activities on the lake (did I mention the cabin was on a lake?!) and take them to the amusement park. I was bummed to miss some of those moments, but I had a view of the lake from the room I was in and joined everyone for fun in the evenings.
Things were set, and it was time to learn how to help my kids and my students!
We jumped right in during that summer intensive class, learning about the 4 Pillars of Applied Educational Neuroscience: Educator Nervous System, Co-Regulation, Touch Points, and the Language of the Nervous System. We then dove deep into the first pillar: the Educator’s Nervous System.
My mind was spinning with Polyvagal Theory and states of the nervous system. I felt out of my depths at times and had a bit of imposter syndrome when I assumed that I must have been the only person in the cohort who was struggling to grasp these concepts. Did I mention I’m a music teacher with parents who met at college for chemical engineering? Soon, though, my fear of science shifted, and I realized that it wasn’t that I couldn’t learn science; I had just never been inspired to understand it. This science was different. It felt real and relevant to me. It related to something I was passionate about, which was understanding and supporting behavior.
Then came one of our first assignments: track our own nervous system states for the week. I was still beginning to understand what all of this meant. Up to 6 times a day, I tracked the sensations I was feeling in my body. Even between those times, I began to notice my heart rate increasing, my breathing getting shallow, and the feeling of coming home when I snuggled with my boys. It felt like an awakening. My body and I were reconnecting. We had been frenemies for a long, long time!
When my son experienced a meltdown (not surprisingly, on vacation, where everything is different), I felt my body tense. With that awareness came the ability to take a breath. My son has always had amazing “spidey senses” which I later learned in our coursework is called “neuroception.” His body’s threat detectors help him to be able to read the feelings of people in a room in moments. When I released some of the tension in my body and breathed, he took a breath. I was able to see the power of my nervous system in real-time!
I have never connected to traditional feeling words. They held too much baggage.
I had tried in the past to notice myself getting “frustrated” or “angry,” but those words filled me with guilt and shame. In our AEN coursework, we talked about sensation words. We were recognizing how feelings manifest in our bodies, how they feel. Instead of noticing that I was feeling “frustrated,” which led to feelings of shame because of my own past experiences, I began to notice that I was feeling “prickly.” There was something liberating about using this new verbiage. I didn’t have any past associations with it, and I didn’t feel ashamed of feeling that way. It felt neutral, free of judgment.
Reconnecting to the sensations in my body felt like an awakening. I was learning about how the sensations I was feeling connected with my Nervous System States. Not only was I noticing how my body reacted to situations and people in my life, I had the data from my tracker to reflect on! I could see how the presence of others was affecting me physically.
I began to recognize that I had been spending a lot of time in dorsal vagal “shutdown.” Things I was doing, like scrolling on my phone rather than cleaning, was my body protecting me from feelings of helplessness and hopelessness.
This knowledge empowered me to take action.
Shortly after returning from that vacation and our very first class for the AEN program, I took some big steps to create peace in my life. I learned about making a safe space when we talked about “building our nests,” and I began to build a nest for my children and me.
What began as learning to be aware of my body’s sensations and nervous system states in a grad class began my journey of hope and healing.
