Connecting to your higher self is a deeply personal and grounding experience. Your higher self is your authentic essence—the wise, calm, and aligned part of you that exists beneath stress, conditioning, and distraction. When you’re connected to this part of yourself, decisions feel clearer, your nervous system settles, and life begins to flow with more ease.
However, in everyday life, many of us feel busy, overwhelmed, anxious, or stretched in a million directions. When that happens, we naturally lose touch with ourselves, and tuning in can feel almost impossible. That’s why learning how to connect to your higher self isn’t about forcing insight—it’s about creating the right inner conditions.
This gentle process unfolds in three essential steps: calming the nervous system, relaxing the physical body, and tuning into inner awareness.
Step 1: Calm Your Nervous System
Before you can connect to your higher self, your nervous system needs to feel settled and regulated. When we’re stressed or overwhelmed, our attention is pulled outward, and our system stays in a state of alert, making inner connection difficult. Soothing the nervous system creates the foundation for tuning inward.
One effective way to calm the nervous system is through somatic practices, which work directly with the body. A simple and powerful method is shaking to music, a technique that helps release stored stress and emotional tension.
Choose a piece of shake or shaking music—ideally five to ten minutes long. Find a space where you can move freely, put on the music, relax as much as possible, and begin gently shaking your body. As you move, tune into any areas of overwhelm or tension and shake from them, as if your shaking them out of your system. Continue until the music ends. If you still feel tension and have the energy to continue, feel free to add another round.
After shaking, take a few slow, deep breaths. You might inhale your arms up and exhale them down with a sigh, allowing everything to settle. Personally, I like to create a “shake and soothe” playlist—an energizing shake track followed by a short, calming piece of music. This allows the body to naturally transition into rest and integration.
When you finish, check in with yourself. Ideally, you’ll feel lighter, calmer, and more centered—ready to move into the next step.
~Shake music examples below
Step 2: Relax Your Physical Body
Once your nervous system has settled, the next step is to relax your physical body. This can happen in many ways, and you likely already know what helps you soften and let go. Practices such as yin yoga, massage, sound baths, energy healing, or even floating in a sensory deprivation tank can deeply support physical relaxation by allowing the body to surrender to gravity and feel safely held.
One especially accessible and powerful practice is body scan meditation. This meditation gently guides your awareness through each part of your body, helping you relax deeply and recover from accumulated tension. As your attention moves through the body, muscles soften, breathing deepens, the mind gradually settles and the body enters a state of deep rest.
Body scan meditation also strengthens the mind–body connection. Developing awareness of your body is a key aspect of grounding and presence, and in somatic psychology, it’s well understood that body awareness helps regulate the nervous system and bring us back into balance.
This practice alone can be enough to help you feel centered and present. If you’re not holding much emotional tension, you may even choose to skip the shaking step and focus primarily on physical relaxation. Either way, the goal is the same: creating inner balance so you can tune in more easily.
~Body scan meditation below
Step 3: Tune In and Connect to Your Higher Self
When your nervous system is calm and your body is relaxed, you naturally become more present with yourself. From this place, connecting to your higher self becomes possible.
The higher self lives in the here and now—in a peaceful, grounded inner space. My meditation teacher translated a collection of ancient poems called The Radiance Sutras, and one verse beautifully captures this inner meeting place:
There is a space in the heart where everything meets.
Come here if you want to find me.
Mind, senses, soul, eternity—
all are here.
Are you here?
To me, this verse describes the inner space where the higher self can be felt and heard. It carries a sense of timelessness—grounded, peaceful, and deeply steady.
As you meditate, gently bring your focus toward finding this peaceful part of yourself—the version of you that feels most authentic and aligned. It may appear in your heart, or somewhere else in your body. Explore with curiosity and presence. You’ll know when you’ve found it, because it carries a sense of quiet recognition that only you can feel.
Spend some time there. Notice how it feels to be connected to this part of yourself. From this space, you can begin asking gentle questions:
Does this decision feel aligned?
What direction feels right for me now?
What do I truly want?
The answers don’t usually come as loud thoughts, but as subtle sensations, clarity, or a quiet sense of knowing. This experience is deeply personal and unique, so allow yourself to explore without expectation.
Over time, you may even begin living from this place—making decisions, communicating, and dreaming from the perspective of your higher self. When you do, new possibilities begin to open.
~Reflection journal below
Final Reflection: Creating Space for Inner Guidance
When you calm your emotional body and relax your physical body, you create the conditions for your spiritual awareness to emerge. Connecting to your higher self is not about striving—it’s about relaxing, softening, and remembering who you are beneath the noise.
This three-step approach offers a gentle, repeatable path back to inner clarity, balance, and wisdom.
Explore these free resources to support your connection to your internal wisdom:
Shake and Soothe Playlist
Nervous System Reflection Journal
Body Reflection Journal + Body Scan Meditation
Higher Self Message Reflection Journal
