Transcriber: Rhonda Jacobs Reviewer: Zsuzsa Viola
Hello everyone.
I would like to invite you to do a little breathing exercise with me.
I want you to take a deep breath in,
but make sure that you're blowing out your tummy and then letting go.
Take a deep breath in,
and then relax.
Once more.
And let go.
One final time.
(Inhales)
Let go.
I have three statements to put out to you,
and I want you to just sit with it and see how you feel.
What if the symptoms you're experiencing
are exactly where they need to be?
What if the symptoms you are experiencing
are perfect for you for now?
What if you are not broken, and whole
and have innate health within you?
My name is Dr. Indra. I have been a GP for over 20 years.
In the last 10 years,
I've come across a new way of approaching health and wellbeing.
It's called functional medicine.
It's an approach that allows us to understand the root cause
of why people are experiencing what they're experiencing.
We look at all the factors that are involved in how health impacts our lives.
So we look at the way we eat, the way we think,
the way we move, the way we sleep,
and the community around us.
We look at the biochemistry of the body.
We go down to the real nitty-gritty of how the body is working
and how the environment around you is affecting your body.
I've come to realize the innate health that is within us.
What I want to say when I was thinking about compassion
is what if we could be compassionate to our symptoms that we're experiencing?
With your permission, I want to talk to you about the vagus nerve
and how, when it's working perfectly,
it allows you to experience some of the symptoms you may be experiencing.
So what is the vagus nerve?
The vagus nerve is one of the longest nerves that we have.
It starts from up here and goes all the way down to our groin.
It allows us to sense the world around us, and it keeps us safe.
In 1994, Stephen Porges proposed the polyvagal theory.
He said that the vagus nerve has three different components to it.
It has a dorsal vagus nerve, a ventral vagus nerve,
and a sympathetic nervous system.
You might have heard of the flight-or-fight system.
What I'm going to do is to explain those nerves
and the different parts of the nerves by talking about three zones:
the red zone, the yellow zone and the green zone.
So here we go.
We're going on a journey, and we're walking along,
and we're just living life,
and we come across something that’s life-threatening,
something that we just don't know what we can do anything about.
That's us going into the red zone.
We don't know what we can do. We feel like everything has to stop.
This could be due to one traumatic event,
It could be due to a number of traumatic events,
that lead us and to our body saying “Stop.”
What would you feel when you're in the red zone?
You may feel extreme overwhelm. You may feel paniced.
You may feel
that you cannot do anything more, and you just have to shut down.
Physiologically, your body is also shutting down.
Blood pressure might lower, your heart rate might lower,
and there is a metabolic shutdown happening.
Symptoms you might be experiencing are severe depression, disassociation,
fatigue and dizziness.
So that's you or us or whoever it is
in the red zone with the vagus nerve working perfectly for you.
So then we're going along,
and we just start to sense that something's a little bit off.
We're not quite sure where it is.
We just feel that there is a level of threat happening around us.
That is your sympathetic nervous system activating.
That is us going into the yellow zone.
When you're in the yellow zone, it's like being at a traffic light.
And when you're in that yellow traffic light,
you're kind of just looking around trying to figure out what's going on,
what's happening, you know, what's the next thing -
your state of high vigilance.
In that zone, you may feel panicky.
You may feel anxious.
You actually may feel rage or anger as well.
Physiologically,
your body is doing things to allow you to prepare yourself to run away.
So there's decreased salivation decreasing your digestion,
increasing your heart rate and your blood pressure,
increased muscle flow into your muscles so that you’re ready to go.
The symptoms you may be experiencing when you're in that stage -
you may have indigestion, you may have digestion issues,
you may have constipation,
you may have muscle tension because your muscles are all tensed up all the time.
Your immune system's affected. Your breathing may be affected.
You may even feel short of breath.
So that’s your yellow zone
and your sympathetic vagus nerve working perfectly, for you, for now.
And you're going along, and you feel fantastic!
You're doing something that you absolutely love.
You may be singing, you may be dancing, you may be doing arts and crafts,
you may be just doing anything that gets you into flow.
You feel like there's no thinking happening.
You're just on top of the world.
You're smelling the roses.
The sunshine just looks absolutely fantastic.
This is you in the green zone.
This is the ventral vagus nerve working perfectly.
This is where we all should be living most of our lives.
You will feel joy. You'll feel connection.
You will feel compassion when you're in the green zone.
Physiologically, your blood pressure returns to normal.
Your pulse returns to normal. Your breathing starts to calm down.
Your immune system does its cleanup job.
All the other times when it's activated,
this is when it starts to do the cleanup job.
When you're in the green zone,
this is where you rest, you heal and you digest.
So, we've talked about the three zones:
the red zone, the yellow zone and the green zone.
Which zone do you connect with?
I'm going to tell you a little story of something that happened to me yesterday,
which really illustrates how your perception
of how you interact with the world around you
really affects which zone you may be going into.
So I met a lady, and she was, you know, in a queue,
and we started chatting because all the trains had got cancelled.
So we were just waiting to see whether or not the next train
would be ready for us to go.
And we had a lovely conversation.
She was in a good mood; she was really interested in what was going on.
We had a really good connection.
That was her in the green zone, and that was me in the green zone
just seeing what would happen.
Later on that day, I came across another lady,
and while we were waiting for another announcement
to see whether or not the trains were going to get going.
And her daughter was on the phone, and she was just so stressed out.
She was like, what am I going to do? What's going to happen?
You know, where's the next train?
Oh my gosh!
And you could see and feel her in her state of anxiety and pressure.
That was her in the yellow zone.
Then unfortunately, at one point when we were allowed on the train -
there was a big rush to get onto the train -
and there was one chap who stood there and got really angry
and got really frustrated.
He started shouting and screaming,
and unfortunately he got to the point
where he actually did collapse on the floor.
We did get support for him, but that was him in the in the red zone.
So how we perceive the world around us
really affects which zone we are going to be in.
So now that you know the different zones,
let's see what we're going to do about this.
Our bodies need to be able to go between those three and zones
because we want to be able to protect ourselves.
Sometimes it's right for us to stop.
Sometimes it's right for us to be in that state of alertness
and figure out what we need to do.
But really, we need to be doing our rest, heal and digest in the green zone.
So, what I would like to leave you with
is now that you know, first of all, when you're experiencing a symptom,
figure out which zone you may be sitting in.
Can you feel compassionate to yourself and to your body
because it's working perfectly for you to give you the signals?
Symptoms are love letters from our body telling us what we might need to do.
Once you know that, can we move ourselves out of that zone?
Is it appropriate for us to be in that zone at that time?
And once you know, let's see what we can do to get you into that green zone.
There are lots of things that you can do to get into that green zone.
It's finding what suits you to get you in that green zone.
The last thing I'd like to leave you with is one very simple way
of getting you into your rest, your heal and your digestion,
and allowing you to feel compassionate
for all the symptoms that you may be experiencing.
It's that breathing exercise
that I led you on at the beginning of this talk.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)