"Just Relax!" - How to Unwind your Mind

“Just Relax!” – How to Unwind your Mind

Modern life is stressful. Despite the fact that we have Darwin-ed ourselves out of the food chain and despite the fact that we are technically living in the safest time in history ever in gross terms, stress is rampant.  Fortunately, you have a built-in, automatic stress response system to handle stress.  Unfortunately, that system hasn’t evolved much since the Darwin Days. 

Your sympathetic nervous system is designed to automatically pump you up with hormones to increase energy and strength in a fight/flight/freeze survival response.  You’ve probably heard of it; you’ve definitely experienced it.  Something clicks in your brain and suddenly, it’s on!  It feels like life or death.  You start sweating profusely to cool off during your death-defying battle.  Your heart rate increases as blood flow increases to your vital organs and decreases to your limbs so that if you get injured in your fight, you bleed less and can keep fighting – or run for your life!  This is an amazing survival technique that would work fabulously if you were running away from the proverbial tiger.  All of that energy and adrenaline surging through your veins would save the day – and by that, I mean your life.  Then once the tiger is gone, your body returns to “normal” via the relaxation response.  It’s the balance of nature.  It’s perfect. 

Except! it goes awry in modern stress when the perceived danger is something simple like sitting in traffic, facing a deadline or having a difficult conversation.  Your mind tricks your body into thinking you are in a life-or-death situation and the nervous system reacts as if you have a tiger chasing you, when really, it is just your thoughts – or maybe that third cup of coffee? -- making you think you will just die if you are late for an appointment, miss a deadline or get rejected.   Fortunately, this doesn’t result in a fight to the death.  Unfortunately, you become filled with stress hormones with no socially acceptable outlet to expend them.  So you can stay in this heightened sense of alert, all pumped up with energy and strength without any real danger -- which doesn’t sound all bad, right?   In the short term, you can feel like a super hero.   You can be super productive.  No wonder you can get addicted to the adrenalin.  

The problem is it gives you tunnel vision (think road rage) focusing on the perceived threat (that idiot in the Prius) and reducing your higher, more rational thinking (calm) mind so that you tend to make bad decisions (ejecting your middle finger, blaring horn or shouting your favorite expletive here).  And just maybe, you feel just a little bit out of control (as you fantasize about -- if not actually -- running the Prius driver off the road. Or worse.). Now you might actually be in danger because you just replaced Big Oil as the number 1 enemy of said Prius driver. 

Chances are you don’t end up doing 25 to life for running over the Prius driver.  Chances are you do end up replaying the injustice and/or fantasy in your head, feeding your stress response.  Now you don’t so much feel like a super hero.  You may feel like the victim of your uncontrollable mind.  The long-term danger is adrenal fatigue and chronic stress. Since stress is the root cause of many diseases, you need to get off the roller coaster and relax.

Why can’t you just relax?! Nothing like someone saying, “just relax!” to send you over the edge.  Invoking the relaxation response doesn’t come so naturally.  In the short term, being relaxed isn’t life or death, so your body doesn’t automatically turn the panic switch off so well as it switches it on.  But when it becomes chronic, stress is a major cause of heart and other disease and actually IS life or death. 

No wonder yoga has become so popular!  The relaxation response is invoked by slowing down the breath, repeating the same rhythmic movements – think sun salute – repeating a simple phrase, bringing attention to the present moment (which attention to the breath and body spontaneously does), meditation techniques, and systematically relaxing your muscles.  Basically, yoga offers all the major tools that invoke the relaxation response. 

And when you can’t get to yoga, say, because you are in traffic, a meeting, a deadline… you can still slow down your breath, count your breath, repeat a soothing phrase (probably not one with 4-letter words and/or our boss’s name), choose to relax something – anything! You may not feel like you can pause your thoughts, but you absolutely can change the channel.  Re-mind yourself of the bigger picture. And observe that, in fact, the world is not ending, there is no tiger chasing you, and you are probably pretty safe. 

You can choose to look on the bright side.  It’s easy to get help with this. In this stressful day and age, you can listen to guided meditations that will find the bright side for you. There are lots of apps for that! And there is another yoga class starting any time you like online.  Check out www.yogisanonymous.com for thousands of options, including lots of gentle and restorative classes by me that will help you unwind your body and mind for less stress and more joy!

Namaste,

Leslie Kazadi, Certifiied Yoga Therapist