What if I was to tell you that are bodies are amazing. Just like a computer, sometimes we need to reset. Sometimes we need to delete things from our computer because its affecting the computers performance. What if this was happening to your body and mind. What if your body already has an amazing reset button? It does. Its called the Vagus Nerve and it is your tenth cranial nerve. It connects your brain, your lungs, your heart and your abdomen. Our bodies have an inbuilt stress response. When our brain or computer links a memory from the past to a similar situation our body will go straight to its fight flight freeze response subconsciously. What happens when we are in fight flight freeze response? The part of our brain that does all our logical thinking, decision making, personality expression and moderating social behaviour, shuts down. If our bodies are continually going to fight flight freeze, we are not operating from the best part of our brain. We cannot deliver the best part of ourselves and we our usually completely unaware. Some people call this emotional hijack.
When we have an awareness of this event we can now observe this happening in ourselves and others. There is a great video you can watch on my resources page called Caveman Craziness, it demonstrates that when people are in this state, they are simply not home. I will never engage a person in this state again. They can’t here you.
Ok, now we can observe fight, flight freeze, how can we use are mind to keep the decision-making part of our brain online. Its simple. With our breath. We have to breathe anyway, we may as well make it count. If we breathe deep into our abdomen blowing out our abdomen on the inhale and reducing our abdomen on the exhale, an amazing thing happens. The vagus nerve is stimulated and the parasympathetic nervous system, the calm down system, is activated. Our pulse rate will drop, our breathing will become slower and that decision-making part of our brain kicks back in. Some people call this breathing technique Yoga Breathing. I call it RESET breathing and there are free downloads on the resource page.
Have you ever been in a conflict situation when you said after the event, “I was going to say this ???”. When you remember this, your body has calmed down and now you can access that part of your brain. You never forgot it, you just couldn’t access it. What if you had the skill to bring in your calm when you needed to. You can, we all can. Learning this technique has helped me so much in my personal life as well as my working life. It is my most essential life skill. It has the ability to change your life.
When you realise when others are in fight, flight, freeze response you don’t take their behaviour personally and you can respond from the best part of your brain. What a vital skill to role model for our children. Calm is a true super power.
Other skills that I learnt to help RESET that constant stress response was meditation. I really resisted meditation for a long time. I was one of those women that would never stop. I felt like I was always going so fast, and that I had to. The funny thing is now that I like to slow down and RESET, I actually achieve much more. There are so many meditation apps available. Free ones are CALM and HEADSPACE. There is also one called ISHA KRIYA. Always be kind to yourself. 20 seconds is better than none. And a minute is better than none. I hope you gradually learn to love and reap the benefits of this practice. Your family will certainly reap the benefits of this practice. When your calm, that calmness becomes contagious. One that I purchased, and love is called Spiritual Power, Spiritual Practice: Energy Evaluation Meditations for Morning and Evening by Caroline Myss. You can buy it as an audiobook. It is quite a challenging meditation however it is my go to always. When times our tough this always has the power to delete from my hard drive. I commit to 40 minutes in the morning and 40 minutes at night and I have more energy when I meditate than when I do not.
Calming the Caveman it an essential part of truly seeing life. I thought I had clarity before however now I have learnt, I was actually asleep. I have just awoken and I can see clearly now.
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