Hey,
It's Doug welcome to your stress relief protocol get into a nice comfortable seat I want to teach you a bit about stress today how to deal with it Why you have it and how it works so quick science lesson Stress response is designed to get us out of danger fast Here's how it goes Your eyes notice something dangerous They lock on to it the stress response kicks in and this makes our heartbeat faster blood flow to our muscles And our breathing increases to help us either fight something or run away from it It does this all by going into overdrive Taking energy from later and using it now Clever system,
Right?
Yes,
But it comes at a high cost to the body and the mind Effectively,
We are just borrowing energy from the future,
But it's like a high interest loan Good short term bad long term Today we activate the stress response a lot Unnecessarily on a daily basis as such stress builds up on stress and like a pressure cooker It gets more and more intense Today's practice is like lifting the lid off that pressure cooker.
So let's do it together What we're gonna do is reverse the mechanics of the stress response and activate the rest and digest response instead So we'll do this by instead of staring at one point We'll open up our field of view instead of breathing shallow and quick.
We'll breathe big and slow This starts with the eyes.
So if they're closed open them now For this I want you to keep your face dead still all you're gonna move is your eyes Begin by looking as far left as you can Remember,
This is with your eyes only not your face Now look to your right as far as you can again only with your eyes Look all the way up and all the way down Now look forward and just have an open field of view So instead of staring at one thing in particular,
You're trying to see everything in your field of view evenly It's like a soft gaze Good job.
You can close the eyes now You can close the eyes now Now we're gonna start to use different breaths to calm our nervous system down.
Let's start with the physiological sigh It sounds like this Inhale through the nostrils once nice and deep Hold it take another sip of air through the nostrils and Then exhale through an open mouth with a sigh Let's do that again deep inhale through the nostrils Hold another sip of air through the nostrils and exhale through the mouth with the sigh One last time,
You know the deal Double inhale through the nostrils big sigh at the mouth.
I'll leave it to you this time Okay,
Great.
So that will start calming us down in the background But for now,
Let's focus on breathing bigger To do this I want you to bring your hands onto your belly notice how you inhale those hands and belly go forward and When you exhale those hands and belly go back with each inhale See if you can push those hands in that belly further bit forward Just getting a bit bigger with each inhale You don't have to push this too hard.
Just feel like you're breathing a bit bigger than normal Now take your hands and place them on your ribs The same thing here Can you feel your ribs going out with each inhale and then returning back to the center with each exhale?
Now with each subsequent inhale,
Can you push the ribs out even further?
Making those breaths bigger Good job.
This one's a bit harder,
But I just want you to bring your hands onto your lower back And just imagine breathing into your hands now in the same way you did with your belly and with your ribs Harder to feel.
I appreciate that.
Just imagine breathing in to your back and with each inhale You're breathing bigger into this area Okay,
Good job Now take your hands away and just imagine breathing in all four directions in a bigger fashion So as you inhale the belly goes out further the ribs go out further the back goes out further And as you exhale you didn't all just come back to the middle Nice big breaths Okay,
So we've dealt with the bigger element of breathing Now I said when you're stressed you also breathe shallow,
But quick,
So let's see if we can extend the breath This would have happened already as you breathe a bit bigger But we can also extend it just in a temporal sense just the time and for this we're gonna use a bit of box breathing All that means is we're gonna breathe in for four,
Hold for four,
Out for four,
Hold for four Let's do it together Wherever you are in your breath cycle breathe out now Inhale with me for two,
Three,
Four,
Hold,
Two,
Three,
Four Exhale,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Hold,
Two,
Three,
Four Inhale,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Hold,
Two,
Three,
Four Exhale,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Hold,
Two,
Four Inhale,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Hold,
Two,
Three,
Four Exhale,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Hold,
Two,
Three,
Four Carry on on your own now Just focusing on the numbers Focusing on your breath,
Finding your ideal rhythm,
Changing the numbers if you need to Just try and make them even for each element of the breath.
Now try integrate the bigger breathing with this longer breathing So continue to box breathe,
But just breathe in that 360 degree fashion we did before real nice quality breaths As you continue with that,
I'll just explain that the last trait of the stress response is We worry about the future So the last thing we're going to do now is take our mind into the present You're doing that already by focusing on your breath counting those numbers Embracing your experience You can stop counting your breaths now And see now even without the numbers of your breath You can just enjoy what it's like to breathe in and out Noticing the breath not necessarily counting the breath Bring your mind to focus in on your experience How it feels just to sit there How your clothes feel on your body How the air feels on your skin How your blood feels inside your veins Yeah,
You can get pretty deep with this stuff Anything that is happening here and now qualifies as your experience That's the protocol Okay,
That's enough for me There you go pressure released Feel free to do this protocol whenever you feel stressed.
It'll be my pleasure to take you through it one more time But if you can remember these things you can also apply them into your everyday That way you can relieve that stress as it comes up Good luck out there See you soon
