Fight or flight

Sponsored Content

BUSINESS NEWS - Everybody knows the term, “fight or flight”. If you don’t, you should. Let’s just run through it quickly.

Fight or flight is the common term used for the body’s stress response to perceived threats/problems.

When we feel under stress, our body reacts to the situation by deciding to either fight, take flight, or freeze.

Our pupils dilate, blood gets sent away from our internal organs to our muscles, our body releases the cortisol hormone which activates your adrenal glands (releasing adrenaline) and your breath quickens. (We’ll get back to the breath in a bit.)

You are ready. Your nervous system is in sympathetic mode.

This is all fine for the short term, a survival instinct, but our modern-day life demands this almost all the time, leaving us in a constant mode of low level stress. You are tired, you struggle to switch off, you feel alert, you haven’t taken a proper holiday in ages, you feel guilty when you just sit down for a second. Sound familiar? Our body has this sympathetic mode for short term threats and stressors, but in the long term, it causes our body to have continuous heightened inflammatory states, which can also lead to chronic pain and lifestyle/autoimmune diseases.

Now, let’s introduce the VAGUS NERVE - the operator controlling the switch between “fight, flight or freeze” and “fest and digest” a.k.a. parasympathetic mode. The lekker mode; relaxed mode.

This beautiful structure derives its name from the path it takes in your body, meaning the “wandering nerve” (see image). It originates from your brain, takes a loop behind your ear and down your neck, passes your vocal chords, runs next to your main airway, innervates your lungs, pierces your diaphragm and then spreads into your organs, belly and pelvic floor. Butterflies in your tummy? Heartache? Anxiety? Isn’t that a state of probable stress? Why does talking, humming, singing and loudly laughing make us feel so much better? Isn’t that just breath activating the vagus nerve?

The vagus nerve is the main switch between checking in with your body and checking out.

This nerve stimulated, helps to relax our bodies and allows our system to do an internal check and process all the different kinds of information it receives – mental, physical, physiological, emotional, nutritional, tensional, etcetera. (Your body is largely run by your organs, so the vagus nerve is like the messenger). ‘’Checking in” is crucial time for your body to be able to digest and release everything it doesn’t need.

If it doesn’t get a chance to run this process – you are left stuck with so much baggage on a large variety of things and it slows your whole system down.

As long as you are too distracted or demanded from outside, your body will not be able to fully internalise and process information and the list of things just keep piling up. Think of a software update on your cellphone: if you don’t do it, after a while everything is slow and doesn’t work as efficiently as you’d want it to. You want to perform all these executive tasks, but your device has too much in its brain to work efficiently.

A holiday is super expensive, the kids won’t stop nagging, you need to take care of everything in the house, the job won’t allow leave now, you can’t ask your sick family member to stop being sick. Life just keeps happening. How are we supposed to find the energy, money, or time to “rest and digest”? How do we switch over into parasympathetic mode? How do we do a software update?

Circle back to our wandering friend, the vagus nerve. This nerve has the power (and responsibility) to switch us to parasympathetic mode. Rest and digest. Feed and breed. And it’s super easy to tap into. Usually this happens when we sleep, but let’s face it: technology, anxiety, overthinking, worrying, work, all these things don’t make proper quality sleep so accessible. So, let’s try another way of switching into parasympathetic mode;

Now, where you sit:

Place your hands on your belly.
Inhale through your nose and allow the air to expand your belly slowly. Don’t let your shoulders or your chest rise. You can do it. (It’s easier if you lean slightly forwards.)
Purse your lips (like you’re blowing out a candle) and exhale through those beautifully pouted, pursed lips.
Repeat.
Try to stretch your exhale out as long as possible and while you’re at it drop your shoulders down and relax your jaw.
Again.
The last bit of thinking is trying to slow your breath down that you’re inhaling for five counts, holding your breath for five, and exhaling for five counts.
Remember to relax your shoulders now.
I would recommend a good four minutes of focusing on this, just for a start. Time is money, right?

Okay so what’s happening is (as you inhale into your belly), by using the diaphragm you are activating your vagus nerve. Do this enough times over and every single organ, from your brain, through your ringing ears, past your throat, your heart and into your digestive system – you are stimulating the vagus nerve to start doing its job and getting the organs to fire up their engines. Software update.

When they’ve had enough of a push, they’ll go right into running like clockwork again, and voila! Your body can switch off your adrenal glands, relax your muscles, and send your life force of blood to your internal organs.

A deep, diaphragmatic breath tells your body that you are safe. It’s also a major role player in decreasing inflammation which is caused by that naughty stress hormone called cortisol. Repeating this practice for a few days or weeks will ultimately heal a lot of physical ailments associated with chronic stress. Why do you think meditating monks live so long? It’s science. You can hack your body’s “unconscious” responses by bringing it into your own decision and power to calm it down.

At our Physio Rooms we have trained professionals to help you relearn your breathing by what we call breathwork, helping to teach you not only more effective ways of breathing, but also explaining the benefits associated with it from a medical, but also an understandable perspective.

Our bodies really have the amazing capacity to heal themself. There is so much more we can learn and it’s all for free. No medical bills, no plane tickets, no retreats, just you, your belly and your breath.

Contact us today for a consultation.