Learning how to activate the parasympathetic nervous system is essential for managing our stress,
Anxiety,
Overwhelm,
Or even symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
We're learning how to turn off or turn the volume down on the body's fight-flight-freeze response,
Which is our body's natural response when it perceives danger.
How are we doing this?
We are going to activate our body in a particular way which sends signals to our brain that,
Hey,
Everything is okay.
I'm going to give you an example.
One time my wife and I were on our way from Southern California to Northern California and we were going to get on a flight.
And on the way to the flight,
Our kids were really,
Really young,
Still in diapers,
And it was just a short flight,
45 minutes,
And we were out of diapers.
And she said,
We got to find some diapers,
Somewhere.
I said,
It's a short flight,
Don't worry about it.
We'll get there.
We were late to the plane.
We got there just in time to get on the plane.
And sure enough,
Somewhere around the 15-minute mark of the flight,
One of our kids has a complete blowout.
For those of you who are parents here,
You can find some humor in this maybe,
Or empathy or something like that.
And so there it is,
Complete blowout.
I stand up to go to get in line to go to the bathroom,
And it's a long line,
And my son is crying like crazy,
All eyes on me.
And there I am,
I'm totally flooded with stress.
As a parent on a plane,
When your kid is crying,
You feel terrible because you know you're disturbing everybody.
And also your child is obviously suffering.
And so there's nothing that feels great about that situation.
And so I was being flooded,
Stress was flooding,
My fight,
Flight,
Freeze response was in full effect.
And so I recognized that.
I take a moment,
I saw the line,
And I took a moment and recognized it.
I noticed that that's a moment of mindfulness,
Just naming like,
Okay,
There's overwhelm here.
And I recognized that there's probably other parents here,
I'm not alone in this.
So that was a feeling of self-compassion.
And then I noticed my body.
And I remembered something that's supportive,
Which is when you are activated and your fight,
Flight,
Freeze response is activated,
You're typically breathing from your chest area.
It's more rapid breathing.
And that's what I was doing,
Very shallow,
Rapid breathing.
Now,
When you go deeper,
If you're able to go deeper into your breathing,
You're bringing more oxygen into your body.
And you're pushing aside your organs a little bit as your belly expands here.
And as you do that,
Your breathing gets a little bit slower,
Which shoots signals to your brain that,
Okay,
Maybe everything is okay.
So this is what I started to do.
I was holding my son in one arm and I was holding,
I was putting my hand on my abdomen in another,
And I took some slow,
Deep breaths.
And started to slow my body down.
And that allowed me to open up space actually,
Where I started to laugh a little bit,
If you could believe it,
At the actual situation,
The absurdity of the whole situation,
How it all unfolded.
Humor,
By the way,
One of the best mediators for stress.
So let's do this together.
Go ahead and get in a comfortable position.
And this is the beauty of this practice is that you could do it anywhere,
Anytime.
No one even needs to know that you're doing it.
And so take one hand and put it on your abdomen and take the other hand and put it on that hand.
It's like one hand is making contact with you and the other hand is supporting that first hand.
And do this with me.
Take a slow,
Deep breath,
Allowing your abdomen to expand.
So you're noticing that your hand is rising.
Do it again.
See if you can expand your abdomen so it's pushing your hand out.
One more time.
And notice how you're feeling.
