Orientation and Truth: What a Regulated Nervous System Does Under Pressure

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been writing about proprioception as the nervous system’s internal GPS. And I meant that literally. Not poetically. Not metaphorically. I meant that there is an actual distributed system that includes fascia, joints, vestibular input, cranial nerves, load-bearing feedback that constantly update your brain about where you are in gravity.

Most of the time you don’t notice it because it’s working.

But once you start paying attention to it, you can’t unsee what happens when it isn’t.

When that internal map loses clarity either from injury, from chronic sitting, from living inside a screen, from stress chemistry that never really resolves the system doesn’t just shut down. It compensates. It starts scanning.

Because if it didn't, we might end up being food. At least, 50,000 years ago.

So when proprioception is off from one of many issues in modern life things start to shift.... Your eyes start to work harder. Your attention starts to narrow and widen unpredictably. Your mind starts rehearsing, and predicting. You anticipate what might happen next instead of feeling where you are now. Instead of locating your body in space, the system starts trying to locate safety in the environment. Your nervous system starts trying to reduce uncertainty in ways that are available to decrease the load.

That shift is subtle. But it’s profound.

And I keep thinking about how that same shift shows up socially.

Because the nervous system that orients your body is the same nervous system that orients you around ideas.

When your body feels clear; when your joints are under load, your breath is low, your head is actually moving in space, your jaw isn’t braced disagreement doesn’t feel like destabilization.

It just feels like information.

You can hear something you don’t agree with and not immediately tense.

You can let a question sit without scrambling to respond.

There’s space for discourse and room for creativity and learning.

But when your system is already scanning? When you’ve been seated for hours, visually locked forward, barely moving your head, jaw slightly clenched, diaphragm tight, living almost entirely in cognition?

Then when something challenges you and it doesn’t land neutrally? Well, we like to interpret that defensiveness as psychological fragility, or as ego, or even emotional immaturity. And sometimes it is. I’m not trying to deny that.

But a lot of the time, it’s not that clean.

If your internal map is a little blurry, your system is already leaning outward for stability. So when someone questions you, contradicts you, misunderstands you, or pushes back, it doesn’t just register as “new information.” It registers as load.

And the system reacts the way systems react to load. It tries to stabilize and orient.

Sometimes that looks like over-explaining. Or dropping citations quickly. Or tightening your argument. Or feeling this urgency to clarify immediately so there’s no ambiguity left hanging in the air.

It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re insecure. It might mean your nervous system is trying to find its edges again.

The brain doesn’t separate physical instability from social instability the way we do in language. Uncertainty is uncertainty. If the body doesn’t feel clearly located, the mind will try to create clarity externally.

So we brace.

And bracing doesn’t always look dramatic. Sometimes it’s just a subtle tightening. A jaw that sets. A breath that lifts. A tone that sharpens slightly.

It’s a compensation pattern. And once you start seeing it through that lens, something shifts.

Because now it’s not about winning the argument. It’s about whether you were oriented in the first place.

There’s a quote often attributed to Augustine, “The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose. It will defend itself.”

Most people read that as swagger, or as the appearance of dominance.

But I took that photo of the lion myself. He wasn’t roaring. He wasn’t performing. He wasn’t even moving much. He was just there, grounded, steady, and completely at ease in his own weight. When I paired that image with the Augustine quote — “The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.” — it didn’t read as swagger to me. It didn’t feel like bravado. It felt anatomical.

What struck me wasn’t dominance. It was structure. His joints were stacked and bearing load. His head was upright but not strained. His breath was slow. His visual field was wide. There was power there, obviously but it wasn’t tense. It wasn’t performative. He didn’t need to prove anything because nothing in him was scrambling for stability. That’s orientation. Not aggression. Not posturing. Structural coherence. And systems that are structurally coherent don’t overact stability. They don’t roar unless there’s a reason. But I don’t see dominance in that image.

I see a lion at rest.

That’s what a regulated nervous system looks like. Not passive. Not aggressive. Just structurally coherent. And structurally coherent systems don’t need to over-perform stability.

In biomechanics, when a structure is aligned well under load, it doesn’t require constant muscular effort to stay upright. If alignment is off, compensation increases. We need more certainty, less surprise, but that means more tension, more gripping. And ultimately more fatigue.

I think ideas are similar.

When something is deeply integrated (tested, metabolized, refined, exposed to critique) it becomes load-bearing. It can tolerate pressure. It doesn’t need to be gripped tightly.

But if something is unstable internally, it requires muscular defense.

You can feel that difference in your own body.

Bracing is exhausting. Stability isn’t. And this is where I keep coming back to movement.

If you look at warrior traditions across cultures, one thing shows up again and again: they didn’t train by avoiding stress. They trained inside of it. Deep stances held until the legs shook. Slow, repetitive drills. Bilateral coordination. Breath controlled under strain. Bare feet on uneven ground. Contact. Load. They weren’t trying to eliminate fear. They were learning how to stay oriented while it was present. A body that knows where it is doesn’t burn energy trying to find itself. It doesn’t scramble for stability. It already has it.

Modern life moves in the opposite direction. We smooth out variability and unpredictability. We sit more than we stand. We stare forward at fixed distances. Our heads barely move. The terrain is flat. The load is repetitive and mostly cognitive. We live in prediction instead of contact. And over time, internal resolution drops. When that happens, vigilance shifts outward. We start scanning more than sensing. And then we act surprised that everything feels fragile... that disagreement escalates instantly, that ambiguity feels intolerable, that uncertainty reads like threat. And maybe that isn’t purely ideological. What if some of it is regulatory?

When I work with people on increasing proprioceptive clarity (slow load-bearing movement, hanging, crawling, controlled carries, even rhythmic resisted chewing) something interesting happens. There is an unconscious shift in their demeanor. Breathing deepens without cueing. Jaw tension decreases. People describe feeling “less reactive” without having done any cognitive reframing.

Because the system feels locatable again. And when you feel locatable, you don’t need to defend every edge. You can let something stand. If it’s structurally sound, it holds. If it’s not, pressure reveals that. Either way, you don’t need to grip it.

So maybe the question isn’t “How do I respond better?” Maybe it’s “Was I oriented when this hit me?”

Were my feet actually grounded? How am I breathing? Is my jaw clenched? Or was I already scanning?

Because if you’re already scanning, anything else just adds load. Sometimes the most intelligent move isn’t a rebuttal. It’s restoring your orientation.

Chewing something slowly and deliberately. A wall sit. A slow carry. Quadruped rocking. Hanging for thirty seconds. Turning your head fully left and right and actually feeling it.

Then reassess.

You may still respond, but you won’t be bracing. And that difference matters.

Truth that requires constant muscular defense is usually compensating for instability.

Truth that’s integrated both neurologically, structurally doesn’t panic under pressure.

It rests.

And gravity is very hard to argue with.