By William Frost
[Certified Wim Hof Instructor - Melbourne]
Picture this; you're about to cross a busy road with your attention locked on your phone. Cars "swoosh" past you in either direction, the tail-wind grazing over your face. Your sixth sense perceives a gap in the movement in which you assume it’s safe to move. Head and eyes are still in a stationary gaze, you take that step ... and "BEEP!" - bad timing! In a fraction of a second you're now upright, alert, and visibly shaking. Your body is vibrating and adrenaline is pumping through your veins. Been there?
The environment and your reaction created something quite extraordinary inside you.
Allow me to introduce you to your Sympathetic Nervous System(SNS). If your body was a car your SNS will be your accelerator; the function that makes the vehicle move. For the sake of redundancy, let's give this system a name; Sim.
Sim has been with you since before you were born. He has grown with you, learned with you, and mentors you. Sim is like that one friend you know who is always "on". He is full of energy and always ready to go, even though he doesn't eat well and rarely sleeps. Without Sim, you wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning, lift a weight off the ground or run for the train.
Sim’s primary role is to protect you from any perceived danger. This relationship works in two directions. The more novelty you experience in life the more Sim learns what to protect you from. You learn from him as much as he learns from you.
When life requires a helping hand, Sim takes grabs the reins, seizes control, and springs into action in those times when you need an assist, like when a moving object threatens to take you down. This action is his specialty, he is the provider of your Fight/Flight system. Sim's a handy guy to have around.
Sim has a counterpart known as the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PSN) -let's name this system Paris.
You arrive home from a challenging day, kick off your shoes, and collapse on the couch as a sigh of relief escapes your lips. Saliva builds in your mouth as you catch a whiff of dinner and you feel the stress of the day fall off your shoulders. This is the effect that Paris has on us all.
Paris is super chill, she is the breaks in your car; slowing you down before you overheat. After a day with Sim, Paris spends her time cooling you down, digesting your food and facilitates your recovery from the tussle of day-to-day life. She also offers immune-boosting aids as tools to help you fight off disease and infection. Paris is the provider of your Rest/Digest system. Without Paris, say au revoir to optimal sleep, health and digestion.
It is important to understand that Sim and Paris are core components of you and both act on their own accord in automatic reaction to the environment. Together they make up your Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). Without them, life would be impossible.
When one system is on the other has to be off. It's impossible for both the accelerator and the brake to operate together. Although they are vital to your vehicle's total health and longevity they can only be used in conjunction with each other.
We need the SNS and the PSN to work harmoniously for the best possible health. All mammals are designed with the ability and capability to switch between the two.
Let's look at an example; picture a gazelle grazing in the Savanna. The gazelle is in harmony with itself and its surroundings. It's currently PSN dominant. Suddenly, a lion launches an attack. The Gazelles SNS is mobilised in a fraction of a second, overriding the PSN. This reaction produces the gazelle with a life-saving cocktail of energy, alertness and strength that it needs to run for its life.
The gazelle gets away and lives to see another day. What it does next, however, is where lies the difference between humans and other mammals: It returns to grazing as if nothing happened. In other words; it switched from the fight/flight state from the distressing event to rest/digestin a healthy and natural way. And it didn't require years of therapy.
Fromhere the PSN can work to employ the recover, recharge, and restoration benefits that the animal requires.
So, what happened here? The Gazelle sensed the danger signals from the surrounding environment (a charging lion), alarm bells in the brain transmitted this information in the form of chemicals and neurons to receiving components throughout the brain and body that in turn responded by switching on the SNS. The SNS primed the gazelle with adrenaline (energy) to run away.
... In a nutshell.
Gazelles, lions, humans, and all other mammals, experience stress in identical ways … biologically speaking.
There is an area in the midbrain that acts as a mediator between stimulus and response. The Limbic System is your brain's emotional center. This framework stores memories and emotions. Think of the limbic brain like your own library and each book is a memory with an emotion bound to it.
Each situation you face in life must be translated via your senses to be cross-referenced in your library of memories in order to form an adequate response. Every book in your library of past experiences all has a connected emotion and is personal and subjective to the individual.
This is why a "stressful" event may be more overwhelming for some but completely dull for another. For example, one who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may experience an attack of anxiety from a car backfire but someone else can gaze in awe and bewilderment at a firework display and feel totally safe.
Stress is inherently a neutral agent. It is only when it's picked up and cross-checked in your library of the past that it is interpreted as either a threat to your homeostasis or not.
Now that you have a better understanding of the link between your senses, the environment, and how they induce your internal state I can introduce you to the crux of this post.
So now you're probably thinking "this is great and all, but what can I do about this? It all sounds out of my control!" Well, I am happy to announce the go-between of your nervous system. The one who services your car, changes the oil and fine-tunes the breaks; Your breath.
That's right. Your breath holds the key to your health and wellness. Before I go on I must provide a framework as to why this unsung hero is indeed the hero we all need.
The modern world is a rapidly evolving entity. It’s a challenge to find stillness at the best of times, and the body is struggling to keep up. One clear characteristic of evolution is that it moves as slow as a Sunday driver. So slow in fact that the humans of 200,000 years ago were identical, that's right, identical to the humans today. As far as biology is concerned you are a 21st-century caveman.
You share the same brain size, anatomy, and (most notably) the same nervous system to your ancestral cousins.
Your ancestors lived and survived in the wild. This lifestyle invited very real dangers; predatory attack, environmental exposure, famine, etc. When your primal forbears sensed danger their physiology mobilised a response (adrenaline, cortisol) to deal with it. Where there's a stimulus there is always a response. But as challenging as it sounds they were actually more in balance with their surroundings than we are.
This was the norm for humans for tens of thousands of years and the nervous system was moulded from those years of continuous hardship and fight for survival for. We evolved out of the wilderness and started on down the road of civilisation only 3000+ years which is a blink of an eye as far as evolution goes.
The key point here is that you are, and always will be, a product of your environment.
The SNS has been groomed under those times of hardship and challenge. And that very same sequence of responses lives inside you today.
Sleeping through your alarm due to poor sleeping habits, having a domestic with your loved one, a pile of unpaid bills, and traffic on the long commute to a job that you’re overworked at. What do these have in common? They're novel moments that elicit a stress response. Or, a standard morning in the life of many!
When you are faced with stress (novel or not) your internal feedback is the same as if it were a life threat. Your ancient blueprint comes online and rushes to your defence from the threat by launching the SNS. But there is no threat. There is no hungry lion to run from, no storm to shelter from, and no scarcity of food to worry about. And unfortunately, we face multiple stressful moments every day.
If this activation never gets the chance to cool off there will be consequences. Your immune system, endocrine system, and your nervous system fall out of alignment and cannot optimally function. If you do not hit the breaks you run yourself past the red line and straight into illness.
In comes the saviour. Your breath is the hero your inner environment needs in times of pressure.
As your SNS accelerates from gear to gear it is the magic performed by the breath that brings it back down to neutral. It does this via the activation of the vagus nerve. This fantastic nerve is a key agent of the PSN. It is a two-way communicator with your mind and body and is activated in many ways, one of which is your breath. Specifically, your exhale.
In times of uncertainty and unease, you can take back control of your response by giving yourself a moment to take a breath through your nose deep into the belly and then focus on slowly exhaling. When you do this you’re making a conscious choice to act rather than react, and thus switching on your PSN. This gives you a window of opportunity that lowers your heart rate, decreases blood pressure, stimulates digestive enzymes, and promotes a feeling of safety.
By extending your exhalation you develop a high vagal tone.
And having a low vagal tone is associated with ill-health, autoimmune diseases, chronic inflammation, chronic stress, and insomnia. This is usually caused by incorrect breathing at rest.
Try it now:
+ Take a full breath in through your nose for a count of six seconds
+ Exhale out the mouth to the count of 12 seconds
Notice the difference? Notice yourself naturally relax on the exhale? And that's just one breath. The more you practice the better you get.
Having control over your breath gives you your power back and having your power back you take back control of your inner state.
So by feeding that positive internal change with conscious breathing you become more engaged with whatever is happening around you which widens the gap between stimulus and response, and the more you practice the wider that gap gets.
You essentially become one with your environment. You become one with your life energy, your choices, and actions. By transforming your inner state you will change the way you respond to the world, and more importantly, how the world responds to you.
Giving yourself time to establish a deeper relationship with your breath will boost your resilience in the moments you need it most. You will also establish a stronger emotional connection, a more durable immune system, and an increase in overall wellness.
One key marker for optimal health is ones ability to switch from fight/flight to rest/recovery and the more you practice breathing techniques the better equipt you will be particularly in those times which used to trigger an anxious response like a job interview, being in large crowds or a challenging conversation.
Another important factor in switching between one state to the other is during meals. If you eat while you're in action mode your body will not be able to completely digest leading to "stress eating” and inflammation. You may develop IBS symptoms and bloating. If this becomes a habit it may even create an emotional bond between your inner state and your food, resulting in your body turning to it comfort food in moments of stress when all you need is to take a breath.
Try it now:
+ Take a full breath in through your nose for a count of six seconds
+ Exhale out the mouth to the count of 12 seconds
Notice the difference? Notice yourself naturally relax on the exhale? And that's just one breath. The more you practice the better you get.
Having control over your breath gives you your power back and having your power back you take back control of your inner state.
So by feeding that positive internal change with conscious breathing you become more engaged with whatever is happening around you which widens the gap between stimulus and response, and the more you practice the wider that gap gets.
You essentially become one with your environment. You become one with your life energy, your choices, and actions. By transforming your inner state you will change the way you respond to the world, and more importantly, how the world responds to you.
Giving yourself time to establish a deeper relationship with your breath will boost your resilience in the moments you need it most. You will also establish a stronger emotional connection, a more durable immune system, and an increase in overall wellness.
One key marker for optimal health is ones ability to switch from fight/flight to rest/recovery and the more you practice breathing techniques the better equipt you will be particularly in those times which used to trigger an anxious response like a job interview, being in large crowds or a challenging conversation.
Another important factor in switching between one state to the other is during meals. If you eat while you're in action mode your body will not be able to completely digest leading to "stress eating” and inflammation. You may develop IBS symptoms and bloating. If this becomes a habit it may even create an emotional bond between your inner state and your food, resulting in your body turning to it comfort food in moments of stress when all you need is to take a breath.
Ways to incite a higher vagal tone:
+ Breathwork, focusing on exhalation.
+ Singing/humming/chanting
+ Positive social relationships
+ Touch
+ Cold exposure
+ Grounding
+ Self expression
Having a high vagal tone is of vital importance to quality health. It is especially for those who find it difficult to "switch off" and always swimming in the infinity pool of what the Buddhist call the “monkey mind.”
By incorporating a few easy to learn breathing techniques you can use it as a wedge between your environment and your reaction. By giving yourself a moment to pause, align, and breathe you can save yourself a lifetime of unnecessary difficulty.
Your breath is a gift. It's the doorway to your internal self, your soul. There is so much you can do and achieve when you allow your breath to work for you.
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If you wish to learn more about all the different ways your breath can be used as a tool to longevity and wellness you can find more information here:
Instagram:@getfrost_
Facebook:/getfrost1
Here you can find more info on the workshops I regularly run on the many aspects and areas of breathing to enhance stress management and the gap between stimulus and reaction.
- William Frost
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