Have you ever experienced a full-blown panic attack where your breathing gets very shallow and you just want to escape?  Or you get so angry and frustrated your body tenses up and begins to shake?  Or you’re filled with so much fear that you’re physically unable to move?

These are all very LOUD ways your body talks to you to let you know something is out of balance in your mind and has triggered your flight/fight/freeze response.

This is a response triggered by your autonomic nervous system when your brain perceives a threat.  You may experience many physiological responses like:

increased pulse rate

sweating

shallow more rapid breathing

muscles tense up or you start to shake

narrow focus on what’s creating the stress response

These physical responses represent what happens to the body when you are under physical or emotional stress.

What Can You Do When You Notice This Happening?

I’d like to recommend combining two tools. The first is the Three Breath Trick I learned from Abigail (found in her Healthy Mind Toolbox) and the second tool I call Return To Your Senses.

The Three Breath Trick is very simple yet an incredibly powerful way to interrupt the spin cycle going on in your mind.  When coupled with the Return To Your Senses tool it may provide a long enough PAUSE that you notice yourself calming down.  From this place you’re more open to discover the cause of your stress using Abigail’s tools from the Healthy Mind Toolbox.

So how do you do it?

When you notice any of the physiological responses listed above happening in your body, bring your awareness to your breath.  Notice how you’re breathing then intentionally take three deep breaths deep into your belly.  Allow your belly to expand with each breath.  This is not a time to worry about holding in your stomach.  Let your belly relax and extend with each inhale.

While you’re breathing, pay attention to how your breath feels moving through your body; in through your nose and out through your mouth.  You can do the Three Breath Trick more than once.  Between each round of deep breaths, breathe normally for a few seconds.  Then continue with three deep belly breaths for up to nine cycles.

Next, bring your awareness to your five senses – sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste and ask yourself the following questions.

• What do I see around me in this moment? What do you physically see in your current environment?  Focus your attention on those items.
• What do I hear? Do you hear sounds of the world around you?  People’s voices?  The sounds of nature?  Sounds of an urban city or birds chirping?  Focus your attention on the sounds.
• What do I smell? Do you smell something cooking in the oven?  The smell of the dirt outside or smells coming from the breeze?
• What do I feel? Do you feel clothing on your body?  Do you feel your hands sitting on your lap?  Do you feel wind on your face?
• What do you taste? Did you recently have something to eat or drink and the taste lingers?  Or do you taste the familiar flavor of your own mouth?

You don’t need to be in a full blown panic attack to try this.  I invite you to take a few minutes and give it a try now.  Before you start, check in with your body to see where you notice any physical tension.  After you’re done see if you notice a shift in your physical body.

When you focus on your five senses and the present moment you quiet the spin cycle going on in your mind.

The last question:  after you’ve done the Three Breath Trick and the Return To Your Senses ask yourself this question.

Am I safe in this moment?

When you become present and quiet the fear in the mind you’ll discover at your deepest core lies peace and awareness.  You have love and everything you need all around you and you are safe.

With love and healing,

Diane

Here’s a little holiday help for your mind and body!

Since physical tension and emotional stress are inextricably linked, it’s important to utilize both mental and physical stress-relief tools.  Think of the mind and body as having a continual conversation – the mind, if thinking stressful thoughts, tells the body to create a fight or flight response (which in turn creates physical tension).  The body, if tense, reinforces the mind’s stressful thinking.  To fully disconnect this feedback loop, you need to address both the mind and the body.

One of the easiest ways to help release physical tension and calm the mind at the same time is to utilize a variety of breathing techniques.  Don’t underestimate the power of the breath to help release physical tension, oxygenate and relax muscles, stop panic thinking, and elevate your emotional state.  In this video, I’ve teamed up with my business partner and good friend, yoga teacher Jess Ryan, to show you a fast breathing technique you can use right now.  The road to wellness, whether you’re looking for pain relief, weight loss, or emotional well-being, lies in establishing awareness of the conversation between your mind and body.  Listen in on the conversation, add your two cents via the breath, and help your mind and body become a solid, healthy team.  Look for more breathing techniques from Jess and I in future posts!

• Breathwork 1 – Basic diaphragmatic breathing taught by a yoga instructor or voice instructor.  (One-on-one instruction is best.)  I would recommend this to every single person.  I think it is the most important thing you can learn – and this is saying a lot, because I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE coaching.

• Breathwork  2 – Someone who works with breath to facilitate emotional release.  You might need this if, for example, you worked with a therapist or coach and did basic breath-work, read about mind-body approaches such as Sarno’s, even took a program like Dr. Schubiner’s, and still have persistent pain.  In other words, don’t blame yourself, don’t blame the programs, information, or humans.  You just might need to release some serious suppressed emotion that can be regarded as basically stuck energy in your body.  (Remember, more coming in future posts.) (My favorite breathwork resource is www.barrattbreathworks.com.)

• Other body-based emotional release techniques, such as EMDR, EFT, or bioenergetic psychotherapy if you don’t have a breath-work specialist in your area.

• Traditional Western psychotherapy – If you have past traumas that you have yet to share with anyone, and if you hate talking about feelings or your personal inner life, you may need to start here.

• Energy healing – such as acupuncture, Healing Touch, or bioenergetic healing.  This comes in as a close second behind coaching and breath-work in my book.  It rocks.  No other way to say it.  It will speed up everything else you’re doing.

• Nutritional guidance of the non-scary kind (someone who can teach you balanced nutrition rather than an overly limited/restrictive diet).  It’s always helpful to support your body in its healing process.  This also means knowing that food alone may not be enough to cure you, and may not be the root cause of your issue.  You can just aid yourself and speed things up by giving your body what it needs.  If you’re prone to thinking your diet causes your pain, you might want to hold off on this one.

• A spiritual guide/teacher – Nothing is more reassuring than a spiritual connection.  My own personal journey to health was a spiritual unfolding within myself.  It may not be the norm to talk about this, or to even talk about its importance in a healing process, but I am not going to hold back anything from you.  I think it’s hugely important.  I will be sharing more about this in the future.  If you don’t work with someone in person, reading spiritual resources that feel right to you can be immensely comforting.  Follow your inner guidance.

• Yoga, t’ai chi, qigong, stretching, massage, and physical therapy – These can all have their place in your healing process – if you find instructors who know what they’re doing and therapists who are supportive.  While these may not heal you alone, they can be immensely effective in moving and releasing emotion and energy.  It can be easy to focus too much on the physical aspect of this kind of work and not enough on the emotional/mental release it stimulates, so be careful.  Make this a compliment, not the main focus.  As long as you’re not hanging all your hope on these things, you’ll find them fantastic supportive pieces of the puzzle – IF YOU ENJOY THEM.  Doing something you don’t like or that doesn’t feel right to you is never helpful.

• A physician you trust – I am a little bossy when it comes to my health, so I like a physician who will listen to me, take me seriously, and be willing to look beyond Western medicine and to the outer reaches of Western medicine.  Yes, I did find one!  I see him about once a year for a pap smear, but I like knowing I can trust him.  Mind-body healing does not mean throwing out Western medicine.  It’s about integration.

• Last but not least: COACHING! Yes, yes, I know I’m biased.  Seriously, though, NOTHING has helped me more than coaching.  It is the fastest way to relax your body, surprisingly enough, because it helps release thoughts and emotions that are causing the fight or flight response within your body.  And I didn’t even know about it when I was struggling through my initial healing process!  So you get to benefit from my experience, here!  Mind body (especially Martha Beck style) coaching is unique, straightforward, and immensely freeing.   As a spoke in the wheel for my clients, I also serve, due to my personal experience, as a sort of Mind-Body CEO, helping them see what works for them, what they can do for themselves, and how they can listen to their own inner guidance both to build their Healing Team and to learn to coach themselves.  I offer my own experience and knowledge as a guide and jumping-off point.  (In upcoming posts – much more about my personal application of coaching in my current life, so that you can see it in action and understand how it helps.)  If you integrate coaching with some of the traditional Sarno work, you get a hugely powerful mix.  If you put it together with body-based activities like yoga, breathing, and energy work, you’d have to work hard to stay in pain or ill!

If you’re struggling with mind-body healing and improvement is not happening for you, there’s no reason to give up, throw in the towel, or decide it’s a hoax.  I want you to know that nothing is wrong with you, you’re not doing anything wrong, and whatever you’ve tried probably isn’t wrong either.  It’s just a personalized, sometimes complicated process.  Breathe deeply, allow yourself some compassion, don’t be in a big rush, and explore.  Put together a Healing Team that works for you.  If you need only one person, great.  If you need ten people, great.  (If you read my blog regularly, I consider myself to be an honorary member of your Team, because it’s fun to think of you and your healing process (even if I don’t know you personally)!  Don’t forget to join my email list because there’s SO MUCH COMING (really soon!) that you might find helpful, and I always tell my email list first about exciting stuff.)

So what do I do now, in my life?  Who’s on my current Health Team?  Here’s my weekly practice: meditation, breath-work, mindfulness, journaling, self-coaching, yoga, visualization, reading, enough sleep, and PLAY.  I don’t do hours of everything – sometimes it’s just minutes here and there, depending on the day.  But I do these things because I love them and because they bring me peace, happiness, and health.  There is no sense of “should.”  I will be writing more about the lifestyle of mind-body health, so that you can learn from my “mistakes” and personal life lessons.

My Health Team consists of: my physician, my coach buddies, my energy healer (a nurse who uses Healing Touch), my yoga instructor (not for “fixing” my body, but because yoga enhances my mind-body-spirit connection and brings up emotions to be processed), my nutritionist (don’t use her as much anymore, but pop in and out here and there), and a great massage therapist (but that is not directed toward pain, it’s because I love getting massaged more than anything – I am a massage addict), and, last but not least – ME.

So anytime something is amiss within my mental/emotional world, I coach myself first.  Then I reach out to my support system and work with whomever is appropriate.  I get coached and take yoga classes weekly, and I consistently book energy healing appointments.  These three things, for me, are preventative, joyful medicine.  They are joy-enhancers.  When I want to treat myself, I get a massage.  The main point is, though, that when I think of my Health Team, I smile.  They all have great compassionate, kind personalities and positive energy.  So yes, sometimes it takes a village, but the village is there for you, waiting to help you return to health.

Which it is not.

The body is not just the body.  It cannot be separated from the mind, the emotions, and the soul.  So, even though we long for linear, logical connections, they just aren’t always there.  Sometimes, the body hurts because we aren’t feeling our emotions.  Sometimes the body hurts because we aren’t listening to our true selves.

This can be hard to conceptualize at first, but the great news is that science can indeed explain much of these processes.  Which is where the resources come in – I LOVE it when doctors write about the mind-body connection, because they can speak to our linear, logical selves and help us believe in something that seems “out there” or woo-woo.  I love any book about the mind-body connection, pretty much, and this month I’m reading a great one.

This month’s book is a short little book called Breathe Smart, The Secret to Happiness, Health, and Long Life by Aaron Hoopes.  I love this little book for many reasons.  First, it’s little!  It’s short!  It cuts to the chase and gives you great information about breathing and its connection to health.  Second, it describes a bit of the science behind the connection between breathing and health.  Third, it hammers home the points I am always trying to make with clients about the power of the breath.

It’s so easy to overlook the breath and just dismiss it as another banal, old topic.  Don’t make that mistake!  Investing time and effort to truly understand and applying healthy breathing techniques will take you much further than you can even imagine.  If you’re looking for a short, concise book about breathing, this one is it.  I highly recommend it.  Then, take yourself to a yoga teacher, vocal coach, or breathwork specialist and learn how to take a full, diaphragmatic breath.  Your body, mind, and soul will thank you!

Don’t forget to check out the June telecourses offered in last week’s blog post!