Nourishing the Nervous System

Embodiment as an Act of Care

COVER ART BY MELODY OVERSTREET IN COLLABORATION WITH VINCENT WARING

DESIGNED BY ERICA EKREM

We are grateful to share today that “Nourishing the Nervous System” (NTNS) from tayla shanaye is available for pre-order! You all have been requesting a reprint for years, and we hope that this revised and redesigned iteration can be a source of grounding and guidance. tayla truly is a teacher for our time.

This project is special to us as it’s the first book that we are publishing since merging with Weaving Earth (WE). As a Weaving Earth board member as well as longtime Loam co-conspirator, tayla was one of the collaborators who helped us come home to WE. 

Sliding scale copies of NTNS are available for pre-order below. And if you’re a paying subscriber to our Substack, scroll to the very bottom of this essay for a discount code. We’re so grateful for your sustaining support. 

Below, we want to share a note from Loam Co-Editor Kate on the necessity of “Nourishing the Nervous System.” Thank you for being here with us. 

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One of the gifts of independent publishing is that freedom from corporate control creates space for magic to emerge. You can redirect resources to better respond to crises in real time. And we deeply believe that this iteration of Nourishing the Nervous System from tayla shanaye is medicine for this moment.

As an integral somatic decolonial feminist scholar and relational educator, tayla writes at the intersections of embodiment and ecology. tayla is a cherished co-conspirator within the Loam constellation whose warmth, wisdom and realness is a gift to our community. She doesn’t deal in platitudes, or succumb to myopia, and I think this is part of why tayla’s teachings resonate so deeply with readers. 

When Loam first published Nourishing the Nervous System during the initial onset of the pandemic, we did so in the prayer that these practices might help hold us through the chaos. Later that year, as protests erupted across the globe in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, tayla shared copies of NTNS with families impacted by police brutality. 

Although we have had many readers reach out to us about a reprint in the intervening years, we couldn’t make it happen until now. In this moment of immense pain, this reiteration of NTNS—brimming with accessible somatic practices and compassionate resources for care—is a loving invitation to remember ourselves. 

As tayla notes in the new introduction to Nourishing the Nervous System:

“The magnitude of this time cannot be overstated, and I do not wish to bypass or neglect the true devastation and pain that we are facing. Although responses [such as fight, flight, and freeze] are survival functions of our living bodies and biologically wise in their design to support our survival, they also limit our capacity for presence. As our presence decreases, we find ourselves locked into numbing practices that consume our awareness. Without our awareness, we look away, and can become hopeless, helpless, and less motivated or capable of showing up to movements for radical change. Our presence is critical for our engagement.”

Somatic practices don’t always make us feel “better.” They are not a remedy for a wounded world, or a replacement for political activism. But as tayla illuminates, they can help us feel more present to—more current with—the trouble. Done daily, the practices within NTNS create the space for us to meet our grief, or feel our rage, or access our love. They help us stay steadfast. And as Hala Alyan reminds us, we need to stay steadfast: the work ahead of us is immense.

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Returning to this iteration of “Nourishing the Nervous System,” I am reminded that taking care of ourselves and our loved ones can—and must—be a part of our strategy for cultivating community care and catalyzing sociopolitical transformation. As tayla writes:

“Working ourselves to collapse, to burn out, to exhaustion, is not actually solidarity. It’s the reenactment of urgency. We owe it to ourselves and one another to be well, to be in this marathon as whole people. We owe those who cannot rest our very best, and we can only show up as our best selves when we are nourished.”

Nourishment can look like masking during marches and sharing mutual aid medicine. It can look like sleeping when we are sick, and cooking for others when we can. More than anything, nourishment is presence. It’s the practice of staying with [the pain or person or place or project] in this era of ecological emergency and social catastrophe. 

Much as we might like to, we can’t transcend our physical form. We’re bound by earthly limitations and bodily needs. We are not just minds and hearts careening through space. We have muscles that tense when stressed, and nervous systems that relax when syncopated to the breath of our beloveds, and bronchioles that constrict or expand in conversation with the air. We are enfleshed ecosystems—vulnerable, interconnected—and this is a beautiful thing. For action to flow from us, we need to take care of and tune into our bodies as able.  

“Nourishing the Nervous System” is a small offering in service of that vision. As tayla shares throughout NTNS, somatics is a path. And it’s our hope that by walking this path together, we can continue to meet this moment with rigor, resilience, and resolve.