One of the only things I think I’ve learned in what will, pretty soon, be decades, plural, of work in elite sport is that everybody is human. Everybody. Every Body. (Including the refs!) Which means that we affect each other. Neurobiologically.

I am—alas—not a parent, so I won’t presume to know what it feels like to see your child out on a field of play, being hurt physically or emotionally, getting acknowledged for good or ill or in between. Or not getting acknowledged at all. I won’t presume even to guess what it feels like in your body when this is happening.

What I will say is that you’ve got options—many of the same options as your athletes—for a reset, if needed. So let’s talk about your nervous system.

One of my favorite things about our respective tenth cranial nerves (the vagus nerve, which wanders from your brainstem up into your face and down through your throat, into your chest cavity, around your vital organs, all the way to your rectum) is that you can so vividly picture........

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