While There's No Quick Fix, Try This.

While There's No Quick Fix, Try This.

Shift Your [Body + Breath]

Did you know your emotions are tied into your body?

Almost all of this operates unconsciously.

Before your mind registers its angry, not confident, or tired, you may clench your fist, slump your shoulders, or yawn. Here’s where people are less aware though. Each time your body initiates an action, it actually reinforces this emotion in your mind. Yes, your experience of the emotion becomes heightened by how your body reacts. So if you feel like you can’t shake a particular feeling, all you may need to do is shake up your body.

Really, it’s that simple.

I’ll give you a faster way of reprogramming your brain at the end of the blog, but let’s keep going with your body for right now.  

A Harvard study demonstrated that participants who, “adopted expansive, open (high-power) poses, or contractive, closed (low-power) poses,” prior to mock job interviews were more likely chosen for hire. Now, because you can’t always be doing power poses when you’re in a work meeting or in a fight with your partner, here’s an even easier simpler way to shift your experience.

It’s with the most unconscious of human activities: it’s your breath. So check in with your breath.

Actually, do it right now. It takes one second.

What’s the quality of your breath? Are you breathing through your nose or mouth? Are they short breaths or long ones? Are these breaths starting from your belly, your chest, your throat, or your face?

There’s science behind the way we breathe and it all starts in our nervous system.

In our nervous system, we’ve got two tracks: a fight-or-flight (sympathetic nervous system) and a rest-and-digest (parasympathetic nervous system). Both the sympathetic and parasympathetic operate unconsciously and simultaneously.

When you’re in fight-or-flight, the sympathetic, your breath will quicken and blood will pump faster; muscles and joints tighten; you’ll hone in on specific details and miss the big picture. When you’re in rest-and-digest, the parasympathetic, things slow. You see the big picture. You’re relaxed. Throughout the day though, even in non-stressful situations, we’ve learned to be in fight-or-flight, or in our sympathetic nervous system.

So how can you begin shifting more into your calmer, rest-and-digest, parasympathetic nervous system?

When you get a slightly stressed, even before your mind registers it, the quality of your breath changes—meaning you shift into your sympathetic nervous system, the fight-or-flight. Many people are operating out of this nervous system all day; they only realize it when the slightest thing bothers them and they react.

So what’s the fastest way to begin reprogramming your nerves?

Start breathing a little more through your nostrils. Play around with it. Try short, staccato breaths. Try longer, five second inhales and exhales. When you breathe through your nose you’re activating your parasympathetic nervous system.

When I work with individual clients, I have them notice and begin reorienting their body posture and breath as they’re processing through emotional stressors. The same goes with couples. As soon as one partner is in their sympathetic (fight-or-flight) nervous system, the other shifts into it. It goes the other way too. When one person takes slower, fuller breaths through their nose, their body language softens, and their partner intuitively shifts out of fight-or-flight; they can now begin processing issues through a wider lens.

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If you want additional info, James Nestor’s Breath is a good intro.