Nervous System Regulating Practices

Childhood experiences affect the development of the brain and nervous system and have a lasting effect throughout our adult lives. This is from the 1st of 4 Insight Timer live talks. Listen to learn simple, powerful practices to build long-term strength and resilience, and to emotionally self-regulate when you are stressed. || Or go directly to: 6:48 Box breathing | 9:07 Longer exhale with vooo | 10:36 Signaling safety through the eyes | 11:32 5 senses for panic | 13:30 Touch your body |
15:00 Thoughts

Transcript

We all share our basic setup,

Our nervous system.

Our primitive brain,

Which has a negativity bias,

The fact that we remember everything that's ever happened to us,

And it becomes this storehouse of memories and evidence that we use to predict the future.

It's good to know that,

As it helps to make sense of what's happening in our nervous system.

So what I wanted to do today was to talk about that a little bit and then get right into several practices that we can do if we are feeling kind of panicked or if we're feeling like we just need to calm down a little bit.

Oftentimes we have a stream of catastrophic thinking that's really got our attention,

And then we'll distract ourselves to something and then we'll come back and it'll be right there again.

As we're getting started,

One of the things we know is that the nervous system is a system that's largely in our body.

It's related to the primitive brain and the early human development,

So brain stem and primitive brain.

It doesn't respond well to the conscious mind.

So,

For instance,

We all know that telling someone to calm down never really helps.

It never really calms anyone down.

So our nervous system is in our body.

Our nervous system and primitive brain remember everything that's ever happened.

So we have a lot of evidence that we're not going to necessarily be safe in a social situation because we've felt embarrassed or awkward before.

Maybe we've had someone bully us or we've had those experiences as a child.

What we do know about safe,

Secure attachment growing up is that we need to have well-regulated adults,

Parents,

In order for us to have a regulated nervous system and that kind of brain development that supports secure attachment.

Of course,

Many of us didn't have that.

So then what do we do?

Until the late 90s,

Scientists thought that the brain just stopped developing at a certain age and that there was no possibility of creating new brain cells.

We know that's not true anymore.

So we have this capacity of the brain to generate new neural networks and new neural pathways.

Dr.

Rick Hansen has a quote,

The brain is Velcro for negative and Teflon for positive.

And that really does seem to be the way the brain works.

Our brain is always trying to keep us safe and it's basing our neuroception,

Our perception of safety right now in this moment on the past.

And you know,

It's not a bad thing to do in the absence of something better,

But really our nervous system's experience since we were very,

Very young is not our situation right now.

Even though when we were in grade school or some time earlier in our life,

We might have been really excluded or maybe we had a situation in our homes where there was violence or threat or emotional neglect.

Now,

As an adult,

We can do some practices to heal our nervous system and to come into a state of connection with ourselves and then with other people.

So when we're doing a relaxation practice,

We start with the body because our body carries all of this tension.

And usually we carry it in one of five places.

So the forehead and eyebrows are one.

Many people frown.

We get really involved in worry and concern and catastrophic thinking.

Now relax your forehead a little bit and bring your eyebrows up and then let them soften.

We can interrupt that pattern a little bit.

Another pattern that we sometimes use for thoughts is we'll start to tap on our forehead,

Just a light tapping with two fingers and take your attention away from the thoughts and into the sensation of the tapping and the sound of it on your forehead.

That can be very helpful as well.

And then notice your mouth and jaw.

Many,

Many people clench their teeth.

So if that's the case for you,

Move your lower jaw around a little bit.

Release the tension in the hinges of your jaw.

And then see if you could develop a habit of keeping a bit of space between your upper jaw and lower jaw so that you're not clenching your teeth.

Then the neck and shoulders.

So you could even bring your shoulders up around your ears.

Take a deep breath and let your shoulders relax away from your ears.

And as you're breathing out,

Let your shoulders soften a bit.

And notice the muscles of the upper back in between the shoulder blades.

And as you breathe out,

Let all of those soften.

Another place where we often hold tightness or heaviness is the chest.

And sometimes this is emotional.

We have sensations or energy.

Oftentimes there's a tightness in the muscles of the chest.

So you could even tighten them if you want and then let them release.

And then coming down into the belly is very,

Very common for people to hold their breath or to have a tight gut.

Women especially are encouraged to walk around with their guts sucked in.

For a moment,

Let's just focus on softening the belly as we breathe.

And one of the things that we know about softening the belly as we breathe is it helps us to relax and soften and have a more continuous diaphragmatic breath.

Just having a smoother breath signals our nervous system that we're safe.

So a diaphragmatic breathing feels like in the body is as you breathe in,

There's a rise or expansion in your stomach area.

And as you breathe out,

There's a softening of your belly.

And if we're feeling quite tense or feeling like there's a lot of tightness or a lot of constriction in the belly area particularly,

Sometimes it's a symptom of a freeze response.

So one of the ways that our nervous system works is we have the fight-flight-freeze.

The first part of that is that we have a neuroception,

A perception of threat.

Again,

It's based on the negativity bias in the brain and it's based on the past.

So we have this perception that there's something wrong and then we start holding our breath or our breath gets very shallow.

If you think about a predator,

You don't want to attract the attention of a predator.

So when we go into freeze,

Our body gets very still and we almost stop breathing.

We hold our breath and that can become quite a habit.

So we're going to work with a breath practice now that helps us to overcome that.

If you're feeling like you're starting to get panicky about something or if you're just feeling like there's just too much going on,

You can't really settle your nervous system,

A practice like box breathing can help.

So there's four sides to a box and we're working with a count of four.

We're going to inhale to four,

Hold our breath to four,

Exhale to four,

And then hold our breath to four.

So that's the basic pattern.

So take in a deep breath.

And then hold for four,

Two,

Three,

Four.

Breathe out,

Two,

Three,

Four.

Hold your breath,

Two,

Three,

Four.

Breathe in,

Two,

Three,

Four.

Hold,

Two,

Three,

Four.

Breathe out,

Two,

Three,

Four.

Hold your breath,

Two,

Three,

Four.

Breathe in,

Two,

Three,

Four.

Hold your breath,

Two,

Three,

Four.

And then just let your breath return to whatever pattern it wants.

And notice the difference in your nervous system right now.

That was only a minute or so.

Box breathing can be a very effective interrupter of what's going on.

So whether we're caught in the grip of a train of thoughts or if we're feeling panicky,

Box breathing can be really helpful to just bring us right back into this moment.

So notice what you feel like.

It's a really good tool to have in our toolbox for whenever we might need it.

Holding our breath isn't something that we want to have going on all of the time.

When you're regular,

Just breathing on a normal basis,

It's good to keep an eye on your breath and see,

Are you holding your breath at the end of the out breath,

Are you holding your breath at the end of the in breath?

Ideally,

When our body's relaxed and our mind is kind of settled,

Then what happens is that our breath gets very continuous and smooth and even,

And it's very soothing so that we know that we're not in any danger.

If we were in danger,

We wouldn't be able to breathe that way.

So it's a good communication with the nervous system.

We need about a six second exhalation for the relaxation response to really kick into our body.

So let's practice some longer out breath and you can do this just by breathing out or you can do it with a syllable vu,

Which trauma expert Peter Levine often works with.

So just take a deep breath in.

Exhale,

Vuuuu,

And as you're breathing out,

Relax your throat,

Your chest,

Your belly,

Deep in breath.

Exhale,

Vuuuu,

Just let your breath continue.

There's not a lot of breath going right at the end.

That's okay.

And then when you're ready,

Just breathe in deeply again.

Exhale.

You might notice that as you're getting more relaxed and you're softening your throat,

That your breath gets,

The sound gets a little smoother.

So that would be an indication that your breath is getting smoother.

Let your breath just come back to normal.

There's a number of ways that we can use the breath to signal to our body that we're safe right now.

The other major way that we can use to signal our body that we're safe is through our eyes.

Like I said before,

The primitive brain doesn't really have a sense of time,

But it also doesn't really listen to words.

So having our conscious mind know that we're safe is great,

And it's also very helpful to let our body directly take in that we're safe right now.

So if you were to look around the room or whatever place that you're in,

If you're in some place that's familiar and where your experience in that place is that your body is going to be safe,

Then it's reassuring to look around and look for the cues of safety in the room.

And then you could also look to your side and back,

Do a bit of a twist,

Look behind you,

Look up and down.

And then coming back,

Look to the other side.

Let your eyes directly take in that your body is safe in the room right now.

And there's a really simple practice of using the five senses to also know that our body's safe.

And this is really effective if you're starting to panic or if you're getting really overwhelmed by traumatic memory or something like that,

You're really upset.

So all you do is you look around the room and you name five things.

You have to say it out loud if you can.

So name five things that you can see.

I see a painting,

I see trees out the window.

I name five things.

And then four things that you can touch and touch them.

I feel the warmth of my body,

I hold my hands,

Feel the coolness of my desk.

Four things that you can feel and touch them if you can.

And then three sounds that you can hear.

You have the best sound that you can hear.

You have the birds outside,

You hear my dog moving.

What are three things that you can hear?

And then two things that you can smell or two of your favorite smells.

I love the smell of the rain.

And one favorite taste.

Come back now and just notice again what's your neuroception.

What's your perception of safety and threat right now?

And our neuroception is unconscious mind.

It's not something that we figure out in our conscious mind.

It's something that we feel.

In our conscious mind,

If you're feeling a little bit of a pain,

You're feeling a little bit of a pain.

It's not something that we figure out in our conscious mind.

It's something that we feel.

In our conscious mind,

If you're in a location where you're safe,

You know that you're safe.

It's fine.

But it's your perception in your senses,

Your unconscious perception.

Notice how you feel.

Notice what's going on with your breath as well.

Notice if your body is more relaxed now.

And then another really interesting way is just to touch our body.

So one way we could do it is to hold our own hand.

Notice what it feels like to just kind of squeeze,

Get the warmth of your hand,

The sensation of holding your hand.

And this is something you can do anytime.

You could hold your own hand in a meeting,

At a family dinner,

Whenever you feel like you need that extra support.

You could do your hands on your heart.

You could put your right hand under your armpit,

Your heart and your left hand over on your right shoulder or right arm.

And just feel the warmth of your hand and your arm.

Give yourself a hug.

Take some deeper breaths.

Soften your belly.

And sometimes people just kind of pat their body.

Just kind of pat or stroke your body.

Notice that you're in your body.

Notice that you can come back.

You could also just notice your feet,

Or if your feet are on the floor,

Notice the sensation of that.

Notice your seat,

Where you're sitting.

So there are a lot of different ways to generate a feeling of safety in our body and to relax our body.

There's lots of different relaxations we can do as well.

But these are really direct nervous system practices where we're using our senses,

Sight and touch and hearing and things and the breath to let our nervous system know that we're safe in this moment.

A big part of that is the thoughts.

The nervous system and the primitive brain generate a lot of the catastrophic thinking.

We'll just do a couple minutes of that.

But if you have just any kind of catastrophic or intrusive thoughts,

You can move back to the tapping.

Tap on your forehead,

Couple fingers.

Notice the sound and the sensation.

You could also put the thought in a frame.

If it's an image,

You could put it in a frame.

And so notice there's the image,

There's the frame.

You can have your eyes closed or you can have your eyes open and put it as though it's on the wall on the other side of the room.

And so when we're looking at an image like that,

We could notice that there's space on the outside of the frame.

So an image doesn't take up the whole of our vision.

It can,

But then we take a step back and we put it in a frame.

We put it over on the other side of the room.

We might notice what's in our peripheral vision over there on the other side of the room.

There might be other things on the wall.

If it's words,

We can look at the spaces between the letters,

Between the words.

You could take your eyes around the empty space clockwise a few times,

Start at the top and circle it a couple of times in one direction and then in the other direction.

That can also help to break the trance of the words or the image.

And just knowing that almost all of the thoughts that bother us are some kind of worry about the future or some kind of ruminating about the past.

Just knowing that can be really helpful.

And that we have tools that we can use like tapping or putting the picture on a wall on the other side of the room that can help to break the trance and let us come back into this awareness that right now that memory that I'm thinking about or that worry of the future is actually not helping.

It's actually not making me feel better and that I do have some ways that I could work with those.

A lot of people get very habituated to watching images of violence.

Our nervous system evolved over millennia and it's not a quick system to change.

It's primitive.

Our conscious level of the mind can take in new information.

The nervous system has trouble with changing quickly.

So one of the things that our nervous system evolved for is to notice with our eyes what's dangerous.

And so if we're watching television,

Especially if there's a lot of movement,

A lot of different images and especially if it's violence,

Then our nervous system is continually activated.

In our nervous system we think that the danger is real and so we tighten up,

We experience whatever is happening on the screen is real and so if you're watching the news all of those images of threat can feel really menacing.

It's like that's an actual threat to me even though it's happening thousands of miles away and your physical body is not in any danger.

So it's a good idea to be really careful about what you watch and if you were to read the news rather than watching videos that would be more helpful.

And then the other thing we can do is as we're watching television to notice what's happening in our nervous system.

Do some deep breathing,

Do some relaxing.

If a show is getting you all kind of wound up then maybe think about not watching that,

Watch something else.

People are binge watching Netflix and TV and different movies and things right now because of COVID and our systems are elevated and some of the nervous system social interaction that we find soothing isn't really available or hasn't been available to us.

So watching a family drama or something where people feel included we can also have that experience a little bit too.

So we might not have it in real life but we can kind of piggyback on a romantic comedy or something like that that makes us feel safer and included so it can work in a positive direction too.

Reviews

Thank you for being such a great teacher and for having a positive impact in my life

thank you for sharing these strategies for regulating your nervous system. very helpful for panicky times.

I really enjoy learning how to “relax” my body. The more I listen the more I’m learning.

This is an excellent, practical lesson with effective tips for resetting one’s nervous system. Your scientific / biological / evolutionary explanation of what is happening,!why it happens and how to reset the nervous system with quite a number of methods for interrupting stir FFFF response is the most helpful I’ve ever experienced. Thank you so much for this generous gift! I’m so very grateful. ❌❤️❌

I appreciate learning these techniques to calm the nervous system! Thank you.

Very helpful in explaining how the brain thinks negatively automatically. This wakes me up and keeps me up at night. I thought my brain was broken but it’s just working too hard to be safe.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge about our nervous system . Much love and gratitude 🙏❤️🕊️

Thank you so much for these techniques to calm our nervous system and feel safe.

Thanks for the clear explanation and simple guidance, I found it very helpful 👍☀️🤸‍♂️

This was so comforting, and helpful. I wonder if you have another version that ends a little more tapered. This one felt like it ended a little abruptly right at the 19 minute mark. Regardless, I really enjoyed it. Many thanks.

I so appreciate the tone of your voice. Calming, grounded, compassionate. Super useful ideas in this audio, thank you

Thank you for this helpful meditation in calming the nervous system. I feel more equipped to address past/future thoughts as they arise 💕

A lot of really helpful information. I didn’t know that the nervous system responds negatively to what we are watching. It does resonate though, and I definitely experience bodily tension when watching action or extreme drama. I’ve moved away from watching those kinds of shows, due to it staying in my mind.
Thank you 🙏🏻 so much.

So helpful. Thank you so much. I feel more settled just listening to this. 🙏🏻

Thank you so much for these practices This meditation was so helpful in settling my nervous system that has felt wired for days and been exhausting. So grateful.

Some really helpful tools for when you’re feeling stressed. I’ve never tried tapping before. Will give that a go - might look a bit odd doing it in public though :-)

This was so helpful and soothing to learn these different practices. I was very disregulated and panicked and this practice really helped me to come back into my window of tolerance. I will come back to this often to get acquainted with the different exercises. Thank you so much!

Very informative, enjoyed how you took time time explain things and afterwards allowed practice. Thankyou!

Great simple helpful practices. Thank you

Thank you Lynn! For these tools to calm the nervous system. 🙏