They say there’s only so much time in a day. Maybe that’s why we’re drawn to experiences where time seems to stand still. Falling in love. Feeling appreciation and gratitude. Getting into a state of flow. Being completely present. In those moments, something shifts. We’re not necessarily given more time, but our experience of time changes. Life feels fuller. More spacious. More meaningful.
The same could be said for our bandwidth of energy.We often think there’s only so much energy we can have in a day before our batteries need to be recharged. And, in a sense, that’s true. But there’s another way to look at it.
Unless we’re living in deep survival mode, we typically wake up feeling relatively refreshed and ready to begin our day. Then, as the day unfolds, we focus on more and more things: people, work, responsibilities, our bodies, our thoughts, our relationships, ourselves. Each of these demands something from us. By the end of the day, we hope there’s still enough energy left in the tank.
Think of Yourself Like Your Phone
Imagine your phone. You charge it overnight so that it’s ready to go in the morning. Then, throughout the day, you open different apps. Each one uses some of the phone’s battery. Ideally, the battery has enough charge to get you through the entire day.
But phones have become pretty sophisticated. They can operate in different modes depending on how much battery is available.
There’s normal operation. There’s optimal performance. And when the battery starts running low, there’s battery-saving mode.
We have something similar. I think of it as three different bandwidth states:
Optimal bandwidth: You feel energized, present, capable and available for life. Neutral bandwidth: You have enough energy to meet most of what’s being asked of you, but you may notice that your reserves are getting lower. Depleted bandwidth: You’re running on low power. Things that normally feel manageable can suddenly feel overwhelming, exhausting or difficult.
The question is: How do we grow our bandwidth?
Four Ways to Change Your Energy State
If you want your phone to have more energy, you plug it in. But if you want more energy, what can you do? There are four main ways we can influence our energy state.
1. Give yourself more energy
We can support the body through metabolic processes. Food provides fuel. Sleep supports restoration. Movement influences circulation and metabolism. Substances like caffeine can temporarily stimulate the system. These can all influence how much energy we have available. But stimulation isn’t the same thing as creating more capacity. Sometimes we don’t need another boost. We need to stop draining the battery.
2. Rest and restore
Our bodies have incredible restorative systems. Rest, sleep, relaxation, breathing, stillness and recovery all give the nervous system opportunities to shift out of states of demand and into states that support restoration. Sometimes the most productive thing we can do is stop asking the system to produce.
3. Access different forms of energy
Not all energy feels the same. There’s physical or metabolic energy, but there’s also emotional energy, mental energy and what some people describe as spiritual energy—the energy of being alive, connected and engaged with something larger than ourselves. Think about the difference between doing something you have to do and doing something you deeply want to do.
The physical activity might be identical. But your experience of energy can be completely different. Connection, purpose, creativity, gratitude, love and being in a state of flow can all change the way we experience our available energy.
4. Close the apps that are draining your battery
This might be the most overlooked one. Think about what happens with your phone. You open an app. Then another. Then another. Eventually, you’ve forgotten what’s even running in the background. But those apps are still using battery. We have background apps too.
Thinking about the past. Worrying about the future. Replaying conversations. Trying to anticipate what might happen next. Being constantly “in our heads” rather than fully including the body in our experience. Feeling unworthy. Trying to be someone we’re not. Not living in alignment with ourselves.
These processes can quietly run in the background of our nervous systems. And they take energy. Sometimes we don’t need to find a way to create more energy. We need to identify what’s already consuming the energy we have.
Your Nervous System Has a Say
Many of these background processes aren’t conscious decisions. They can become patterns that the nervous system has learned to run automatically. And sometimes the body gives us signals that something is running in the background.
Fatigue, tension, pain, stress, restlessness, feeling overwhelmed.
These can be invitations to become more curious about what our nervous system is experiencing and what patterns may be asking for our attention.
This is where NeuroSpinal sessions can offer an opportunity to explore something different. Coming to the clinic for a NeuroSpinal session is, in some ways, like closing some of those background apps. It creates an opportunity for your nervous system to experience a different state—to pause, reset and become more aware of patterns that may have been operating automatically. The goal isn’t to never have those “apps” open again. It’s to become better at noticing when they’re running.
Because once you can notice them, you have more opportunity to choose what happens next.
Growing Your Daily Bandwidth
Growing your bandwidth isn’t necessarily about pushing yourself to do more. It may be about having more capacity to experience what is already here. More capacity to be present. More capacity to connect. More capacity to respond instead of react. More capacity to rest. More capacity to move through the inevitable demands of life without constantly feeling like you’re running on low battery.
On November 7th, the Align Adventure will offer an opportunity to explore this through a nervous system reset—a kind of reboot for your system. Registration opens September 28th and closes October 7th. I hope you can join us. You might just discover that growing your bandwidth isn’t about finding more energy.
It’s about learning how to stop spending so much of the energy you already have.