Serenity Wellness Podcast E2: The Anxious Body System

Join me for an exploration of our natural Flight-Flight system and how it impacts our anxious body cycle. Learn another simple technique to add to your wellness toolbox that assists in calming the mind and body. Thanks for spending time with me.

Transcript

Hello,

Welcome to Serenity Wellness Podcast.

My name is Nicole White and I'll be your host for this podcast series.

This series is dedicated to helping you tap into your full potential of how you can heal and balance your mental,

Emotional,

And physical well-being.

Together,

Let's explore our inner self,

Connect to our strength,

And manifest your true nature,

One full of love,

Purpose,

And passion.

Welcome to episode 2.

I want to start by saying thank you so much to all of you for your amazing support by listening and sharing my podcast,

Encouraging others to listen,

And just your kind words of encouragement.

I truly appreciate it and my heart feels so full because of all of you.

I also want to thank Nick for his great suggestion of keeping my thoughts on maybe being on the Joe Rogan Experience someday.

That would be amazing.

So just by continuing to listen and support my podcast,

Maybe you will help in making that happen for me someday.

So today's podcast is going to be on exploring a little bit more deeply about what I was referring to about the anxious body.

When I started talking to you about chest breathing and the exercise that I suggested you might consider working on in recalibrating your system down to that deep belly breathing.

I hope all of you have been finding some connection to that and finding some connection to the difference it makes in just how you feel physically in your physical body when you're taking that nice deep breath,

But also how you might start to feel a little bit more grounded and relaxed in your way of daily living,

Which over time with some more tools that we'll learn in future episodes,

You'll see how that breath work is just again such a great anchor in emotion regulation and body awareness.

I also hope that you found some time this weekend to tap into some ideas of that wellness toolbox and how you might be able to start to fill that for yourself and things that really help to resonate with you.

This past weekend,

I was sure to tap into filling my wellness toolbox with some of my favorite things that included some time with some great friends with laughing and listening to music and dancing.

There's nothing like connecting to the energy of music and the energy of the artists and letting that vibration run through you as you connect through dance.

So that was fantastic.

I also started tapping more into learning because I'm working on a certification that will be done here in the next few weeks.

And that certification is to be a certified mental health integrative medicine provider.

And what that does is it incorporates the use of nutrition and herbs,

Energy work and somatic body work,

The use of raising consciousness and awareness,

As well as looking at the use of natural plant medicines and helping to treat anxiety,

Depression,

Post-traumatic stress disorder,

Eating disorder,

And addictions.

The use of natural plant medicines is something I've been exploring for the past few years and attended an amazing conference actually last year in the Trauma Center in Boston.

And it looked at the use of psychedelics,

Specifically MDMA and psilocybin,

And the use of that in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.

And it just really has some amazing results.

So one of my future goals is working on becoming one of the certified therapists that gets approved for some FDA research looking at the use of microdosing in the treatment of mental health.

So I'm hoping,

You know,

With these continued certifications and maybe by also continuing,

You know,

To connect with others who are exploring this research,

That's something I'm looking at down the line.

But anyway,

The current certification that I'm working on this mental health integrative medicine provider also looks at the use of that natural plant medicine in the treatment of mental health.

All of that being said,

I again was able to tap into some of my wellness toolbox this weekend and I hope you were able to do the same.

So with today,

As I mentioned,

I wanted to help you understand a little bit more about this anxious body cycle that we can get into within our body system.

And chest breathing was just one of the many things that our body can kind of loop around and feed off of within itself to really keep us in that loop of anxiety.

So I just want to talk to you a little bit further about that today and then give you another tool for your toolbox of consideration.

So when we think of this anxious body system,

I'm just going to kind of refer to it as the trauma center in the brain.

And you can think of just this little area in your brain that is the fight or flight center.

So it's part of our biological makeup and has been there,

You know,

For generation after generation.

And it served a great purpose and continues to serve a purpose in our life.

It just can sometimes remain open for people and active through just different ways we hold on to it in our body system,

Like that chest breathing,

For example.

But it was designed in our system for when we like lived on the land with lions and we needed to know like,

You know,

Oh,

We got to get to safety quickly and have our muscles and our body respond and also be in that constant state of alert awareness in case,

You know,

The lion was about to come eat us.

But that is not the case anymore.

And we're not living on the land with lions,

At least most of us right now in this moment.

But our body system can react in that same way.

And that trauma center,

If you would,

Can remain open and really make us in that anxious body cycle,

Which affects our mind state,

Our body state and how we engage with the world around us.

So to just help you explore and understand a little bit more about what that looks like and feels like in the body,

I'm just going to go through some of the symptoms and ways that it affects the body system.

The reason that this is an important step to include in your awareness is because when we become aware of how the body is regulating itself in what it thinks a protective cycle to get ready to fight or flee,

We also have the freeze system.

But this body system examples that I'm going to go through with you today are more when we're getting ready to fight or flee.

And,

You know,

It can often for sometimes people will talk about how it almost feels like it's hijacking their system,

Hijacking their body and their awareness.

So these are not necessarily in any particular order that I'm going through.

However,

They do tend to feed each other and really keep the system running rather quickly.

So it's not like it's step one.

This happens next.

Step two,

It all kind of goes pretty quick.

And you might not feel all of these and you might experience all of them.

So it's a little different for everyone.

So one area is the mind and the racing thoughts that happen in the mind.

The mind starts to race because it feels at this moment that it needs to be able to quickly evaluate what's happening when it's scanning the scene.

So the mind will start racing and it will have rapid thoughts that can fire back to back rather quickly.

And within that back to back firing,

It will start to kind of spiral and splinter out into all different types of thinking and thoughts that really elevate the system further.

That will be a future episode that will really kind of dive further into what those thoughts look like.

But just for now,

You know,

The idea of the racing thoughts and how they can really kind of elevate rather quickly.

Another thing that can happen is change in vision.

Again,

Our system is trying to scan and evaluate in a very rapid way because it thinks it may be in danger.

So because of this,

The change in vision,

You might notice tunnel vision or almost very sharp vision with,

You know,

Really being able to hone in on certain aspects that you might not in your just regular when you're kind of going through everyday life.

Another thing would be dry mouth.

And this is because the mouth system is connected to the digestive system.

And when we are in this danger system in the body,

This fight or flight system,

It slows down the digestive processes because all of that energy is going to the muscles.

So because of that system,

It will and can also cause dry mouth for people when the body thinks it is,

You know,

Getting ready to respond to a danger.

So it's giving that energy to your muscle systems.

You can also have elevated heart rate.

And that can also be increased not only due to the feeding of the muscles.

So your heart is going to elevate and race because it wants to get more and more of that blood flow to the muscles again to tighten and be able to get ready to respond and run if needed or to fight.

Another thing that helps to elevate that heart rate is that chest breathing that we talked about in episode one.

You may also feel some nausea or butterflies in your stomach.

Again,

It has to do with that digestive system is not in its typical,

You know,

Nice flow and rhythm cycle because the body is responding to a sense of danger.

It's slowing down and shutting down the system of what needs to be fed to the digestive track in order to have the healthy digestion.

So because of that,

You might get that nausea and butterfly feeling.

Your hands can also get cold.

Again,

Blood flow is going to the muscles,

So it can cause the hands to get cold.

Muscle tension can be felt all over the body.

A lot of times you might feel elevated tension in your legs as well because you're getting ready again to want to run.

A lot of times people will hold tension up in their neck.

If you check in with your neck right now,

You might notice that your neck is a little raised almost even up by your ears for some people.

Also,

Sometimes people will hold tension in their jaw,

Often clenching down on their jaw without awareness.

You might find that your tongue is up on the top of the roof of your mouth.

Again,

These are all ways that we're holding onto tension and often we're holding these areas throughout our day.

So that muscle tension and how it can be throughout your whole body.

Your palms also might get sweaty,

And this is because your body is trying to cool down.

Your body system in this fight or flight is just elevated.

Blood is flowing rather quickly.

Your breathing cycle is not in a steady rhythmic place.

So your mind is racing.

Some other things we're going to talk about in a moment are happening.

So your body is elevated and heated,

And that's what can cause your palms to sweat or even your body to start sweating because it's actually trying to cool you down.

You may also feel bladder urgency.

Some people get surprised when I go over this with them,

Especially those of us who have PTSD,

Post-traumatic stress disorder.

This bladder urgency can get pretty elevated when we start talking through our trauma or working through it.

And again,

Even just being in this fight or flight response system,

It can also create that bladder urgency in the body.

And this is actually because the bladder muscles relax when it's overstressed.

And so this will make us have to go to the bathroom a little more frequently.

The adrenal glands are also responding in this system because it's elevating and pumping out adrenaline into your system to help it be ready,

To help it be ready to respond to this elevated stress,

The sense of danger that the body currently thinks it's in.

As we talked about in episode one,

That chest breathing happens.

You're getting that quick,

Shallow breathing,

Although it's not getting in that full range of motion.

So you're not getting that diaphragmic breathing to help keep the body cool and keep the body relaxed and feed those cells.

As we talked about,

This quick,

Shallow breathing is actually taking in more oxygen.

And because of that,

This quicker breath is bringing in more oxygen because it's kind of like pumping up the system.

It's pumping up the system to get ready to respond,

To get ready to fight or to flee.

Those of you who have been in fights,

I mentioned in episode one,

I made and had bad decision making as an adolescent.

And I will admit that fighting at one point in my life was one of those bad decisions.

And so it elevates the system so that you are ready to fight if you need to.

That quick,

Shallow breathing gets your adrenals even pumping a little faster to get you ready to respond.

Because of this elevation and that extra oxygen in the system,

If you're not having an output,

So say you're just sitting still and trying to work through this elevated system that's happening in the body,

And the increase in that oxygen from the short,

Shallow breathing,

Because of that,

You can also get dizzy and lightheaded.

And that's due to that extra oxygen.

So then there's the thinking again.

And it goes around and around in this cycle.

And again,

It's not like a step one,

Step two,

But it keeps feeding itself.

And that thought cycle that this loop gets into is just profound in the way that it can really elevate the system.

If you think about when we can catastrophize in our thinking and think of worst-case scenarios,

How quickly we can do that when we're in this high stress response system,

And how much thinking of worst-case scenarios can really make us feel much more a sense of danger.

But that,

Again,

Will be a future episode or two or three.

You know,

That's a lot to talk about there with our thoughts and how it affects this system.

So those are some things to be aware of within this idea of the anxious body system and how quickly it can affect all of these different functions in the body system.

There's secondary things that happen with that.

So,

You know,

I mentioned about the adrenals and how all that adrenaline is pumping into the system so we can get adrenal fatigue due to that.

We also have the cortisol levels that are affected within this,

And that will be a whole episode in and of itself,

The cortisol levels and how they affect mental health and our daily functioning,

How that gets into our rhythm cycles of sleep.

So there's just so many different things that when we are in this fight or flight system,

How it creates and affects a lot of different secondary systems in the body or primary systems.

If you look at some of them,

You know,

Think about your digestive tract,

Think about your bladder system.

And for some people,

They are in this,

You know,

Even low level of fight or flight response system through their day.

If you think about the idea of how I said having that baseline of chest breathing keeps us in this anxious body system and anxious body cycle,

When we are,

You know,

In a rapid response thought cycle,

For example,

Of worry,

We are still keeping us in this system.

When we are holding on to tension in our bodies and,

You know,

I mentioned the muscle tension in legs.

But again,

If we check in with ourselves at our desk at work in our car driving in a conversation that's getting a little elevated or heated and you check in to your shoulders and you check in to your jaw or where your tongue is at,

You might notice that you're holding on to tension there.

That again is signifying this fight or flight response center that it might need to be open a little bit,

That there's a sense of danger and it's keeping that stress,

It's keeping that system going within this system and cycle.

So that is the little bit of learning today about adding just some more awareness to your body system.

Again,

This is a biological system that is there for a purpose.

We need to be able to scan and know when we are in danger.

We need to be able to have that elevation of blood flow to the muscles,

To the mind,

To the eyes,

For us to scan,

To think it through rationally,

To respond and get to safety quickly.

But it is non-effective and actually detrimental to our overall mental,

Emotional,

And physical well-being when we stay within this system throughout our day and are often not even aware that that's what's keeping us drained,

That that's what's keeping us in a worry cycle,

That that's what's keeping us in a super reactive,

Low frustration,

Low toleration of things that come and go and get us out of our routine or our schedule.

So staying in this cycle makes everything a little less tolerable as well as taxes the body system in many ways,

Which we'll talk about in future episodes.

So for today,

At the end here,

I'd like to again teach you another skill for your toolbox.

And with this skill that I'm going to tell you about today,

It actually will factor into quite a few things that you might be able to use it for to help elevate some future skills and tools that I'll be teaching you,

One of which is going to be meditation and mindfulness.

So starting next Monday is going to be the opening of the Monday series of the podcast,

And that's going to be Mindful Mondays.

I'll be teaching you about mindfulness and going through some different guided meditations and tools and techniques of how to incorporate everyday mindfulness into your life and give you some ideas and tools and techniques for those of you who want to explore some other facets of meditation and have some upcoming wonderful guest podcast speakers to help you understand the research behind some of that as well.

So with today's tool that I'm going to give you and teach you,

You might find it a useful tool for meditation practice and giving some space and thinking.

You might find this tool I'm going to teach you useful in anxious response systems in the body system and helping to calm it down.

And you might find it useful if you have at times low frustration tolerance.

And for those of you who might have a little difficulty with anger management,

This is actually a tool and technique that is often used with impulse control and being able to gain better impulse control even in terms of addiction.

But for today,

I am teaching it just as an overall skill to add into your toolbox to allow you to see again how breath is always with us.

And with it always being there,

It can always be a tool that we use to ground,

To recalibrate,

And to add some space in our thoughts.

And when we add some space in our thoughts,

It lets us get out of this fight-flight response system that we can sometimes get looped into.

So for this,

It's going to take us about two minutes,

But you will need a pen and paper or some type of writing utensil to do this.

So I'll give you just a moment to grab what you need.

Or of course,

You can push pause.

I'm new to this podcast stuff.

I will tell you that I've only listened to a few before even recording one.

So yes,

I forgot about that lovely function.

Okay,

So pen,

Paper,

Or writing utensil of some sort.

What we're going to do here is I'm going to be the timekeeper.

And for the first little chunk of time here,

It will be one minute long.

During this one-minute experience,

When I tell you to go ahead and start,

Any time you have a thought come through your mind,

A change in your awareness,

So maybe you're looking at your piece of paper,

And then you look over across the room,

Change in awareness,

Or a change in emotion.

So maybe you're feeling kind of calm,

And then 15 seconds in,

You start feeling anxious,

Wondering if you're doing this right.

Another 10 seconds later,

You're bored,

Wondering,

When am I going to tell you this minute is over?

So all of those are examples of changes.

So any time a thought comes in,

Change in awareness,

Or change in emotion,

You're going to place a dot on your paper.

That's it.

So when I say go,

You're going to place a dot on your paper any time any of those things happen.

Okay?

And begin.

Okay.

Perfect.

You can stop.

And just take a moment to count up your dots there for a second,

And put the number just somewhere.

Once you have your dots counted up,

You're going to just put a little line under that area,

Just or flip your paper or something,

Giving yourself a nice new little section here to do the second part of this.

So with the second part,

It's going to be a minute long again.

Same rules apply as far as any time you have a change in thought,

Change in awareness,

Or change in emotion,

You're going to place a dot.

The slight change here is when I say begin,

You're going to start by connecting to your breath.

You're not going to be trying to change your breathing or worrying about if you're chest breathing or diaphragmically breathing.

You're just going to connect to the act of breathing.

Maybe that will be just a connection in feeling it enter and exit your nose,

Or maybe your connection to the act of breathing is the connection of the rise and fall of your body.

Whatever it is for you,

You're going to just connect to the act of breathing.

So when I say go,

You're going to connect to the act of breathing.

Any of those things happen.

You're going to place a dot,

And then you're going to go back to the connection to the act of breathing.

So I say go,

You connect to breathing,

Thought comes in,

You place a dot,

You go back to connection to breathing,

Emotion comes in,

You place a dot,

You go back to the connection of breathing.

Got it?

So start with breath,

Dot for any change,

Connect back to breath.

You can begin now.

So breath,

Dot for any change,

Connect back to breath.

You can begin now.

So breath,

Dot for any change,

Connect back to breath.

And you can stop.

Perfect.

Go ahead and count those up.

So many of you may have noticed in your counting that on the second time we did that,

Your number was lower.

And with that,

You know that the only thing we changed was a connection to breath.

So this technique is something that,

As you can see,

Just by using the breath,

Which is always with you,

It allows some space.

And having that space,

It is a beautiful emotion regulation tool in terms of space and thinking,

But also it helps to cool and calm down that system that we just went over today.

Keeping in mind again that this technique can be used for a multitude of different things,

Which we'll talk about and build upon later.

But also when we talk about meditation,

It's a great way to keep in mind when I talk to and teach others meditation and mindfulness,

There's always this almost anxiousness or fear response of,

Am I doing this right?

And how am I ever going to stop thinking?

Well,

We'll talk further about that on Monday.

But it does allow you some understanding of how to give a little bit of space and thinking just by using your breath.

So one thing I do want to mention,

As I had mentioned about how this is one thing that will build upon other tools,

Is that in episodes you will notice over time that all these things I'm teaching and all these things that you'll be learning with me are things that just start to build upon themselves.

Oftentimes my clients talk about how they just start noticing they have changed and how the skills start just kind of piling together and becoming this way of living.

So this is one of the examples of those.

I hope that you found today's episode useful and I hope that I continue to have your support and that you continue to listen and share my podcast with others who you think it might also be useful for.

If you're interested in learning more also about what I do or what the other amazing practitioners at Serenity Wellness Center do,

Please be sure to check out our website www.

Serenitywellnesscenter.

Com and that center spelled C-E-N-T-R-E.

Also,

Just to give you a little insight on who the other practitioners at my center are,

I have Eva Letwin.

She is a mental health therapist who specializes in EMDR.

Her and I both specialize in trauma work and substance abuse as well with our mental health treatment.

And then I have Ray Stefaniak and she is a massage therapist who also does reflexology and is a Reiki master.

And she also just started her own podcast.

So I encourage you to check her out.

Her podcast,

They come out on Tuesdays and it is,

Oh my goodness,

I just slipped my mind.

It is Radiant Alchemy and it's spelled R-A-E.

So Radiant spelled with R-A-E at the beginning,

Alchemy.

And you can find her on all the same platforms that you're finding this podcast.

I will try to figure out how to put a link at the bottom of this and you can find it there too,

Hopefully,

If I figure that out.

And then also I have Lauren Peters at Serenity and she is also a Reiki master and she's an intuitive healer and she's a crystal healer as well and she's going to be opening up another new service that we're hoping to announce next week.

So those are the practitioners who are at Serenity Wellness Center.

And then as I mentioned before,

We have a lot of practitioners from the community and surrounding communities who come in and offer workshops and yoga classes and a lot of other great stuff.

So again,

Thank you so much for your time and for listening.

I hope that you have found today useful and this series is again dedicated to helping you tap into your full potential of how you can heal and balance your mental,

Emotional,

And physical well-being.

Together,

Let's explore our inner self,

Connect to our strength,

And manifest your true nature,

One full of love,

Purpose,

And passion.

I look forward to spending time with you again and remember on Monday we'll have our first Mindful Monday series for you.

Have a great one.

Bye bye.

Reviews

Super educational. I want to listen to the entire series.

Great introduction to the world of meditation and physiological response

Listened without doing the practice. Very helpful and informative. Will listen again and do the practice.

So helpful. Very informative. Thank you for sharing.