Got Stress? Breathe Through It
There’s a lot going on in the world.
By that I mean your personal world and the global world we all share. Fires. Viruses. Refugee Crisis. Political Mayhem.
Plus lots of personal stressors. Current and historical. Including the good kind.
If we’re taking an honest look about (and within), we may recognize this has always been the case. Tragedy. Celebration. Break downs. New Explorations. Scary news. Heartwarming stories. Badness. Goodness.
Life holds everything. It always will.
Depending upon how you were raised and what you experienced, times of challenge may be experienced in different ways.
If you walked on eggshells as a kid, you may be susceptible to walking on them now.
Unless you’ve retrained your system. If you were helped to manage ups and downs with empowering strategies, positive mindset, and sturdy role models, you’ll likely experience more resilience. Especially if you’ve taught yourself over time to flow more easily with everyday challenges or big scary world events.
Everyone has the potential to “soothe their system” in the face of challenge.
I view this as an essential skill on the path to sturdiness.
Feeling steady within your being is a definite benefit regardless of whether you are facing a minor disruption to your wellbeing or feel you can’t hold your head above water one more moment.
So how do you soothe your system?
Simple. No matter what you are facing, you breathe through it. The “it” in every case is the challenging experience (or group of triggering experiences) that you are facing when your anxiety, temper, heart rate, helplessness, or story telling escalates.
Breathing through it is a simple and effective technique.
In fact, it’s so simple that a lot of folks dismiss it in favor of allowing the mind to run willy nilly, dragging the body along for the ride. I hope you aren’t one of those people.
Let’s break it down.
Your stress response system was designed to keep you alive and procreating. Since you are part of the human race, it looks like that goal is being accomplished.
When faced with a threat, this system uses a multistep process to send forth the first responder hormones adrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol. You know the drill – you have a surge of energy and greater focus so that you can run away or fight the threat.
Trouble is, most of these tigers and pirates live in our minds – replaying like age old dramas or remakes of age old dramas.
When a car cuts you off on the highway, the fast flowing adrenaline helps you react swiftly. And the body allows the stress hormones to process through your system. You feel the recovery as your heartbeat and breath pattern return to normal and the heat in your body subsides.
Whew! Dodged a disaster and off you go, singing show tunes.
Unless of course, you keep replaying the scene and your upset over in your mind. In that case, the stress hormones keep pumping and you keep being disturbed. (Who’s the pirate now?)
It is rare that you face an actual threat. Most stress arrives by way of your fixation on the tigers and pirates who show up as deadlines, bosses, disappointing people, illness, financial stress, and replays of the past hurts of your life.
And when there is worrying and rumination, your body continually releases cortisol.
This is all too common in the hectic, connected world you live in. Unfortunately, cortisol as a habit can suppress the immune system, increase sugar and blood pressure, contribute to weight gain, disrupt sleep, produce acne, and generally disrupt a felt sense of sturdy wellbeing.
Too much worrying and stressing, without the presence of actual tigers and pirates, keeps you walking on eggshells.
Here’s the good news. You have the power to change that.
Even if your stress response system is hyper alert after years of vigilance (due perhaps to real threat if abuse of any kind was present in your environment). Understanding the protective intent of a system which has become habitually overactive allows you to release judgement and just breathe.
Here are some (really) simple steps which can, over time create a new bodily response to stress.
1. Notice you are stressed (cue physical symptoms, emotional upset, mental rumination).
2. Cross your palms and place them in the center of your chest. (This is called HeartBreathing – a technique in Heart Assisted Energy Psychology.)
3. Close your eyes, if possible, and focus on your hands, heart, and breath.
4. Invite your breathing to slow and your exhale to lengthen. (You can inhale to a count of 4 and exhale to a count of 6.)
5. Say a positive statement, mantra, or self encouragement to keep you focused on the calming action of HeartBreathing and away from the stress trigger. (“I am safe in this moment. I am taking good care of myself. Breathing calms my body and mind.”)
6. Flip your hands and continue HeartBreathing.
7. Aim to continue the self-encouraging, positive statements while HeartBreathing (occasionally switching palms) for 4 to 5 minutes. Talk aloud if it helps you maintain your focus.
8. Notice the way you feel now. HeartBreathe as you notice the changes in your system. Claim it: “I soothed my system. I did this. I can calm myself.”
A (really) simple practice with many immediate and long term benefits. Let’s take a look at what they are.
1. The long exhale activates the parasympathetic nervous system. The calming “brake” on the fight or flight response.
2.The HeartBreathing enables the heart to return to a coherent rhythm and communicate the desire for regulation of the body (physically, energetically, chemically, electromagnetically). Dysregulation increases stress as you have frequently experienced.
3. A coherent heart rhythm also turns off the production of stress hormones such as cortisol and turns on the feel good, helpful hormones such as DHEA.
4. The positive, self-soothing statements refocuses the mind away from the impending threat and creates a positive mindset.
5. Staying focused for 4 to 5 minutes allows the cortisol and other stress chemicals to be processed by the liver so they are no longer preparing the body to fight or flee.
6. As your heart rhythm encourages coherence throughout your body, you have greater access to your frontal lobe with its higher order problem solving capacity.
7. All the while you are creating new neural pathways (allowing the brain to change), creating habits which support sturdiness, and discovering your capacity to alter your response to the challenges of the world.
Soothing your system takes a few minutes. Creating a new approach to life’s challenges will likely take a lot of practice.
I’m assuming you are an adult. So that means you have a lot of years of reactive stress habits. My suggestion is to not wait until you are in the midst of a self or other induced stress event to see if this works. Just like lifting weights over time increases muscle mass, this practice can help reset the way your system responds to the good and not so good stressors in your life.
Everyone walks on eggshells sometimes.
Or gets lost in a mental rant about something that isn’t happening with someone who isn’t there. If you are interested in a future that involves fewer Chicken Little responses, practice this a lot.
Calmer and smarter, you remember other ways to take care of yourself during challenging times.
Wash your hands. Send positive prayers to the world. Turn off the constant news. Eat good food. Focus on your wellbeing rather than a possible pirate with a virus.
Above all, remember that the world needs a calm, sturdy center. Could that be you?
Peace be with you and with all. No exceptions.
HeartWarming
News
HeartBreathing and Energy Psychology. You know it’s my favorite thing to teach. Let’s just look at the breath. Veterans learned yogic breathing techniques. Why? Respiration is one of the autonomic functions you can control. Slow and deep breathing. Calming the fight or flight response. In one week, symptoms eased. One year later, even without maintenance of breathing techniques, symptoms were significantly decreased. Slow, deep breathing. Can’t say enough about it.
