Welcome.
This is a useful exercise for when your system is feeling hot,
Maybe flooded,
Over-emotional,
Probably a little out of control.
Just to say,
These feelings are not weakness or failure.
It's your limbic system doing exactly what it's built to do when your nervous system is overwhelmed.
But maybe now isn't the best time for a big cry.
This exercise can rein in that runaway limbic system in just a few minutes,
Moving you out of fight or flight responses to feeling fully in the driver's seat.
I'm going to share a short neural stack,
If you will,
Five simple drills put together to get all the parts of your brain working like a team with you in charge.
We're going to walk through each drill once,
And then we'll start to stack them together.
Just to say there is a beginning version of this.
So if this version feels too complicated,
Please go back and find that one.
We want to work with your brain where it is today.
But for now,
Find yourself a comfortable position and let's begin.
Before we start our exercises,
I just want you to do a quick body scan.
Presumably you're in a heightened state,
And I just want you to take a moment and feel where that lives in your body.
Where are these feelings actually residing?
Are there parts of your body that feel hot right now?
Tight?
If you want to be scientific about it,
You could give this a rating.
If we were going to say,
How activated are you in this moment?
One being I'm very calm and five being a five-aligned fire.
Where are you in this moment?
And then we'll come back and ask that same question at the end of our exercise.
Our first exercise is a breathing drill.
We are gonna inhale for two counts and exhale for four counts.
I'm gonna walk us through this a few times and then I'll leave you to continue it silently in your own mind.
So let's do this.
We're going to inhale,
Two,
Exhale,
Two,
Three,
Four.
Inhale,
Two,
Exhale,
Two,
Three,
Four.
Inhale,
Two,
Exhale,
2,
3,
4.
And I'm going to have you keep going now.
Good,
And then rest.
Our next exercise is an eye drill.
We're going to do vertical eye jumps along the midline.
To do this,
Make sure your head is nice and steady.
It might be good to prop it up against a wall or a couch.
You can also hold your chin with your hand and stabilize it that way.
We're going to have our eyes open,
And without moving our head,
We are going to look straight up.
See if you can find a location,
A target,
Choose some kind of object there,
Whether it's a knot in the wood,
In the ceiling,
Or a hook,
Or any kind of visible landmark.
And then we're going to look down and pick a target that is in our lower range of visual field,
Again,
Along the midline.
And we're going to do this without moving our head.
So make sure our head is on straight,
Look down,
See if you can find the target there.
Make sure you can still see the target that is up.
And we're going to make sure we're really clear on what these targets are before we go.
And then we're going to start to jump our eyes from the top object back down to the bottom one.
And then back up to the top one.
And back down.
And I want you to do this as slowly as you need to,
To make sure you're really looking at the objects that you've chosen,
But as quickly as you can to make it challenging.
Again,
Making sure the head is not moving,
Just the eyeballs.
Make sure you're breathing.
And then rest.
The third exercise we're going to do are shoulder circles.
We're going to lift the shoulders up towards our ears.
We're going to bring them back towards our spine,
Drop them down,
And then bring them forward.
So we're making a nice big circle.
We're lifting them up.
Bringing them back.
Drop them down,
And bring them forward.
And then we're going to reverse it.
We're going to go down.
Up to the ears,
And forward.
Down.
Back.
Up to the ears,
And forward.
Good.
And now,
I'm just going to have us listen to a metronome.
This is set to 60 beats per minute,
And I just want you to listen to it without moving to start.
Good.
Now we're going to start to stack these exercises together.
This can become very complicated for brains very quickly,
So listen to your brain.
We are looking for the number of exercises that we can stack together that challenges you,
But does not push you into a stress response.
Once you feel like you found your sweet spot,
Stay there for a while.
Know that you can come back and master the rest of this series another time.
And again,
We have the beginning version if this just is too much.
I'm going to start by putting the metronome back on,
And we're going to do our breathing to this.
Beat.
Here's the rhythm.
We're going to inhale 2,
Exhale 2,
3,
4.
Inhale,
2.
Exhale,
2,
3,
4.
I'm going to let you continue this on your own.
Good.
Now we're going to add in the eye jumps.
So same drill.
I'm going to keep my breath going to the beat.
And while I do that,
My eyes are going to jump up on a beat and then down on the beat.
If that feels too challenging,
You can jump every two beats or three beats.
Okay.
Here's the metronome.
Get the breathing going.
Inhale,
2.
Exhale,
2,
3,
4.
And then the eyes.
Up and down on the beat.
And then finally,
We're going to add in the shoulder circles.
So the shoulder circles are going to go up on the beat,
Back on the beat,
Down and forward,
And so on,
As we did earlier.
But now we've got the breathing and the eyes all at the same time.
Here we go.
Here's the beat.
We're going to add in the breathing.
Inhale 2,
Exhale 2,
3,
4.
Get the eyes going on the beat.
And then the shoulders get added in.
Good.
And rest.
I am going to add one more layer of complexity to this.
This is for the very advanced.
We're going to do exactly the same setup we just did,
But this time I'm going to say switch and your shoulders are going to change direction on the word switch.
It will be at random.
So let's get that beat going again.
Get your breathing going.
Inhale,
2.
Exhale,
2,
3,
4.
Eyes are jumping.
Shoulders are circling.
And switch.
Switch.
Switch.
Switch.
Switch.
Switch,
Switch,
And rest.
Nice work.
Let's check back in with our bodies and notice what's shifted as a result of the time we've spent moving our eyes and breathing to a beat and circling our shoulders,
Pulling together with those movements the different parts of our brain,
Both the parts of the brain responsible for creating fight or flight responses and those capable of taming them,
Making them right-sized.
If you rated yourself a 4 on the activation scale before,
Maybe you're a 3.
Maybe you're a two.
What's possible with just that seemingly small shift in control over our emotions?
If you found this useful,
Come back and do this drill again.
Maybe try another level up in the challenge department.
So this is a great preventative tool for getting overwhelmed as well.
And then go back out into the world and share your gifts and enjoy your day.
Thank you for being here.
