Opening To Ease Lecture

In this short lecture I discuss the idea of ease as relaxation in action, go into some detail about the role of the vagus nerve in transitioning us out of the sympathetic flight, fight or freeze mode and into the parasympathetic ease response, and I introduce and give step by step instructions in the oxytocin breath I guide you in during many of my meditations. This lecture is not a guided meditation, but there is guided breathwork to practice the oxytocin breath.

Transcript

Tonight we are going to talk about ease and what do I mean by ease?

So to me ease is being fully present in the body,

In your energetic field,

In your emotional field and at ease or relaxed in the body.

And I'm going to talk a little bit about what I what I feel like the difference between ease and relaxation is because it's a little bit of a semantic difference I think.

But what I want to say first is that so many of us spend a lot of time out of ease in dis-ease or unease in our bodies.

And to me dis-ease is is that physical sort of disharmony in the body that many of us experience.

And unease to me is more of the being out of ease in the emotional seat in our mind.

When we're feeling anxious we're in unease.

So ease really affects our physical body,

It affects our emotional state and it affects our energetic field.

And I think that many of us have spent so much time in our lives out of ease that we don't actually know what it feels like to be in ease anymore.

And that was true for me for a lot of the time.

I think we get so used to holding tension in our bodies specifically or having certain pain in certain areas of our bodies or being uncomfortable emotionally that we forget what it's like to really be present and relaxed and grounded and in the flow of things.

And that's the other thing I would say about ease.

I think being in ease is being in flow.

It's letting go of that illusion that we have control over what's going on and opening to that highest good.

And that's kind of been our theme for the year so far.

We set our intention for the highest good at the end of 2020 and I feel like every episode so far this year is sort of furthering that idea of being in flow,

Of being open to our highest good,

Of releasing our feeling that we know what that is.

Because we really,

I've talked about this before I'm not going to go into much detail,

But you know we're in a physical body with a physical mind with all the limitations that comes that come with that.

So we're not omniscient,

We're not in a physical body.

We don't have this broad spiritual view because we're in a physical body.

But this higher power,

The divine God,

Whatever word you want to use for it,

Has a grand vision for us if we're willing to step into service.

And we all have individual ways to serve and being in ease is what allows us to be in if we're in dis-ease or unease,

It's hard for us to serve.

So coming into ease allows us to open to that divine path,

Whatever it might be.

And I said briefly when I started I wanted to talk a little bit just very briefly about ease versus relaxation because what's the difference?

It sounds like maybe a semantic difference.

But to me relaxation doesn't necessarily lead to presence.

So when you get super duper relaxed sometimes you fall asleep and that's,

There's no conscious presence in that.

When you're asleep you're not consciously present,

You're not in your body.

And being at ease,

To me a very important component of being at ease is being present,

Is being in flow.

So I would actually say that ease is kind of relaxation in action,

Which I thought was a cool,

I might make a little meme out of that.

Ease is relaxation in action.

And what does that mean?

So that means,

You know,

I can come and sit in this wonderful energy of my treatment meditation room and be in complete ease and relaxation and then get in my car and drive into traffic and go and not be in ease anymore.

So ease is relaxation in action.

So when I come into this meditative state and I'm relaxed and then I carry that into the rest of my life and I function in that way,

I was getting ready for that Women's Summit and,

And that's a lot of where this word ease came from.

And I'm going to talk more about oxytocin breathing tonight,

Which came out of that group for me.

And everything they prepare for is about being at ease and being in flow.

And the event that I was a part of,

You could feel that,

You could feel that ease and that flow throughout the event.

And it made the whole thing feel very relaxed and very organic and authentic.

And that's what I want us to go for in our everyday lives is being at ease,

Being in flow.

And yes,

We're still going to have obstacles,

We're still going to have bad days and things that come up.

But when we're at ease,

When we're in flow,

We kind of move past those and they don't get stuck in our energetic field.

We go like,

Oh there was that,

Okay.

And sometimes we even get a feel for what the message is that's coming.

Like I hurt my foot,

I think I mentioned that a couple shows ago,

Right before Christmas.

And I was like,

Oh this is a clear message that I need to slow down and relax more because I was doing,

Doing,

Doing.

And if I had been listening to my messages,

Maybe I wouldn't have hurt my foot and needed that kind of stronger message.

Sometimes I say I need to get hit with a two-by-four to get my spiritual messages and that's something that I'm still working on.

I want to talk a little bit about the science of this tonight.

And I have mentioned these things in passing a lot of times when we start a meditation.

I've briefly introduced this oxytocin breathing but we're going to go a little bit more in depth on that tonight.

And that way when I mention it in the future,

You'll have a little more understanding of where this comes from and why it's important.

So I want to talk a little bit about the sympathetic versus the parasympathetic nervous system.

And the sympathetic nervous system is that fight,

Flight,

Or freeze mode.

That's that mode that we're in when our adrenaline kicks up,

When we start having,

You know,

A heart racing,

We get anxious,

We feel like we're confronting something.

Whether for a lot of us in this society now,

That's more of,

It's not a physical confrontation.

A lot of times it's not a,

You know,

You're not facing a saber-toothed tiger and figuring out what to do.

It's more emotional.

You know,

We're in a constant state of stress.

We're constantly in a hurry.

We're being bombarded with information all the time and trying to figure out what information we want to take in and what we need,

What we can let go of.

So that's that sympathetic nervous system.

The parasympathetic is the ease.

That's the ease part of the relaxation part of our nervous system.

So when the parasympathetic takes over,

We come into relaxation,

The heart rate slows down.

That's when we feel more present in the body.

It's hard to feel present in your body when you're in that sympathetic mode when you're feeling nervous or adrenalized or,

You know,

Kind of anxious.

It's hard to be in the physical body.

When you're at ease,

When you're relaxed,

When you're in that parasympathetic,

Then it's much easier to be present in your body.

There are a lot of ways to come back into ease.

Bodywork and massage,

Meditation,

Intentional movement and exercise.

And that word intentional there is important.

So just blindly running on a treadmill,

That's not going to bring you into ease.

But things like yoga where you're consciously breathing or any kind of movement that has that intention of bringing ease to the body can bring you back into ease.

And then of course,

One of the simplest ways to bring ourselves into ease,

To bring ourselves out of the sympathetic and back into that parasympathetic response is through breath.

So I want to talk a little bit tonight about oxytocin breathing.

So first of all,

What is oxytocin?

So some people call oxytocin the cuddle hormone or the love hormone.

It regulates trust,

Empathy and our positive memories and communication.

And oxytocin goes up naturally when we're giving birth,

When we're breastfeeding,

When we achieve orgasm and when we hug.

But it also goes up when we practice this very specific type of oxytocin breathing that we're going to work on tonight.

This oxytocin breathing stimulates the vagus nerve.

And I think I say that every week and I kind of do this and then we move on.

So I want to talk a little bit more about what I mean by that and why that's important tonight.

So the vagus nerve covers much of the upper body from the brain to the gut.

That's when I go like this I'm kind of showing you where the vagus nerve kind of controls what it what it regulates.

And it regulates metabolism,

Heart rate and well-being.

And it supports that parasympathetic response.

So the vagus nerve is one of the tools that we can use to bring us out of the sympathetic.

It soothes that sympathetic response so that the parasympathetic can take over and bring us into that state of ease and of relaxation in action.

I want us to practice this breath together and I've introduced it again a few times at the beginning of the meditations but I want to go into a little bit of how to do it and then add there's an extra step you can use for grounding that I haven't introduced just because I haven't taken the time to do that.

So that's partly where this whole idea of ease came from tonight because I really wanted to go into this breath work a little bit more and then we're going to use it throughout the meditation.

So when we practice this oxytocin breath it's a big belly breath.

So when we practice this together I want you to actually put your hands on your belly here and when you breathe in so this is not chest breathing we're not breathing up into the chest and and you can even when you hear that sound you know when you let's say like here I'm walking my dog and I see a rattlesnake that's the kind of breath I do it doesn't go into my belly it comes into my chest my shoulders go up and it instantly brings me into that sympathetic response.

So we want to do the opposite here we want to breathe all the way down into the belly and you want to feel your hands come out so you start with your hands on your belly and you're going to take a nice deep breath in through your nose and feel that belly really expand so we're really drawing that energy down getting a big full breath vibrating that nerve and then as we breathe out we're going to use that ha sound and that sound is what actually vibrates the vagus nerve humming also vibrates the vagus nerve and can produce oxytocin so that's kind of where this comes from and the pitch of this ha is not important it's going to be customized to your unique kind of pitch of your voice but you want to start at that higher pitch and kind of let the pitch come down so I want us to practice that a couple times together and then I'm going to add the last step in before we go into the meditation so you want your hands on your belly for this part and take a nice deep breath into the belly and then ha sound it out and let's do that two more times and one more time ah and you'll notice I have a smile on my face my friend Sarah likes to remind us to smile while we're doing this breath this is a pleasant in enjoyable breath we're bringing pleasure into our bodies this way so one of the ways we produce oxytocin is orgasm is pleasure so adding that little smile when I go from that high pitch to a low pitch I can actually feel the energy in my body move it brings you down into a grounded state and that's how we achieve that parasympathetic response and then the last step to this which is something that's totally new I've never brought this up before there's an extra step you can do at the end of this breath to really ground yourself to kind of get that connection to the earth and we begin pretty much every single meditation kind of coming from the head down to the feet and then imagining that we're really connected to the earth through the feet or through the bottom whatever is touching the ground so this is a quick way of doing this that kind of bypasses all of that thought and all of that intention and get you into that grounded state pretty quickly and it's a great tool to use like let's say you're in traffic and you're getting stressed out or even in the grocery store Sarah always jokes about how she does this in the grocery store and obviously it's a little bit more subdued hmm there's a reason we sigh and kind of make that sound sometimes when we're exasperated or stressed out it's the body's natural way of bringing us back into ease so you can use this breath and use this vocalization obviously we're doing it in a big expanded way here tonight and that's great but you can also use this when you're in your office or when you're in your car so the grounding noise that comes at the end of this breath so you're gonna breathe in and you're gonna do your ha sound and at the very bottom of your ha sound you're gonna let out a little oomph sound oh and that pushes that energy kind of down into the earth and gets you grounded fully in the body it's just an extra little step as we brought ourselves down and and we're getting toward the low end of the body with that ha sound oh you just kind of oh yourself out there and we don't do this every time this is a specific we have a specific purpose so this is great if you really are feeling anxious or you're feeling like you're out of your body and you need to come back in and you need to do it quickly if you're feeling like you're too much in your head you're sort of trapped in that mental space and you feel like you need to come back down into the body so let's practice that one time and it sounds a little bit weird but it works and again your sound is gonna be unique to you so you're doing kind of that low pitched like oomph sound but however that comes out of your body with that little oh it's a little push to your belly's gonna oh kind of push out when you do that do whatever comes naturally to you there and you'll find as you practice this that it becomes more comfortable so let's practice that once together ah ooh and it seemed I make you laugh or smile a little bit and that's great that's part of the pleasure as well because it does seem a little bit silly but it definitely works so we're going to do some experimentation with that breath throughout our meditation tonight I'll guide you into that and I may specifically tell you to add the grounding or I may leave it up to you you can always add that grounding that's completely up to you but I'm only going to guide you into it maybe five or six times out of we'll probably do 12 to 15 of these big oxy breaths so the last thing I want to say is when you practice this breath even if you're you know you're just in the car try to do at least three in a row so that first breath kind of just brings some awareness to like I need to do this breath the second breath starts to bring you really into that body more and then the third breath is usually it's kind of like you throw away the first pancake so like by the third breath you're really getting that deep belly breath going you're really getting that energy to come down and the third breath is a good time to add that little ground and that's usually what we do when we practice this together in my women's group but experiment around with this see how this works for you and my challenge to you I'm actually going to give you some homework tonight is to practice this breath throughout the rest of the week and feel free to leave me comments or contact me if you have questions you can message me through Facebook or you can reach me through my website on the contact form which is at the bottom of each page but practice this see how it goes for you notice how your life changes because it will if you keep practicing this breath when we start to come into ease everything flows more easily in our lives and again we're never gonna get rid of the challenges of being human it's part of being human but when we can when we're in grace when we're in ease those obstacles seem easier to overcome or sometimes we don't we just sidestep them if you're really in flow you know there might be a big boulder flowing at you and you know in the past the controlling kind of ego part of us wants to be like no I can stop that I've got this boulder and the flow part of us is just like whoo like we're in the matrix and it just like went by and and then we keep moving forward so that's the whole goal of of stepping into ease and this is such a simple way to do that and I encourage you to do all the other things I listed you know Matt we do this meditation weekly you know body work and massage is still a little tough but energy work is the same thing you know you can connect with someone who does energy work virtually you can surround yourself bathe yourself in sound that is inspiring that is relaxing to you there's all these self-care methods to come into ease when you have a lot of time but you're breathing all day long no matter where you are and what you're doing you're breathing so introducing this oxy breath you know try to do at least three breaths at least three times a day for the next week and just notice if anything changes notice how you feel notice if you feel more present in your body if your mind starts to slow down a little bit if you feel a little bit more like you're in flow and when those obstacles come at you you know you're just under the limbo stick or dodging side to side and and you're you're recovering more quickly you become more resilient all of these things happen when we're at ease when we're in flow when we're living relaxation in action I talked a lot tonight because I really wanted to get into this and I will probably refer to this episode more in the future so that people who are new to the practice when I say let's do an oxytocin breath and I just give you that you know breathe in through the belly and with a ha sound now anyone who's seen this episode will know a little bit more about this and why we practice this the way we do be easy with yourself I say that every week and there's a reason that I use that word ease or easy be easy with yourself be gentle with yourself don't stress yourself out about whether you're doing this oxytocin breath correctly or not you will get used to this and you will start to be able to feel that energy kind of moving down and then grounding you into the earth

Reviews

So informed! Thank you so much! I thought if how my mom would always be letting out these big sighs.. naturally trying to calm♡