What is Nervous System-Informed Coaching?

In recent years, conversations around mental and physical well-being have expanded to recognize the powerful role our bodies play in processing information and managing stress.

Nervous System-Informed Coaching is an approach that recognizes how our nervous system shapes emotional regulation, stress responses, attachment, and overall health. For many people, especially those navigating chronic stress (burnout), trauma, or chronic illness, traditional personal development approaches can feel too rigid or even overwhelming. Coaching through the lens of the nervous system provides a flexible, adaptive approach to growth and progress.

In this post, I’ll provide an overview of what Nervous System-Informed Coaching is, why it is valuable, what a session might look like, and who could benefit most from this approach (hint: just about anyone)

What is Nervous System-Informed Coaching?

Nervous System-Informed Coaching recognizes that each person's nervous system is unique and shaped by factors like past experiences, trauma, and health conditions. These factors impact how we think, feel, and respond to life’s challenges — and, therefore, how we engage in personal development. Important considerations are:

• Neurobiological limitations—physical, cognitive, energetic, psychological, and emotional capacities

• Windows of Tolerance (Regulation)—the optimal zone for managing emotions and stress in daily life. People experiencing chronic stress and chronic illness often have narrower windows or struggle to come back into their windows.

• Neuroception—the neural circuits that detect and assess whether to pursue opportunities (safety) or avoid potential threats, which inform our responses (i.e. fight, flight, freeze, etc.).

A nervous system-informed approach recognizes these differences, integrating body-brain education and resources to help you tailor the process to your individual needs.

Key Components of Nervous System-Informed Coaching

Whether you’re seeking coaching to clarify your purpose, build skills and confidence for your business, or pursue health goals, one thing remains constant: you’ll be engaging your nervous system.

Understanding your nervous system’s baseline and patterns (your default strategies) and identifying personalized support resources are essential for overcoming obstacles and limiting beliefs.

By learning about the vagus nerve — the essential ‘two-way connection’ between body and brain — you can shift your body’s stress response, promoting safety, resilience, and connection — key elements for meaningful growth.

In coaching, this approach complements goal-setting by helping you regulate your nervous system, enabling you to respond from a place of calm rather than stress or overwhelm. These are some key elements that set it apart:

1. Neurobiology Based

Coaches trained in nervous-system-informed care understand how the nervous system functions, including concepts like dysregulation, fight-flight-freeze-fawn responses, and the "Window of Tolerance." This knowledge helps them tailor their coaching to a client’s current state, ensuring that engagement feels safe and manageable.

A healthy nervous system isn’t always calm; the key is being able to navigate within our Window of Tolerance or return to it when we've overstretched. By creating new experiences and learning how to regulate ourselves, we stimulate neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to reorganize and form new connections, which allows us to reshape our responses and support lasting change.

2. Flexibility and Adaptability

For those with nervous system dysregulation, a rigid coaching framework can sometimes add unnecessary pressure. Nervous system-informed care, on the other hand, emphasizes flexibility and responsiveness. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, it recognizes that what works for one person may not work for another. Timing is everything and action plans should adapt to your needs, respecting your unique capacity and maintaining a sustainable pace.

3. Creating Safety

Nervous system-informed coaching creates a supportive environment where clients feel safe to explore their goals without requiring overexertion (e.g., hustle). By integrating trauma-informed practices, clients are encouraged to connect their brain and body, helping to release stress and emotional tension that may impede progress.

Language also plays a powerful role in nervous system regulation. While it’s not about sugar-coating experiences, the repetitive use of certain words can heighten nervous system activation and trigger stress responses.

Since safety is more than just a cognitive experience — it’s a felt sense in the body — we can’t simply tell our nervous system to feel safe; we must show it. This is where co-regulation and guided practices become essential.

4. Holistic Perspective

A nervous system-informed approach considers the whole person: their emotional, psychological, and physical states, all of which are interconnected. Our nervous systems are shaped by past experiences, and feelings that seem to arise suddenly can often be traced back to physiological responses linked to memories. Triggers can evoke fear and strong emotions, leading to reactive decisions or procrastination.

Reshaping the nervous system requires creating an integration between our brain and body. By improving how we process information from our internal and external worlds, we can gain clearer insight, allowing us to make more values-aligned decisions that support our growth.

5. Empowerment and Self-Regulation

Nervous system-informed coaching empowers clients to understand their nervous system and how it influences their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Clients can develop self-awareness and self-regulation strategies that enhance their ability to navigate challenges with confidence.

This includes practicing a range of somatic resources that can be used in daily life, such as EFT tapping. This technique uses the body (tapping on acupressure points) and brain (verbalized phrases) to shift and regulate uncomfortable emotions and transition to more nourishing ones.

For example, if you’re working on setting better boundaries, role-playing the dialogue is only part of the process. Tuning into your body and learning how to shift into the right nervous system state — whether by mobilizing or discharging energy and adopting a supportive body position — helps you feel empowered to set that boundary effectively.

Why Work with a Nervous System-Informed Coach?

Traditional coaching frequently relies on structured frameworks and accountability methods while emphasizing specific outcomes. While these can be helpful for some, they can feel overwhelming—or even counterproductive—for someone with a dysregulated nervous system. For people experiencing chronic stress or illness, coaching that prioritizes strict approaches (e.g., SMART goals) can inadvertently induce stress, making it harder to regulate and engage effectively.

Coaching isn't therapy and doesn't address trauma, but our nervous system influences the behaviours and attachments we bring to relationships, work, and personal growth. By recognizing and working with the body’s natural responses, nervous system-informed coaching creates a foundation for meaningful, lasting change.

For example, you wouldn’t train for a marathon in a month if you’ve never run before. You’d start with smaller, achievable goals, like preparing for a 5K over several months. Similarly, when pursuing our own goals, whether personal or professional, we should challenge (stretch) ourselves but without pushing beyond (overriding) our neurobiological limits to the point where we can no longer engage with the goal.

What to Expect in a Coaching Session

Curious about what a session might look like? Here’s a quick glimpse into how a coaching session might be structured:

1. Check-In and Regulation: Sessions start with a check-in to see how you’re feeling physically, emotionally, and mentally. If desired, we can ground with a resource/tool to help you feel more present and regulated for the session.

   
   

2. Exploring Goals or Intentions: We review progress on goals and celebrate any successes. If specific goals feel too rigid at this time, we'll discuss intentions and areas of growth that feel meaningful to you (like incorporating more play or gentle movement). Together, we'll work on specific requests you have around your goals, obstacles you're experiencing, and any observations you've made.

   
   

3. Personalized Support, Education, and Tools: Each session may involve techniques tailored to your needs that day, such as EFT, breathing exercises, or other grounding practices that support nervous system regulation and can be used between sessions to build resilience. If interested, there may also be an educational component that can help with making connections and cultivating self-compassion.

   • Here is a blog post I wrote about how understanding my nervous system supported my journey learning Spanish.

     
     

4. Closing and Next Steps: At the end of the session, we’ll reflect and define actionable steps to move forward. This wrap-up is intended to leave you feeling centred, empowered, and excited.

Who Benefits from this Coaching Approach?

My coaching practice supports individuals with chronic illnesses like fibromyalgia, LONG COVID, and ME/CFS, as well as those experiencing burnout, living with neurodiversity and anyone seeking a body-brain approach. Partnering with our nervous system and building resilience is valuable for EVERY BODY. Many of us struggle with self-regulation and effective pacing, which can show up as perfectionism and shame.

Personally, understanding my nervous system has been incredibly eye-opening. I live with fibromyalgia, a condition where a hyperactive stress response can disrupt the nervous system, leading to pain, cognitive issues, and fatigue. Understanding how the nervous system functions and learning ways to regulate it has been invaluable in managing my symptoms. 

It’s also given me more self-compassion and helped me understand why I sometimes struggle to progress toward certain goals. Creating my own "Library of Techniques"—a collection of knowledge and resources to draw from, has been empowering and incredibly supportive in my daily life.

Ultimately, I’ve noticed my Window of Tolerance has widened. Situations that once felt overwhelming now feel more manageable, and I’m able to come back to a regulated state more quickly after intense emotions or stress arises. As a result, I’m seeing progress in areas where I previously felt stuck.

Want to Learn More?

As a trauma-informed practitioner trained through the Nervous System School, I offer life coaching tailored to your unique needs. If this approach resonates with you, I’d love to talk with you! Book a complimentary initial call here.

Rooted & Rising is a weekly newsletter about intentional living and nervous system regulation. It’s designed to support people navigating the world with chronic illness, burnout, or neurodiversity—offering gentle tools to shift limiting beliefs and deepen self-connection. Join here.

---

Resources will be added soon.