[whoo] did you know that yawning is an important skill for anxiety reduction?
Today, we're going to talk about how to activate your parasympathetic nervous
system by triggering the vagus nerve the vagus nerve is different than most
of the other nerves in our body because it sends
information in both directions down from the brain to our bodies and
From our bodies back to our brain so the
vagus nerve helps trigger the bottom-up approach to resolving
Anxiety. The bottom-up approach is basically the fact that a calm body can create a calm mind.
I recently heard a great story about this a
woman adopted a dog that she found on the side of the road
It was just running around on the side of the road, and this dog was a great dog
It was good with kids
It was good with families it was wonderful to have around it was obedient and it listened to them
but the dog had one major drawback-
When they would put the dog in the car and take it anywhere like on a trip or to the park
The dog would freak out it- would just have a crazy
Anxiety response and it would start to throw up in the back of the car.
So after this happened over and over again and their their car was just smelling
disgusting the woman who owns the dog took the dog
to a dog trainer and asked "what do I do? I cannot figure out how
To help this animal?" And the wise dog trainer said "In order to help this dog feel calmer
it needs to have a calm body" First she taught the
woman how to direct the dog to sit down and lay down and
They constantly trained the dog to do that
so they bring it into the car have it lay down and force it into a relaxed position and
As they did that the anxiety that the dog was experiencing decreased
and pretty soon the dog was not throwing up in the car anymore.
This this story illustrates the principle that a calm
body can create a calm mind. Ancient societies have known this for years
People practicing yoga or meditative breathing
Understand that we can change our mind's reaction by changing our body and today
I'm going to teach you a couple of techniques to do that. So the first technique
I'm going to teach is diaphragmatic breathing. That means breathing with
your stomach. Now most people don't realize it
But they spend most of the day breathing with their
chest. We have some ability to expand our chest
But when we only breathe with our chest we're about 70% less
Oxygenated than when we breathe with our stomach the diaphragm is a muscle
that's right below our ribcage and as we take a deep breath our diaphragm pushes down and
pushes those abdominal organs out.
So in order to breathe with our diaphragm
We need to see our belly moving in and out
One of the ways to do is take your hands cross your fingers and put them on your stomach and
then lean back a little bit in your chair and
Take a few deep breaths and try and get your hands to move out when you breathe
That's it diaphragmatic breathing. Now these are called self-regulation techniques
And they're called self-regulation techniques because you can regulate yourself in any situation
You don't have to leave the situation to calm
down. Relaxation is where you go leave a situation,
Take a hot bath, get a massage, etc. If we could do that all day long
We wouldn't have a problem with our nervous system.
but the reality is we're often stuck at work or in
stressful meetings stuck in a commute, or a traffic Jam and
We need to be able to regulate our nervous system during
stressful experiences not just avoiding stressful experiences.
So diaphragmatic breathing is something you can do in a meeting you don't have to make a loud noise.
Just sit there and take deep breaths and have your stomach move in and out.
It even helps a little if you put your hands behind your head
lean back in your chair and take a deep breath.
This increases the ability of your lungs to expand
and again you should be seeing your stomach move in and out as you do this
And you don't have to do it as loudly as that. This is an
activity you can do during meetings, phone calls,
while reading an important email,
whatever it may be,