There's no question that right now we're living in challenging times and our nervous system is responding to the danger.
Our nervous system has a negativity bias and it has one job to keep our body safe.
One of the things we can do to help our nervous system be more accurate in this assessment is to come right into this moment in time.
Look around the space that you're in.
Is there anything here that's an immediate threat?
It's true that there are threats and danger in the world.
Could you come into a more accurate assessment of your personal situation in this moment?
We all know what it feels like to be in a hypervigilant state.
Our system perceives a danger and it puts us into a survival response.
Fight or flight is that anxious hypervigilant feeling.
I can't really settle in my chair.
I'm jumping out of my skin.
I need to be ready to move into fight-or-flight to protect myself.
We also know the opposite of that where we feel so overwhelmed and hopeless that we just freeze.
We watch screens all the time.
Some of our habits are actually making things worse like doom scrolling and there are a lot of ways that we can interrupt that and come into something that will actually be helpful.
Looking around the room and noticing that right now in this moment my body is safe is very reassuring for our nervous system.
It's a signal to our nervous system that it's safe enough to relax our body,
Take some deeper breaths,
And take a break from the chaos and the stress and the danger in the world.
With so many people having activated nervous systems in the fight response or in a freeze and kind of numb and not available for connection,
It's a lot harder for us to feel safe with each other than it would be if the levels of stress weren't as high.
One of my favorite ways to signal safety to my nervous system is through the breath.
Cyclic sighing is a deep double inhale through the nose and then you push your lips on the exhale and breathe out like you're breathing through a thin straw.
Let's do that together.
Breathing in through your nose and again and then a long slow exhale.
Pretend you're breathing out through a thin straw.
Again,
Breathing in and breathe out.
Let your exhalation extend.
This helps to activate the relaxation response in our body.
How do you feel now after two or three deep in breaths and some long slow exhales?
As we breathe out,
Our body naturally wants to soften and relax.
We've just established by looking around that our body is not in danger right now.
Then when we have some deeper breaths and we make a little bit of movement with our body,
That also signals to our nervous system that it's safe enough to breathe,
To make a little bit of sound,
And to move our body around a bit.
If you were to do that inhalation and bring your shoulders up and then on the exhale release,
That helps with that bracing that we do.
We have such a tight back and neck and we're bracing for trouble.
It feels so good to let that go.
We need to be aware,
What am I signaling to my nervous system?
One thing we know is that our brain is always assessing our visual input.
We look for signs of danger or for safety like we just did.
We use all of our senses and our sight is one of the most important ones when it comes to assessing danger.
If what we're seeing is consistent,
It's predictable,
It's something that we're familiar with,
Our brain just discards that.
What we're looking for is anything that's unusual,
Anything that signals danger.
What's happened in the last 60 or 70 years is that our brain has started to see visual images of danger that's happening around us but that's not happening in our immediate vicinity.
If we saw an image of danger,
Of somebody in trouble,
It was something that was happening in our immediate vicinity and we needed to take action to protect ourselves.
Now so much of what we see is on a screen.
It might be happening somewhere in the world,
It might be happening to someone else,
It might be a movie or AI generated image.
Those aren't actually threats but our brain doesn't know that.
Our nervous system developed over millennia and it can't change as quickly as our technology is changing.
One of the things that we can do is we can reduce the amount of alarming images that come into our brain.
That helps.
So pull away from the screen if you're doing scrolling,
Take it off your phone,
Go outside,
Take a few deep breaths.
There are a lot of ways that we can bring regulation back into our nervous system.
Many meditators learn to witness our thoughts.
Our nervous system generates a lot of the content of our thoughts.
So it's really helpful for us to notice what am I thinking when I'm anxious,
When I have detected threat,
When my nervous system is saying there's something wrong here.
One of the habits of our nervous system is that we're always trying to think ahead to protect ourselves.
This is the root of a lot of the anxiety we feel right now.
We have a situation that's going on and then we project into the future.
Well if this happens how am I going to handle that?
If this goes on,
We scare ourselves.
Our brain believes the thoughts in our mind and as we're planning ahead for what could happen so that we could protect ourselves,
If this happens I could do this and that will help keep me safer.
Our nervous system is getting more and more alarmed.
It's so helpful to be able to monitor what are the thoughts in my mind right now,
What's happening in my body as I'm thinking that.
Come back into your body,
Come back into your breath.
Let's take a moment to watch thoughts in your mind,
Something you worry about.
It could be something specific,
This situation is happening,
I'm not sure what I'm going to do,
I could be fired,
There's something going on with my health,
What am I going to do?
Bring up a worry for a moment and let it come to mind,
Visual,
Auditory,
Other sense perceptions,
Touch.
Look at the thoughts as they're coming in and then soften your forehead.
So let the worry be there and at the same time soften your forehead and your eyebrows.
And each time you breathe out,
Soften your forehead a little bit more.
It distracts us from the thought.
It also helps compensate for the effect in our body of scary thoughts.
Many people hold their breath,
Feel the relief of taking a deep breath,
Moving your body around,
Letting yourself get unstuck.
We might stand up and shake out the stress,
Shake out the anger or the frustration.
We're not actually trapped in the experience of a hypervigilant nervous system or in freeze.
The first thing we do is we recognize that it's happening.
Somatic mindfulness is we're aware of what's going on in our body.
We're aware when we start holding our breath.
We're aware when our shoulders are up around our ears or when we're clenching our teeth.
So we can relax our body.
We can move.
Our nervous system creates these trains of thoughts that we can interrupt through awareness.
Take a breath.
Move your body however you'd like.
Look around again.
Is your body still safe?
What sensations are you feeling in your body right now?
We just brought forward a worry,
Something that we're feeling anxious or scared about.
Maybe you can feel that as a heaviness in your chest or a feeling of fear in your gut.
So now let's work with our brain believes what we think.
So bring in now something beautiful.
Sunset,
Your dog cuddling with you on the couch,
Creek or a river,
A person's face,
Something that sparks joy in your heart.
Bring that into your awareness.
The visual,
The sounds,
The smells,
The touch.
Let yourself completely focus on that for a moment.
Notice your breath.
Relax your body.
Notice now,
How do you feel in your body?
When we bring to mind a person,
An experience,
A location,
Something we love and enjoy,
We often have a warm feeling in our heart.
Our body softens.
We come out of a survival response and we come back into our heart.
We actually don't have access to compassion when we're in a survival response.
All we care about is surviving.
But what really makes life rich and meaningful is our connections.
Our connections with nature,
With each other,
With our sense of community.
So coming back into a more settled,
Regulated nervous system is what opens the door to joy and freedom and meaningful connection.
This is something we can do.
