You are aware of how stress affects you. It’s likely worse than you think. That’s because you have spent most of your life, maybe all of it in a stressed out state rarely returning to peace. Good news: you can do something about it. You can shift out of stress into the heal-restore state of health and reside there.
Before I tell you how to get out of the stress hole, I’ll talk about some simple neurology. Or if you like to eat dessert first scroll down to the methods below.
Some Simple Neurology
You have two nervous systems:
The autonomic or involuntary: Heart beating, digesting, breathing, tissue repair and growth, from my morning strength training, etc. And the fight, flight, and freeze system.
The somatic – the one you can control, like me typing now.
The autonomic divides into two parts – the sympathetic and the parasympathetic.
The sympathetic governs fight, flight, and freeze. These are the responses for stress, for danger, for perceived threat. Note perceived. It doesn’t have to be an actual threat. Think of the old adage, “To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”
If a mammal is under attack or threatened the body goes into a sympathetic response adrenaline kicks in, heart rate goes up, and blood is shunted to the skeletal muscles to run or fight. We also get tunnel vision. We only have eyes for the predator, for the threat. All of this is good. It has saved mammals from extinction. It has saved you a number of times, no doubt.
When a prey animal fights or escapes, within minutes it drop back into digesting there breakfast, healing their body, growing muscle, et al.
Most mammals, maybe all mammals spend 99% of their time in heal restore. Yeah.
Modern humans don’t. We spend 75% of our time in stress. A whole raft of health concerns result from this. Things that look like disease are really just the results of not spending enough time in the heal, digest, restore mode.
A short list of problems :
- Sore muscles
- Migraines
- Back Pain
- Dizziness
- Grinding of teeth, clenching.
- Irritable, anger
- Depression, feeling hopeless
- Anxiety
- Fearfulness
- Nightmares
- Difficulty sleeping
- Excessive worry
- Frustration
- Chest pains, angina
- Irregular heartbeat
- High blood pressure
- Poor digestion
- PTSD
- Constipation, diarrhea
- Excessive eating, loss of appetite
- Frequent influenza
- Allergies
- Minor infections
- Frequent accidents
- Increase in drinking alcohol and smoking
- Self medicating
- Autism, ADHD
- Excessive distrust
- Loss of interest in sex
- Difficulty concentrating, remembering, making decisions.
- Excessive menstrual pains
- Skin problems
Woof.
The Four Hurricanes Can Blow You into a Stress State
We live in especially stressful times. Perhaps unprecedented. Certainly, unprecedented for most of us alive today.
Four hurricanes rage around us, all threatening us:
- Global Warming – creating real hurricanes in New England. Massive regular forest fires. Worldwide droughts which lead to fires of course, and food shortages, and mass migrations which will change us all.
- Coming to terms with historic and ongoing systemic racism, and misogyny.
- Pandemic – yikes and future pandemics in our interconnected global village.
- Rise of right wing authoritarian governments in the USA and elsewhere.
Methods for Moving into Heal Restore
First, the vagus nerves are the longest nerves in your body and runs the heal, restore, digest part of the autonomic nervous system. Turning it back on after stress will bring you back into peaceful ease.
Repeat as needed. I mean, repeat often.
Breathe:
You can stimulate the vagus nerve by exhaling longer than you inhale. Easy.
I recommend in for 4 counts exhale for 8, repeat 10 times.
Or in for 4, hold for 2, exhale for 8.
Or in for 4, hold for 8, exhale for 8.
Stimulate the Vagus Nerve
Heads up: These take less than two minutes and appear too simple to do anything useful. However, they work. You may not notice much at first or the effects may be profound. Keep at it, please.
You don’t need to do them all. Experiment with them all. Pick one or two that feels most useful to you, feels right.
Watch these videos and do the simple exercises in them.
The basic one: Repeat often during the day.
Vagus Nerve Reset to Release Trauma Stored Your Body
Vagus Nerve Exercises to Rewire Your Brain from Anxiety
This video has three methods. I like them.
Vagus Nerve Massage for Stress and Anxiety Relief
More information about Polyvagal Theory –this is theory and useful. I recommend it, and you don’t need it to benefit from the exercises above.
You might like this book:
Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve by Stanley Rosenberg.
Lastly, consider working with me. Life coaching can pull you back from the edge and support you in better self-care.
May you walk in beauty,
William
P.S. Walking in nature almost always resets the heal restore system.
P.P.S. Pass this article on to anyone you care about.
