Hello and welcome to this talk and practice about moving from reaction to response.
I'll put it differently as well and we'll explore this in a little detail,
Moving from an existential relationship with something to an experiential relationship with something.
But to begin,
Let's maybe frame this up a little bit and also just arrive.
You might be joining this talk or you might have turned to this talk because you're in a state of reactivity.
So let's let this be a practice to not just talk about what we might do if we're in this state but maybe this is you now.
And so let's let this be a practice to come to understand what might be happening and understand how to respond to it with a level of courage and grace and ease.
So to begin,
Let's just maybe take a couple of breaths and notice where we are and notice what we're feeling.
So just taking a couple of deeper breaths and seeing if on the exhale you can invite the sense of softening,
Relaxing and letting go.
Softening,
Relaxing and letting go.
And just seeing what happens when we relax a little,
What becomes a little clearer to us.
Maybe asking the question of what am I feeling now?
And just deepening the breath again and maybe you'd like to take this talk in with eyes open or closed,
That's totally up to you.
We're just going to take a little bit to share a little about the neurobiology of reactivity and how we inevitably end up in these states as humans.
How we end up maybe sometimes doing things and saying things that afterwards we maybe wish we hadn't.
And hopefully sharing a little bit and understanding a little bit about how this happens can validate and affirm that this is a very human experience and there's also something we can do with it.
But to begin,
I'm going to start with a quote by Viktor Frankl.
You may have heard of before.
Viktor Frankl was a prisoner of war in a concentration camp at the time of the Holocaust and he later on went to write a beautiful book called Man's Search for Meaning about how even in suffering we can find meaning.
And a lot of this is about choice.
And so this is his quote.
Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
And in our response lies our growth and our freedom.
So in between stimulus,
Some data,
Something that's coming in to our system,
Whether it's a car pulling in front of us,
A loud noise,
Someone saying something that we have a certain association with.
In between that stimulus and our response or our reaction to that stimulus there is a space and in that space is our freedom.
Our freedom to choose how we respond.
But it happens so quickly we often can't access that space and therefore often can't access that choice.
And that happens because before we were humans in some way we were animals.
And we had quite a simple response.
Our autonomic nervous system could either move,
Well in the beginning actually,
Our reptilian brain could either move on or off.
We could play dead or we could be alive.
And if something threatening happened we would either turn off and pretend to hide under a rock and hope that it passed and then we could come back out.
We then became mammals and that response,
On or off,
Complexified to be able to be on or off towards or away.
I could move towards something and enter attack mode,
Which is fight mode,
Some of you might know it as.
Or I could move away,
Something that's threatening,
And move into flight mode,
You might know that as.
And with either of those work I move into freeze mode,
Back into the on or off option.
And then we complexified even more and we have thoughts now.
So I can now also think about it incessantly and ruminate and try and sort it out.
And that itself can be stressful.
And so we have these responses in a very,
Very bodily and very pre-verbal or pre-cognitive way.
It's a very bodily experience.
Our nervous system just responds to the world.
And without being aware of how it's responding we just end up doing things.
It's like our body just moves through the space on autopilot.
I'm sure you've had that experience before.
It's very human.
But what we're hoping to do through things like mindfulness is activate what's called our prefrontal cortex,
The latest development in our human organism,
Which helps us reflect.
Helps us reflect on ourselves,
Helps us reflect on the world.
It's where we have language and are able to talk.
And it's where we're able to access that choicefulness.
To say,
Hey,
I did that last time.
It didn't work.
I'm going to try something different.
And be able to make these choices.
And it's the thing that often gets shut down when we are in reactivity because it feels like it's a survival matter.
Except it might just be a text message.
Because our bodies haven't really updated through the course of time.
We have the same response that we might have had to a neighboring tribesperson or a saber-toothed tiger as we do now to a text message or an email from our boss.
And so what we're trying to do is create that pause.
And that's what mindfulness tries to do.
We're going to explore a very simple model called SBNRR,
Which is an acronym for stop,
Breathe,
Notice,
Reflect,
And respond.
Which tries to,
And in my experience when I'm able to practice it,
Often does help me move from reaction to response.
It also helps me move,
As I mentioned earlier,
From taking things to be existential.
In other words,
For that would be to take it to personal.
That this must mean something about me.
To being experiential and focusing more on what's happening as opposed to why it's happening.
What's happening is that this person said this and I'm feeling hurt and now I want to run away.
So,
The practice,
We did a little bit of it at the beginning,
But the first step is to notice if I'm feeling agitated,
First thing is to stop.
And then breathe.
So,
Taking a couple of deep breaths.
Just to connect with the present.
Stop,
Breathe,
Notice.
Notice how I'm feeling.
I'm feeling sweaty in my palms,
I feel my heart jumping out of my chest.
And I feel this coarseness in my throat.
I want to yell.
I'm feeling angry,
That's what I'm feeling.
I'm feeling angry.
So notice,
I'm feeling angry.
Reflect.
What is this about for me?
Is there a need beneath this feeling?
Yes,
I didn't like how that person sent that email,
The language they used.
Okay,
So there's a need for respect here.
Okay,
And now I know something about this.
And then respond.
How might I respond wisely?
Knowing something about how this particular stimuli made me reactive.
S-B-N-R-R.
So,
In this way,
And of course,
At times we don't have a chance at catching these things,
But we're hoping that over time we're able to access this pause between stimuli and response a little more often.
And we start to craft these new responses that become more habitual than the reactive responses.
So I hope this has been useful in just understanding a little bit and maybe even just affirming that it's very natural,
It's very human.
Biologically,
It makes a lot of sense.
Our organisms are oriented towards survival and energy conservation.
So we create shortcuts that optimize our chances of survival.
And sometimes in a social world,
That doesn't work for us.
And so we need to learn to actively engage the prefrontal cortex through practices like this to find more collaborative,
More equitable,
More just,
More fair responses in relationships.
So I hope this has been useful.
Feel free to share any questions in the comments.
And I look forward to practicing again soon.
