Restore Calm And Reset Your Nervous System After Anxiety

Our nervous system loves predictability.

Look around the room.

Notice our body.

Move your body a little bit.

Take a few breaths.

Notice how that feels.

We're working today with calming anxiety and resetting our nervous system.

One of the things I love about that is that we can reliably do that.

Our internal experience changes through the practice.

However we come in and then our experience changes through the practice that we're doing.

Coming in and noticing what's here.

Some days that's a lot of ease there.

It's very comfortable.

Other days it's like,

Whew,

I'm glad I have this opportunity because I'm coming in hot.

I'm really agitated or scared or whatever that might be.

We can welcome ourselves into the practice.

The best way to do the practice is to try to stay attuned to your experience and then do what feels good.

Do what seems helpful.

One of the things that happens with trauma is that we disconnect from ourselves,

From the present moment,

Our sense of value,

Quote from Dr.

Gabor Maté.

And I've really found that to be true many of times when we're developing that skill of somatic awareness of what is going on in my body.

I notice I clench my teeth a lot or for me it was upper back tension,

Shoulders up around my ears a lot.

These patterns that are in our body,

Whether it's physical like that or whether we hold our breath,

They all have a reason.

Some of it has to do with this moment and a lot of it doesn't.

A lot of it is our historical experience.

Our nervous system has developed a habit of holding our breath or clenching our teeth or disconnecting,

Dissociating from our body.

And then here we are.

We've brought ourselves here to come back in.

One of the ways the mind works is our thoughts wander.

What I find is that as much as possible to be kind with your mind,

Bring yourself back if your mind wanders,

Bring yourself back.

There's no need to be discouraged or shaming or anything like that.

Let's start with looking around the room.

You might look and see is there anything dangerous in the environment that you're in?

So if you're in an unfamiliar environment,

It's not a certain.

If you're in a familiar environment,

You have some predictability there.

The reason we do this is that our eyes communicate directly with our brain,

With our nervous system.

So we want our eyes to take that in.

Right now it's safe enough for me to be here doing a practice.

And also looking around,

Notice cues of support,

Safety,

Nurturing.

I'm looking right at some pictures of family,

Some art.

I'm looking out the window.

So as you're looking around,

What is it that's supportive that would help you to feel safer if you notice that?

And you might notice a bit of a shift.

Maybe your body relaxes a little.

Maybe you feel a bit of warmth in your heart.

Let's work a little with the breath.

One of the powerful breaths is cyclic physiological sighing.

Deep inhale through your nose and then a little bit more.

So double inhale.

And then when you breathe out,

Push your lips and breathe out like you're breathing out through a thin straw.

Inhale.

And again.

And then exhale.

As you breathe out,

Let your whole face relax,

Your mouth and jaw,

Neck and shoulders.

All the way down your body.

Take your time with it as you're breathing out.

Breathe out as long as you can without making any pressure.

You don't want to be squeezing your stomach in on the exhale.

Just let your belly soften as you breathe out.

With the pursed lips,

I find that we can breathe out a lot longer and that gives our parasympathetic nervous system a chance to relax our body.

So let's do this for another minute or so.

So inhaling twice.

Breathing out through a straw.

Let a wave of softening come from head to toes.

See if you can keep your mind focused on the practice.

And if it goes somewhere else,

Bring it back.

And notice now,

What is your experience in your body?

How does it feel in your nervous system?

Notice your muscles.

We can hold a lot in.

And that breath pattern of holding and the muscle pattern of holding comes from stress,

Comes from trying to protect ourselves.

When we do a practice like that,

It helps us to come into our body again.

So it helps with the connection.

We've just looked around and verified that we're safe enough to do the practice,

That we have some supports here as well.

My dog is sleeping on the floor.

Now let's notice the soles of our feet.

If you have your feet on the floor or the ground,

Or they're touching something,

Notice that.

And you might start at your big toe.

Mentally trace the toes on the big toe down through the second,

Third,

Fourth,

And the little toe.

Do it on one foot and then the other.

And then notice the space underneath the toes,

Between the toes and the balls of the feet.

Notice the balls of your feet.

And then the instep where you can't perhaps feel it quite as firmly on the floor.

Notice your heels.

Come up to your ankles.

If you were to point and flex your feet to make circles with your feet,

Notice what that feels like in your body.

And then bring your awareness up through your back body.

So notice the back of your feet.

The calf muscles,

The back of your thighs,

Your buttocks,

Your lower back,

Mid-back,

And behind the heart center,

Upper back,

The shoulder blades.

Turn the shoulder blades down through the back of your arms and hands.

And then through the neck up to the back of your head.

That space in behind your ears.

The part of your neck that's not flat.

If you have a pillow or something though,

You might be able to feel that supported.

Notice your whole back body.

Is this something that you feel like,

Oh,

I'm completely relaxed.

I can feel the support that I have.

Or are you feeling a little bit on the edge of your seat?

Those are both highly influenced by how safe we feel.

So as we're signaling safety to our nervous system,

One of the ways we do that is we let our body soften and accept the support that we have through the back of our body.

You might take a few breaths and move your body around.

It doesn't have to be a stillness practice.

It's a relaxation practice.

Let yourself notice from the back of your head,

To the back and sides of your neck,

The large muscles of the upper back,

Muscles of the back of the arms,

Down through the back of your hands.

And in your arms and hands,

Are you feeling any kind of edginess or I need to get up and move?

When we have a habit of hypervigilance,

We'll often have trouble just softening into stillness.

Because our body is not ready.

There's an edginess there.

I need to be doing something.

So many of us have that feeling some of the time.

And some of us have that feeling a lot of the time.

We notice that in our legs as well.

Are your legs ready to move into action?

Do you need to fight or flee?

Or could you allow your whole back,

Your buttocks,

The back of your legs,

All the way through your body in the back?

Could you allow that to settle?

And tension in the body is not an on-off switch.

Usually there's a dial down.

You might be feeling a little less agitated or like you need to move.

Sometimes when we get into our body,

We feel more agitated because we're aware of the agitation.

Before we might've been just,

Well,

I'm feeling kind of stressed and antsy.

And then now we get to be specific.

Maybe I could do a tension and release on my thighs.

Tense all the muscles in the front and back of your thighs and release.

Wiggle your toes or stretch your legs.

You could do some shaking.

We have so many really great ways now to bring awareness into our body.

So much you can move your shoulders around.

You could shake out through your arms and hands.

Make some noise with your breath.

If there's something that would help you to release any of that edgy energy out of your body,

Then go ahead and do that.

Make the practice your own.

First step in that is noticing what would be helpful?

What does my body want to do?

What is it signaling?

And then we allow ourselves to do that.

So let's come down through the front of the body now.

If the back body is a little bit more settled,

Then usually the front of the body is perhaps not as tight as it was.

But we have a lot of persistence in the habits.

So if you have a lot of worry,

If you have a lot of anxious thinking,

Catastrophic thinking,

Ruminating,

It quite often involves the head,

The brain.

Also there's our forehead and eyebrows.

You might notice that we have a habit of knitting our brows.

So we could lift our brows and then soften.

Tension in the mind is also reflected in the jaw.

Move your lower jaw around.

Release tension out of the hinges of the jaw.

Keep a little bit of space between your upper and lower teeth so that you're not clenching your teeth.

Even if there's tension in your jaw,

That you're not clenching your teeth.

It's a good habit to develop if you can.

Ideally we have no tension in the hinges of the jaw.

Notice your tongue and your throat.

When we're worrying about something or chewing on something,

We often have some activation in the vocal cords,

In the back of the tongue,

The throat.

Take a moment to soften the face.

Notice if that helps in terms of letting the thoughts settle a bit too.

Softening your forehead,

Your eyebrows,

The little muscles around your eyes.

Taking a few deeper breaths,

Noticing the sensation of coolness as you breathe in.

You could do a few cyclic sighs.

That's always helpful.

Deep double inhale through the nose.

Long exhale like you're breathing out through a straw.

Keep going down through the front of the body from the face.

Let's go to the sides of the neck,

Front of the neck,

Down to the collarbones,

Sides of the neck to the muscles of the arms,

Down into the palms of your hands,

Your fingers,

Fingertips.

Notice if the energetic feel of that has changed.

Sometimes we just get the message,

Oh it's okay to relax,

And our body goes into a real softening.

More often probably when we take our attention away from relaxing a part of the body that habitually carries tension,

Then the tension might come back.

I could stand to soften them again.

And bring your attention to the muscles of your chest at the front.

We have this lovely rib cage that protects our heart and lungs.

And we have muscles at the front and back of the chest.

Let those muscles soften.

We have the capacity to move our shoulders around.

That can help us to loosen up or also just become aware.

But notice if you're bracing against anything through the large muscles of your back,

Or if there's some kind of emotional bracing or protective coating or like a shield in the muscles of the front of your heart area.

What's happening in the muscles of your chest?

And then coming into the stomach area from the lower ribs to the stomach area.

Notice how your breath is moving your body.

If you're breathing diaphragmatically,

Which is ideal,

Then your stomach softens as you breathe out.

The breath is continuous and smooth.

We have ease in our breath.

And if we're feeling safe enough to breathe,

We won't be holding our breath.

We'll be letting the breath flow.

And again,

We have those habits of the body.

We need to attune with these different areas.

What's happening with my breath?

What's happening with my neck and shoulders?

Are my arms and legs settled now?

Let's take another couple of deep breaths and then bring your attention to your thoughts.

Sometimes we have a racing mind where it's just a lot of anxious thought.

It's just,

We have a lot going on there.

We might have a more of a sluggishness in the mind,

A dullness,

If we're in more of a freeze response.

Sometimes we can tell by the content of our thoughts what we're worried about or stressed about.

Other times it's more of a muddle.

Let's take a moment to tune into the area where your thoughts form somewhere around the brain.

And as you're breathing in and breathing out,

Notice that you could soften your forehead,

Your eyebrows.

We have a lot that we're worried about right now.

Our nervous system is very uncomfortable with uncertainty.

If we don't know what's going to happen,

We tend to go into trying to figure it out so that we can keep ourselves safe.

That creates a lot of fear and anxiety in our body and in our mind.

We have the big global picture right now and we have our personal life right now as well.

We got a lot going on that we might have running through the mind.

So one of the things that's helpful about doing these practices is that we get to breathe,

We get to relax our body,

But also we get to see a little bit what's going on in our mind.

What is it that we're worried about?

To really give ourselves validation of the way our nervous system works.

If we have pain in our body,

For instance,

Or if we have something going on at work or with a friend or any of those things,

We're going to have more anxiety in our body and we're going to have thoughts about that.

And if we have the awareness that some part of our body is protecting us,

Then it's helpful to notice,

I don't need to brace myself by having shoulders up around my ears.

If I was to release that,

I could feel what's here in my heart.

Take a moment to just be here with this more integrated experience.

Take a few deep breaths.

Notice your experience in the practice.

When we notice that we've had a positive experience,

That we feel better in some way,

That helps us to be inspired to come back.

So that's helpful as well.

Notice your breath.

One thing that we can always do is to notice when I'm holding my breath,

When I'm tightening my body,

Anything like that that's going on,

It's for a reason.

Our nervous system doesn't do this randomly.

It does it because we live in a high stress,

High anxiety society and our nervous systems aren't really built for that.

When we think of the millions of years when they were developing and the changes in the last 100 years,

200 years,

We could offer ourselves some kindness around this and also really commit to doing these practices.

It's very helpful.

Do something for your nervous system every day.