Stress Test

I want you to leave this next three minutes of reading with a tool that can transform how you react and reset to challenging scenarios. This can be applied if you are dealing with a fear of public speaking, the difficulty focusing at a work meeting, or trying not to be totally overwhelmed when your kids come home from school and destroy all calm and cleanliness of your previously peaceful home.

In each of these scenarios, there is a common thread that involves reacting to the energy of others. What is happening internally, and more importantly, what can you do to start the process of making a lasting change?

You have a complex nervous system that is using patterns and algorithms of past events to predict the future and react to current events. In a case like public speaking, you may subconsciously ramp up your heart rate, shorten your breaths, and alter the pores on your skin to increase sweat gland distribution minutes or even days before you need to actually perform your speech. If it feels like your kids bring a tornado into the house after playing, your nervous system can get hijacked so fast that your reaction is to become a hurricane. When you are patiently listening to your spouse pick apart a minor detail that you omitted from the last three hours of intense household productivity, and you find your internal pressure cooker ready to explode with a precision missile - BOOM - this is the chance to reset. Let's get to work.

In the moment, you are involved in an exchange between internal and external receptive states - exteroception versus interoception. Some humans are naturally more interoceptive while others are gifted at exteroception. In these examples, it does not matter what end of the spectrum your gifts are located - you are struggling with your allocation of energy in reaction to external stimuli.

Interoception/exteroception awareness can be used as a tool to help regulate your nervous system. Here is how:

You feel triggered. Take 2-3 seconds and perform the following steps. As you read this, it may feel like you might need longer. However, if you simulate and practice, this exercise becomes easier.

1. Connect with any point of your body and its contact with the outside world. Feel where your skin touches a loose article of clothing, or where your feet are connecting to the ground. Other examples are where your body is in contact with a seat or what the breeze feels like on your arm. You are focusing your awareness on a location that links your interoceptive world, and the exteroceptive surroundings.

2. Next, move your focus to an internal system. For example, notice which muscles are storing tension (jaw, eyes, neck, back, and hands are good starting places) or focus on your breathing (how full or empty are your lungs at a given moment).

You are temporarily transitioning from external to internal.

3. Now, use exteroception: turn your attention to something in your immediate space. Focus on something in your visual field that is obvious and has features you can concentrate on like a physical feature of furniture or variations in color (something you would choose if you were playing “I spy” with a child). If you are more attracted to audible stimulation, channel out the sounds of a particular object like a ceiling fan, footsteps of a passerby, sounds of a moving object in the room, or the humming of a radiator. If it is dinner time, consider a pleasant odor from the kitchen. Extend your focus on this vision, sound, or smell.

4. Next, zoom out and create a mental picture of the entire scene you are in. See yourself and notice the external and internal stimuli. Like taking a picture from a drone floating overhead, you are witnessing a transition between the details of the environment surrounding you, and moving back to your body in internal homeostasis. From a distance, where are points where muscle tension can be released? What is the pace of your breathing? By observing yourself in a way that someone else might, you are cued that you possess an energy to yourself. Even in tense moments, you have the capacity to shift this energy. Create a bigger picture of you and your surroundings in this exact present moment, and allow yourself to deepen awareness into this energy.

5. Recognize the location of your inner Self in relation to this abundance of stimulation. Begin to think about what is recognizable and predictable. Connect with your Self energy. If you struggle to make this connection, please consider a free visit and allow me to explain what this looks like. How do you desire to show up at this moment?

6. Return to the reality you are surrounded by. It may be chaotic, but you can always recalibrate with this exercise.

The first time you try this, it will likely take over 10 seconds to travel through each of these steps (it took me over a minute). Try to repeat it at a faster pace. Try a third and fourth time with a slight increase in speed each time. See if you can do it in under 4 seconds. Try again in under three.

I like to use this with my breath. As I inhale, I start with a point of contact and pull my awareness in. As I exhale, I find a detail in my environment, zoom out, and look back - this is my reset moment.

If this sounds interesting for you to pursue, it is helpful to create a script of areas in your life where you tend to be activated or triggered. Run through these scenarios and rehearse what each of these steps could feel like and how you want your desired response to look. What emotions are you encountering at each part of the process? How do you want to feel at each of these points? Repeat, repeat, repeat. Practice to see what pace you need to proceed through each of these steps. Remember, you can become more efficient. Like a muscle, this can be exercised to a point where you become increasingly efficient. Again, if you get confused about your reaction or want someone to help with structure or accountability, please reach out to me. I really enjoy connecting with others in circumstances like this.

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Simple Sleep Assessment

By Ben Mooney • August 9, 2023

Having trouble sleeping? Please consider taking 2-3 minutes to answer the following seven questions. This assessment is from Bastien et al. Insomnia Severity Index, Copyright 2001. Rate the current SEVERITY of any sleep issues, based on your last two weeks of sleep. None Mild Moderate Severe Very 1. Difficulty falling asleep 0 1 2 3 4 2. Difficulty staying asleep 0 1 2 3 4 3. Problem waking up too early 0 1 2 3 4 4. How satisfied/dissatisfied are you with your current sleep patterns? Very Satisfied Very Dissatisfied 0 1 2 3 4 5. To what extent do you consider any potential sleep problems to INTERFERE with your daily functioning (e.g. daytime fatigue, ability to function at work/daily chores, concentration, memory, mood, etc.). Not at all A little Somewhat Much Very Much 0 1 2 3 4 6. How NOTICEABLE to others do you think any potential sleeping issues are in terms of impairing your quality of life? Not at all A little Somewhat Much Very Much 0 1 2 3 4

The Physiological Sigh

By Ben Mooney • August 9, 2023

I have grown to love The Huberman Lab Podcast and Breathwork. I had such profound experiences with breathwork that I decided to take the training to become a breathwork facilitator. I believe breath is such a powerful tool to regulate our nervous systems; perhaps one of the most powerful ones we possess. The Physiological Sigh is something that everyone can use in real time. It works, and there is a great biological explanation. Andrew Huberman PhD. talks extensively about the Physiological Sigh in The Huberman Lab, and I am so excited to share this information! If you are stressed, it’s great to get a massage, soak in hot springs, go for a run, or go to yoga, but in reality, you often experience emotional turmoil in the moment. Which is why it's so important to have a tool for that moment. It is very hard to control your mind when you are in intense states of stress. Good luck being intentional or channeling inner wisdom of mindfulness at the exact moment something is driving you crazy. What do you do? Perhaps you have just enough mental capacity to temporarily think about your response before you react. You need a real time tool. I will try not to get too geeky, but there is a great biological component to this. First, a simple explanation: If you want to slow down your heart, lengthen your exhales in relation to the inhales. Calming your nervous system can happen quickly through a long exhale. Priming the exhale with an oxygenated inhale will help deliver oxygen to your blood and eliminate carbon dioxide. Finally, using the skeletal muscles of the diaphragm is a tool to fast-track this process. If this information is good enough, feel free to skip the next three paragraphs, and jump ahead to learn how to incorporate the Physiological Sigh as a reaction to in-the-moment stress. Breath controls heart rate through reactions between sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. When you inhale, your diaphragm moves down as your lungs and heart temporarily expand. As a result, the blood in your heart is at a lower volume than prior to your inhale (in relation to the space in the heart), and your heart moves more slowly. The SA (sinoatrial) node in your heart registers the rate of blood flow, and acts as the pacemaker for your heartbeat. The SA node is constantly trying to achieve a balance of pressure and optimal oxygen distribution of blood throughout your body. A longer inhale causes the SA node to send a signal to your brain that blood is moving more slowly to your heart. The brain sends a return signal to the heart to speed up the heart rate to produce more oxygenated blood flow to muscles throughout your body. Therefore, if you want your heart to beat faster, inhale more vigorously than your exhales. Additionally, if inhales are completed over longer time periods than your exhales, you speed up heart rate. This creates a sympathetic activation response and is a great tool if you need to increase your attention or if you are tired (Journal of General Physiology, 9/13/10 136(3) 237-241, H. Peter Larson). The opposite is also true. If you want to slow down your heart rate and calm yourself, capitalize on the relationship between heart rate, diaphragm, and brain. When you exhale, the diaphragm moves up and gets smaller. The blood volume of the heart is flowing faster through the heart, and the SA node recognizes the faster flow of blood. The SA node sends a message to the brain to slow the heart rate. The parasympathetic nervous system is activated in your brain, via the vagus nerve and baroreceptors in the arteries as well as its relational connection to the diaphragm, and it sends a return signal to slow your heart down. Take a long exhale to calm yourself. Now, let's focus on your lungs for a moment. Think about how you breathe when you experience stress - often it is shallow. You have tiny sacks in your lungs called alveoli. The job of alveoli is to expand and contract as oxygen is inhaled and circulated into your blood. When you are stressed, the alveoli tend to collapse and are not as efficient. Meanwhile, carbon dioxide builds up in your bloodstream, increasing agitation. Your body will want to replenish the blood with rich oxygen and clear out the carbon dioxide at this time. Finally, the diaphragm is unique because it has the ability to be subconsciously controlled through natural processes similar to your spleen, pancreas, intestines, or stomach, AND as mentioned earlier, you can also voluntarily expand and contract your diaphragm with skeletal muscle control. You don't need to think about breathing, but you have the choice to override and manipulate your breath. As a result, you can do double or triple inhales and control the timing of your breathing for speed, capacity, and duration. Through a double inhale, you can efficiently re-inflate the alveoli, and cue your nervous system to focus on intentionally moving out of the shallow breathing pattern. The Physiological Sigh: Double inhale - first for one second, with your second inhale shortly after for ½ to ¾ of a second - to sneak in more air. Hold for several seconds, then perform a long exhale. Through my breathwork training, I learned if you combine your long exhale with a hum or audible sound, and you recruit the superpowers of the vagus nerve (your 10th cranial nerve and the longest and most complex of all cranial nerves) for a deeper calming effect - but this may not be appropriate in the middle of a staff meeting. Repeat this 1-3 times, or more until you gain your desired result or at least enough to find mental clarity to calm your reaction. The double inhale reinflates the alveoli fully in your lungs and the long exhale rids your body of the carbon dioxide, modulating your stress response through slowing your heart rate and calming your nervous system. This is a fast, hard-wired way to lower your internal reaction to stress the moment you experience it. I would recommend practicing it so it becomes immediate. Think of moments where you find yourself to be stressed and imagine using your physiological sigh as you proceed through that moment. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse so it becomes more instinctual. This can be applied during weight lifting, at times of the day when you intentionally want to relax, as part of a calming routine before sleep, and certainly if you are triggered in the moment of a life stressor.