Trigger the relaxation response as a strategy to improve your overall feelings of health.

 

We lead very busy lives. We are bombarded with stimuli all day long and occasionally it wakes us up in the middle of the night because we can’t fit any more into our chuck-full lives.

Consider times of day when we are performing relatively mindless activities: washing dishes, commuting to work, mowing the lawn, weeding, vacuuming, or running on a treadmill. Typically, these ‘mindless’ activities are anything but ‘mindless’. These activities are oftentimes filled with our perseverating thoughts of negativity. When you are washing dishes, how often do you find yourself thinking “I love my life?” “I’m grateful for the opportunity to prepare this meal and clean up after it.” “I can’t wait to do it all again at suppertime.” More likely, the thoughts that race through our heads when we are doing something that requires little strategic thinking are old programmed thought patterns reinforcing our self-image and beliefs about ourselves and our lives. Remember that 95% of our neural activity is lower brain and does not use the higher brain functionality of the pre-frontal cortex. Einstein would call this ‘creative daydreaming’ and reports that these are the times that new ideas would come to him as the boundaries of pre-programmed thinking were no longer engaged. You cannot solve a problem with the same level of thinking that created the problem to begin with. Breaking these thought patterns is completely possible and the more you practice the better you feel and the easier it gets.

Next time you are about to engage in a ‘mindless’ activity, trigger a relaxation response first so that you can use the experience as therapy for yourself. The following is a simple way to trigger the relaxation response.

Abdominal breaths/yoga/belly breaths

Assume a comfortable position. (The first time you try this it may be easiest when lying down and place a book on your abdomen).

Take your dominant hand and put it over your belly and your non-dominant hand on your chest. Pull in air through your nose and lift your dominant hand (or the book) significantly. Instead of breathing air with just our lungs we are engaging our abdomens. Do this a couple of times to notice how easy it is.

Now relax. Breathe normally and consider a time of day when you would like to prepare yourself with a strategy of experiencing different thought patterns, engaging higher levels of brain function and relaxation. Set the stage for some healing.

Close your eyes. Rest the tip of your tongue on the area behind your upper front two teeth. Clamp the pointer finger and your thumb of your dominant hand together tightly as you bring air in through your nose to a count of 3, filling your abdomen with air just like inflating a balloon. Now, while continuing to hold your thumb and finger together, hold your breath for a count of 3. Now, releasing the pressure of your thumb and forefinger, release the air through your mouth making a release of air noise to a count of 6. Do this cycle 3 times then breathe normally.

Abdominal/yoga/belly breathing is a strategy for relaxation. When taking breathes in this fashion we lower the diaphragm significantly which fills the lowest air sacs in our lungs where the greatest air exchange happens. We inhale more relaxing oxygen and release more stimulating carbon dioxide. The action of tugging down on the diaphragm also triggers the vagus nerve which is the largest nerve leaving the brain and feeding the entire body. Stimulation of the vagus causes a parasympathetic response, the opposite of the sympathetic response and we feel ourselves relax. The only time of day when we naturally belly breathe is while we are sleeping. It is during times of day that we are relaxing that our bodies are healing itself. If we are not sleeping well, our bodies do not have an opportunity to heal itself. Strategically set yourself up for a positive night’s sleep by triggering the relaxation response just before falling asleep or anytime that you wake up in the night.