Buffering your Stress Respone
Ever since yoga studios reopened and students trickled back in for their daily doses of wellness, I have noticed some trends - here in Munich at least. While vinyasa and athletic-oriented yoga with lots of chaturangas (yoga push ups), longer flows which get your heart beats pumpin’, inversions and lots of things packed into a class dominated the yoga scene for YEARS, lately I see classes with a lot more breath work, less and slower movement, stretching, yoga nidra, more yin. In short, more practices to regulate our stress response. The last 2+ years wreaked quite a lot of havoc not only on our daily schedules, routines and movement, but more importantly, they did a real number on our nervous systems. And we are starting to notice that. Collectively.
First the daily uncertainty of a pandemic and now the daily uncertainty of war and a recession.. on top of our usual daily run-of-the mill stressors - be they mental, physical or environmental. In my little corner of the world at least, there seems to be an awareness of our bodies need to rest and restore.. also known as being in parasympathic mode (rather than sympathetic mode of fight, flight and freeze).
Your sympathetic nervous system is part of your autonomic nervous system and it is responsible for regulating automatic things such as heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, urination and sweating. But what it is probably most known for is the role it plays in preparing the body to dangerous or emergency situations. Think averting a traffic accident or needing to defend yourself from a person who pulls a weapon on you in a dark alley at night.
While we can certainly encounter life or death situations in the course of our 80+ years on the planet, in the 21st century we have trained our minds (and then our bodies) to perceive daily stressors such as work deadlines, financial uncertainty, a new child or dog, or many life transitions as situations that we potentially cannot handle and rely on our emergency system known as the fight or flight response.
When your body perceives you are in danger, your body undergoes a serious of changes initiated by the sympathetic nervous system. The SNS sends signals to speed up your heart rate, dilates your pupils so you can see and perceive the threat better, increases rate of breathing, delivers more blood to areas of your body that need more oxygen, and gives you stored energy in the form of glucose from the liver all to help us get out of perceived danger. These effects help you in situations where you might need to think or act quickly. The SNS also activates at times when your body’s under strain, like when you’re exercising or are sick and affects your immune system and your body’s repair processes.
While we NEED this response to help us in situations which require our immediate actions of fighting or fleeing for safety, when we operate in this mode in non-emergency times, our minds tell our bodies we are not safe and we become hypervigilant — scanning our world for stressors we need to react to.
Living in a constant stress response wreaks havoc on our bodies. An overactive sympathetic nervous system has been linked to autoimmune disorders, cardiovascular diseases, kidney disease, type II diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome, insomnia and sleep apnea and depression, to name a few.
Luckily, we are starting to understand that while we experience stressors in work, relationships, and even physically in exposure to toxins in our air, water and food, our perceptions govern whether we think we can handle the stressors or not. To a large part, since we train our minds to perceive everyday stressors as emergency situations, we can also train our minds to do what is needed, and then lean back knowing we did all we could.
There are loads of mind-body therapies (see some below) that activate the other system - the parasympathetic nervous system (also called the rest and digest system) which can help buffer our resilience to stressors. Making positive changes to our diet can also help. Eating a whole food and nutrient dense diet allows us to maintain internal stability and gives us good “raw materials” which help when build up our defenses when stressors are present.
For me at least 2022 was a real shit show in the health department. Waking up feeling pretty great every day was something I took for granted. And while we all have stress, I personally felt overwhelmed with the degree to which I had to constantly adapt. The daily stress caused my own health to suffer. I’m better now and I learned a lot.
Here are a few things I picked up in the last year which have been helping me manage my own stress response (which I also teach and coach on):
Getting outside within an hour of waking up. This helps to regulate cortisol (one of our main stress hormones)
I eat breakfast, even when I have very little hunger. This helps to regulate both blood sugar levels (which helps the adrenal glands) and cortisol.
I exercise daily, but I listen to what my WHOLE BODY needs not what my mind is trying to overpower my body to do. If I am tired or didn’t sleep well and I know my adrenals are overwhelmed, I go for a walk in nature with my dog or a more gentle yoga class. If I am perky and energized, I go for weights or HIIT training.
I support my adrenal glands - I like adaptagenic herbs like ashwaganda and nervines (herbs that support the nervous system) like lemon balm and chamomile and valerian root closer to bed.
I do breathwork. Good old ujayyi from yoga or alternate nostril breathing to calm me down. And some heliotropic breathing to create space for the new me unfolding to reside.
I work with changing my beliefs which bring me away from healing and towards lack, fear or scarcity. I love tapping as it calms me AND works with shifting limiting beliefs in my subconscious that keep me anxious or fearful
This newsletter and what I am currently posting about on instagram may sound a bit different to you. That’s because I am in a mentorship program in Functional Nutrition. It’s expensive as shit, but I believe 100% it is the future of healing. If you are unfamiliar with Functional Nutrition, it comes from Functional Medicine and looks for root causes of smaller symptoms of sicknesses. It is a top down approach to healing looking first at how the brain (and also our thoughts and beliefs) communicate to our organs and systems in the body and what happens when communication systems break down. This has a lot to due with the gut/mind connection and we look a lot at modern sicknesses such as hormonal imbalance, thyroid issues, leaky gut, SIBO and autoimmune disorders. Email me if you want to work with me. :) I am also incorporating my learnings into my retreats (see below) as a way to have retreats not only a way to retreat away from what isn’t working but also to get concrete tools to bring back into “regular life”.
Be well lovelies.. Take time to rest, breathe, be in nature, laugh and have fun!