INFLUENCING THE IMMUNE SYSTEM WITH WIM HOF METHOD HOW TO USE IT TO CONTROL ANXIET Y, DEPRESSION & STRESS
Brian Luke
FOREWARD I decided to put this together after watching the first episode of a new series on the BBC called Freeze The Fear inspired by the, “Iceman,” himself Wim Hof of which I’m a great fan of. I hope that the series dives further into the Wim Hof Method so that mainstream audiances get to understand why this method is incredible. I was introduced to breathing techniques to help with anxiety, stress and depression first via Qigong energy cultivation then The Wim Hof Method. With these initial influences in my life this motivated me to start taking responsibility for my own mental and physical health, A better Way was born. Becoming a friend of Suffolk Mind I learnt about emotional needs, the mental health continuum. I studied and became an advocate for mental health in the workplace. I took up running after at least 10 years through the amazing NHS app, Couch to 5K. I discovered more about The Autonomic Nervous System and how to influence the ANS through various techniques. Understand and learn about the Autonomic Nervous System, the power of the breath, healthy lifestyle choices, food, exercise and maintaining a positive outlook on your life. This knowledge impacted positively on my life therefore I'm sure there will be something within these pages to motivate and encourage you to improve your health both mentally and physically and create a life that you love. So within these pages you will learn a little about WHM, ANS, SNS, PSNS, controlling the ANS to help with stress, anxiety and depression. Learn about Wim’s breathing technique, cold water therapy and more. You ask, “What the heck do all these letters mean?” Read on and discover what and how all these letters can help you take control of your life. I know it will because they have done so for me. As always if you are seeking help or starting something new in anyway do not hesitate to contact qualified medical professionals and others qualified in their field of expertise. With thanks Brian Luke
UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENS DURING THE WIM HOF METHOD
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UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENS DURING THE WIM HOF METHOD Just Breathe! Let go of your ego and instead reflect on what connects us, which is love . Let go of your thoughts and stress and open up yout heart. It is only when you let go that you will truly be able to reconnect to the
Universe , with nature buried deep within your cells. The Wim Hof method WHM, developed over decades by Wim also known as,”The Iceman,” is known for his breathing techniques, cold water therapy, ice baths and breaking countless world records. I am a great fan of his and practice most of his techniques and they work very well for me. So I’m going to talk about the mechanism and what really happens in the body when you do that type of breathing and when you do ice baths so that when you understand the mechanism then you can adapt the method to fit your lifestyle as I have and you can get all or most of the benefits without having to become an Iceman, unless of course that your idea of fun. The WHM Wim Hof Method according to the Founder Includes three things breathing, cold therapy, and mind Focus. The Wim Hof breathing starts out with 30 power breaths and this is where you breathe in as much as you can and then you blow it all out as much as you can. You keep doing this rather forcefully. You go very powerfully on purpose and what might happen is that you may get dizzy or light-headed and you might even pass out. So it’s a good idea to lay down or be in a recliner where you are not going to fall anywhere if you actually pass out. Never do this in water, in charge of machinery or a vehicle. Then when you’ve done these 30 power breaths, you blow all the air out, exhale and hold. And you do that for as long as you can, when you can’t hold your breath anymore, you take a deep breath in and then you hold it for 15 seconds, that is one round, then repeat this up to 5 to 10 rounds. I love it and as Wim says, ” Get high on your own supply.”
WIM HOF METHOD BREATHING Wim Hof Method breathing is simple and easy — everyone can do it! Just follow the steps below. We recommend practicing right after waking, or before a meal, when your stomach is still empty. Note that WHM breathing can affect motor control and in rare cases, lead to loss of consciousness. Always sit or lie down before practicing the techniques. Never practice while piloting a vehicle, or in or near bodies of water. STEP 1: GET COMFORTABLE Assume a meditation posture: sitting, lying down — whichever is most comfortable for you. Make sure you can expand your lungs freely without feeling any constriction. STEP 2: 30-40 DEEP BREATHS Close your eyes and try to clear your mind. Be conscious of your breath, and try to fully connect with it. Inhale deeply through the nose or mouth, and exhale unforced through the mouth. Fully inhale through the belly, then chest and then let go unforced. Repeat this 30 to 40 times in short, powerful bursts. You may experience light-headedness, and tingling sensations in your fingers and feet. These side effects are completely harmless. STEP 3: THE HOLD After the last exhalation, inhale one final time, as deeply as you can. Then let the air out and stop breathing. Hold until you feel the urge to breathe again. STEP 4: RECOVERY BREATH When you feel the urge to breathe again, draw one big breath to fill your lungs. Feel your belly and chest expanding. When you are at full capacity, hold the breath for around 15 seconds, then let go. That completes round number one. This cycle can be repeated 3-4 times without an interval. After having completed the breathing exercise, take your time to bask in the bliss. This calm state is highly conducive to meditation — don't hesitate to combine the two.
SNS & PSNS IN THE ANS!! To understand anything about the WHM we need to understand the Autonomic Nervous System ANS because Wim Hof has been known to control his ANS by will and this is the part of the nervous system that controls the things you don’t have to think about normally, so blood pressure, digestion, muscle tone and so forth. They are at a certain level, automatically and these functions are managed for you and there are two branches, sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system SNS & PSNS this is like a seesaw, when everyone goes up the other side goes down same as when you’re driving a car you cannot speed up and slow down at the same time. You have to pick one and this is hardwired into your nervous system that they’re going to alternate. This is your resource allocation system, the sympathetic is going to allocate resources to defend you. This is called this fight, flight system, it’s your alarm system if you’re standing in the street and a car comes rushing up or if you’re in the woods somewhere then a bear comes running up to you, you’re in an alarmed state, your body is going to mobilise resources, it is going to increase heart rate, increase blood pressure, to pump more blood, it’s going to increase muscle tone to get you ready to get out of there as quickly as possible. It is also going to increase stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol to raise blood sugar and mobilize energy. Everything about the sympathetic nervous system is about focusing outwards that if there’s a threat out there you have to defend yourself against that threat first so you can survive before anything on the inside makes sense. An interesting thing to know is that everytime that you breathe in your heart speeds up and the only time the heart speeds up is when there is sympathetic activation; therefore your breathing is tied to the balance of your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. So we are going to talk about how this fits in with the different breathing patterns and parasympathetic obviously is the opposite it is known as the feed breed or rest digest System it does the opposite it lowers blood pressure, lowers heart rate lowers stress hormones and it’s involved with inside functions like Digestion, the immune system, reproduction and sex. Now of course this is about directing resources inwards, so you can pretty much if you understand how this balance works then you can allocate resources inside to heal or you can allocate resources outside against the outside to defend yourself, but you can’t do more of both at the same time, the seesaw principles can make the nervous system pick one or the other.
Of course when you breathe out now your heart rate is going to go down and this makes a lot of sense because the body is smart when you breathe in there is more air in the lungs, more oxygen to be absorbed and therefore it makes sense to speed up the heart and send more blood there to pick up the oxygen when there’s more of it there and then when we breathe out, we don’t want to waste our energy, waste our resources so the heart slows down this is called heart rate Variability. I have talked about breathing in the past and after that people always ask me which kind of breathing is the best because I’ve heard about different kinds of breathing that are different from yours, so it’s not that one is bad and another one is good. It’s that they are different and once we understand what’s happening with his breathing method now we can kind of understand when and how to do it, so the breath I usually propose is an even 5 seconds in and 5 seconds out, maybe a little longer on the outbreath and here’s why. MOST PEOPLE SHALLOW BREATHE Most people breathe in for 2-3 seconds and then breathe out really fast and then breathe in for 2-3 seconds and out really fast. So with the in breathe they are activating their sympathetic nervous but breathing too fast to allow that parasympathetic nervous system to kick in and balance out the sympathetic so most people get stuck in that state of stress and anxiety and of course the anxiety makes you breathe even faster so you are sort of stuck in a vicious cycle there. But if you allow 5 or 6 seconds to breathe out you’re allowing the parasympathetic to kick in and balance the sympathetic that’s the purpose of this particular breathe, to balance the autonomic nervous system and bring you in a state of relaxation.Two things happen when you breathe first you take oxygen in and also you take carbon dioxide out the thing about carbon dioxide is that it’s acidic so this is a way that the body can regulate pH of the blood if you don’t breathe enough then the carbon dioxide builds-up and your blood gets acidic and this is actually the trigger for your body to breathe more. There’s a sensor in your brain stem that says your blood is too acidic to breathe more and this is a much stronger influence actually than the oxygen needed. Now when you breathe in balance like this the purpose is to create balance also known as homeostasis. When they measure heart rate variability when they measure the pattern of how the heart rate increases and decreases with the breath, when you get into a perfect smooth and rhythmic pattern it is called coherence and that is a very healthy place to be.
That means that your brain and your heart are working together; they are cooperating in harmony. This kind of breathing is also very relaxing obviously and when you do it and you stay within these relaxed physiological parameters then the body is going to regulate the PH and the CO2 and O2 and put them all within optimal levels. WHM BREATHING Then what about the Wim Hof Method Breathing, well it is not a relaxed breath you breathe in as much as you can and out this much as you can and repeat 30 times and often times you get dizzy or even faint so this is a forced breathing, it’s unbalanced, it is stressful, unnatural and what happens now is because you’re forcing the breathing you’re blowing off way more carbon dioxide than your body calls for, so you are artificially bringing your PH up, your making your blood alkaline, this is why you get dizzy and light-headed at the same time you’re CO2 levels go down and your oxygen levels go up. Then once you are done with 30 breathes and you blow out and you hold, now your body is really alkaline, your blood is really alkaline and because it’s the CO2, the acid CO2 that makes you want to breathe that gives you that air hunger you are not going to have any air hunger when your blood is alkaline, so it’s very easy to hold your breath it might be 30-40 seconds before you have any urge to breath and you might be able to hold this for quite some time. Then of course you alternate breathing in and breathing out but whenever you’re holding your breath you are increasing growth hormone. They have done studies on this, they have taken people just have them hold their breath for as long as they can repeat a few times and their growth hormone levels increase. COLD THERAPY Cold therapy is something that you can practice from the comfort of your own home? It may or may not be your idea of comfort however. It is an extreme stress. It is an increase. It’s a powerful massive increase in sympathetic drive. It causes vasoconstriction and it has your blood pressure shoot through the roof you could probably if you managed to measure it right in that moment it would probably be 200- 250 something like that. Anytime you shock your body or stress it significantly the body is also going to make growth hormones so that it can adapt. Now that we understand a little about the breathing and the cold therapy and what really happens in the body the next question is.
STRESS Is this actually a good thing? Well we have to start understanding a little bit more about what stress is and what it does and the different types. Short-term physical stress is very very normal. This is when you have to get out of the way from the car this is where you respond to something physical you defend yourself you do a workout you have a physical strain of some sort and now it’s adaptive, that type of stress is adaptive it gives your body a chance to adapt and get better for when it’s going to happen next time. Therefore it’s very healthy and it’s very constructive. It gives the body a reason to improve so now if we understand these parts, then we also see that it’s necessary because if you don’t have these, if you don’t have this short-term physical stress then you’re not giving your body a reason to adapt. You’re not giving it a reason to get better and in one word that’s called degeneration but the other kind of stress is destructive. That’s The Chronic stress we are designed for short-term physical stress, but chronic stress is the stuff that we can’t bounce back from because it just goes on and on. A lot of the stress is emotional and if we have anger or anxiety, depression or worry or fear then these are emotional habit patterns that break us down. We can also have excess physical stress and even though exercise is necessary and hugely beneficial if we do too much then it breaks us down. Exercise breaks down and when we recover, when we rest we allow the body to build back up, but if we work out too much we don’t allow enough time to the next workout now we are just adding insult to injury and we break the body down more and more. So this chronic stress we’re not designed for is abnormal. It’s maladaptive, unhealthy, destructive and in the case of emotional stress these are habitual patterns that we create and just like you can create a skill of any kind you can create a language skill or the skill of catching a ball. These are neurological patterns that work for you, but they also work against you in the case of negative emotions like anger and fear. Wim Hof talks about the mind also and that’s an important aspect and it takes a certain amount of dedication and commitment to jump into that ice water. So you have to sort of focus your mind first you have to make a commitment and then once you jump in this is a massive sensory input, you are firing off all types of receptors and pathways and hormonal responses so massive sensory input. It’s a type of shock and when you do that in an extreme form it increases your focus, you are going to jump into that ice water and you’re not going to think back.
I wonder if I remember to feed the dog before I left or worry about what I’m going to do later on today. You’re not going to do that, you are going to be right here right now you going to be present in the moment. You are going to be focused on what’s going on in the ice water and that improves your focus which is a good thing. Frontal lobe activation and the frontal lobe It’s like a muscle you workout muscles with weights you work out the frontal lobe with signal stimulation and then once the frontal lobe is activated and strengthened it actually gets better at inhibiting that sympathetic nervous system and the stress response. One way of thinking about it is also like a rubber band if you really wanna relax a muscle it can help to contract it first and then notice and accentuate the contrast this sort of works the same way, were you jumping the ice water and you really fire off that sympathetic, but then that makes it easier to notice the contrast and relax so you can get a rebound parasympathetic response. There are several benefits to having a pattern interrupt and this is very, very powerful that most of our health problems, most emotional problems are because we get our pathways, we get our nervous system stuck in certain pathways and certain patterns. One of the most powerful things you can do is to interrupt that pattern, make the nervous system just do something else, anything else at all is good and you also get hormonal bursts, you activate survival circuits you have survival jeans and if you expose your body to something harsh then the purpose of these survival jeans is to help you through that crisis that harsh period. So in the short-term you make adrenaline which is a stress hormone, but as soon as you get out of the water that adrenaline is going to go down very quickly but instead you have a long-acting benefit from the human growth hormone that decays that has a much slower Half-Life. You also get the brain stimulation which is like a workout for your brain and it helps you get even more calm after. There are a lot of clear benefits of doing this method. You understand the benefits now. I’m sure you are wondering, do I have to do all of that? How much do I have to do? Do I have to become an Iceman to get these benefits?
STIMULATE THE SYMPATHETIC NERVOUS SYSTEM
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STIMULATE THE SYMPATHETIC NERVOUS SYSTEM Let’s talk about it. If it thrills you then I think you should be an Iceman. If you really get a kick out of walking on coals, jumping out of airplanes and sitting in ice water and you can look back, feel good about the fact that you did that and that’s an added benefit. So if that’s your personality then go for it. The only thing I want to point out is about your particular health State and the duration. Because when it comes to the ice bath for example they talk about starting off with 30-60 seconds or maybe working up to 15 minutes. As humans we tend to think if a little bit is good then more has to be better, but that’s not really how it works as we saw with our discussion on stress before that our bodies are design for short stress that what creates the trigger, the body gets to the point and then it makes the changes so I’m not convinced that 15-minutes is better than 60 seconds ok? This is my opinion. I don’t know that anyone has really studied this but the other part is that if you’re not super healthy, if you have a weak heart, weak adrenals you can get in a lot of trouble and you could actually trigger a heart attack. If you have a weak heart and you jump into ice water, It’s like locking all of your blood vessels and it’s like the heart is trying to pump against concrete and a healthy heart can handle that, a weak heart might not. Same thing with adrenals a little bit might be good might be just like a little stimulation, but if it goes on and on and on now you might actually sort of whip those adrenals beyond the point of health. So if you like doing this and you’re healthy I would say go for it. There’s certainly benefits. What if we’re not looking forward to the next time we plunge into the ice water then we have other alternatives that in my opinion can probably create most if not all the benefits. Fasting is the single most powerful way to create growth hormone and the longer you fast the more growth hormone you make. Fasting alone is not going to get you fit. It’s not going to stimulate your brain tremendously even though it has benefits so you always want to do more than one thing and High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), is an excellent way to stimulate your brain to create more growth hormone, to challenge these survival circuits and these adaptive circuits.
Wim Hof breathing is an excellent idea. I think it’s a good addition but again understand why you are doing it. It’s stressful and again I don’t think that more is better, but I would use it as an introduction as a warm to a relaxing breath. You do the power breath with the WHM, you can do some breath-holding if you like, but then you sit down and relax because now you have stirred things up. You are in a very receptive state for your body to relax and now you do that 5 seconds in and 5 seconds out and you allow your nervous system to get back into homeostasis (balance) and create some long-term neural plasticity. When it comes to cold therapy it turns out that both hot and cold will produce growth hormones. It will stimulate your own Autonomic Nervous System, (ANS) It will shake things up. So if you don’t like the ice baths you could just alternate warm and cold showers, so have your shower and then at the end of it you turn up the heat a little bit and then you turn on the cold and you just do that back and forth a little bit and you have created a lot of the same effects. Now the Scandinavians, the Finns and Swedes have known this for centuries. They have something called the sauna.A very hot place you throw some logs on the fire and you create tons of heat and steam. You sit there and roast and that heat is quite effective, but then if you go outside and you jump in ice water or in a cold shower now you accentuate the effect of the contrast and here is the interesting thing for those who have the facilities and the availability to do this I strongly suggest to do a sauna and then jump into really cold water or ice water and you’ll be amazed because it’s not going to feel cold. When you are really, really hot and you create that contrast for the first 5 to 10 seconds your body does not know what’s happened. It does not feel cold, 10 seconds into it you start feeling cold, but it’s not really unpleasant because you were so hot so you don’t have to freeze to get the benefits. You just have to create the contrast and then you jump out of the ice water and you stand there after a minute and it feels really nice and warm your steaming of your skin, you look like a red Lobster but you’re feeling so peaceful and so wonderful so if you have a chance give it a try if not just work with it in the shower. Stay happy, strong and healthy. Always listen to your body and before you try anything new check with your GP first.
INFLUENCING THE IMMUNE SYSTEM WITH WIM HOF METHOD
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INFLUENCING THE IMMUNE SYSTEM WITH WIM HOF METHOD Let the body do what the body does. If you take the bits of a dead bacteria and introduce them into someone’s body In all likelihood, the person’s immune system is going to flare as if it’s under attack. As harmless as dead bacteria might sound, the body will still react as if it’s being invaded. These dead bits are also known as endotoxin and are a major red flag for the immune system. When your immune system does find endotoxin in the body it will trigger the release of different proteins and physiological changes. It will make a person feel sick. Symptoms such as fever, nausea, headache, shivering are caused by your immune system gearing up to fight off infections. This is known as the innate immune response. It’s fantastic! You can take any person, inject them with endotoxin, and watch them feel terrible for a short while. That’s what scientists at Radboud University did! With over 100 people, mapping out a predictable innate immune response. Now, it wasn’t believed that one could voluntarily influence the innate immune response. But that’s exactly what happened when scientists at Radboud injected Wim Hof with endotoxin. Using the breathing method he developed he was able to dampen the immune response to the endotoxins presence by flooding himself with adrenaline and stimulating the release of a key messaging protein, Interleukin 10. This was achieved through voluntarily influencing the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The same system that beats your heart, remembers to breathe for you…And prepares you to fight or flight in the face of danger. A system that for all intents and purposes should not be controllable because, if we did have control over this system we might forget to breathe or beat our hearts because we were thinking about…cake. Yet, this is exactly what happened in the case of Wim Hof. Voluntarily flooding his body with adrenaline. Deliberate influence over his autonomic nervous system. So what should be done?
The possibility is that Wim Hof had different genetics from the average person giving him the unique ability to withstand the endotoxin So a larger test was needed. With more participants, performing the same techniques designed by Hof. 30 healthy male volunteers were gathered. 18 of whom would be trained by Wim Hof. The other 12 are the control of the larger endotoxin experiment. The 18 volunteers went to Poland to train in a mixture of meditation, cold exposure, and the breathing technique over 4 days, they would enjoy a gauntlet of swimming in freezing cold water, standing and lying in the snow. For the ultimate test, climb a mountain at an elevation of 1590 meters. With wind chills of -27° C. All done in shorts. Very nice shorts too! The kind you wear at the beach. Those who weren’t trained – the control group, were injected with endotoxin. They exhibited the typical symptoms and reactions of the innate immune response. Not a fun thing to experience, granted, but we suffer for science here…and yeah, they suffered…During the experiment a lot of information was kept track of. This included the composition of the blood. Cytokines, catecholamines, white blood cell count and various physiological changes, such as heart rate and temperature. This group did not commit to any breathing techniques. Simply passively enduring endo-toxemia. The trained group, on the other hand, did commit to the breathing techniques during the first 2.5 hours of the 8-hour experimentation. In the end, they were successful in dampening their innate immune response. But what happened? Well, let’s walk through this.There were lots of fun bits of information collected and I’ll try to condense the more interesting parts. Firstly, most clearly, the trained group had a lot more adrenaline from the very start of the experiment due to the breathing. As compared to the control. This burst of adrenaline from the very start correlates nicely with the production of interleukin-10. The anti-inflammatory element of interleukin 10 is that it inhibits the release of other cytokines that contribute towards inflammation and mediation of the innate immune response.
As a result, the trained group had a less pronounced release of these inflammatory proteins compared to the control. Had less acute symptoms, and recovered faster. Here are the cytokines kept track of in the control. Here in the trained group. Notice the difference in release. Far fewer in the trained group because of interleukin – 10. Now, even though the inflammatory response was suppressed white blood cells were not. Having adrenaline in the system actually stirred leukocytosis and increased of white blood cells in the blood. Here’s a graph showing the controlled white blood cell count over the 8-hour experiment As compared to the trained volunteers. Some of the categories of different white blood cells were also measured but the experiment was limited in that not all subtypes were counted. So, stirred from adrenaline it appears as though the immune system was still humming and working in the background. Despite a dampened inflammation response. Being able to dampen inflammation is also wonderful news on its own! It implies an interesting alternative to those who suffer from excessive or persistent inflammation. Especially when considering autoimmune diseases. The study of which this animation is based is a precursor to more investigation. It had a small sample size, but the results were astonishing! The influence over the autonomic nervous system was probably the most striking part that even Peter Pickers, one of the scientists who orchestrated the study, expressed his surprise. If there’s one thing this tells us is that there are deeper layers of our bodies that we can consciously explore. A potential we should study. A potential within our biology and it’s all there in front of So, let’s have fun exploring!
THE AUTONOMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM & HOW TO USE IT TO CONTROL ANXIETY, DEPRESSION & STRESS
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THE AUTONOMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM & HOW TO USE IT TO CONTROL ANXIETY, DEPRESSION & STRESS We may not always choose what happens to us in life ,
but we do get to choose how we respond to those things. The Autonomic Nervous System, or ANS, is the part of the nervous system that regulates activities of internal organs. The ANS is largely autonomous, acting independently of the body’s consciousness and voluntary control. It has two main divisions: ● ●
Sympathetic, Nervous System, SNS. Parasympathetic, Nervous System, PSNS.
In situations that require alertness and energy, such as facing danger or doing physical activities, the ANS activates its sympathetic division to mobilize the body for action. This division increases cardiac output, accelerates respiratory rate, releases stored energy and dilates pupils. At the same time, it also inhibits body processes that are less important in emergencies, such as digestion and urination. On the other hand, during ordinary situations, the parasympathetic division conserves and restores. It slows heartbeats, decreases respiratory rate, stimulates digestion, removes waste and stores energy. The sympathetic division is therefore known as the “fight or flight” response, while the parasympathetic division is associated with the “rest and digest” state. Despite having opposite effects on the same organ, the SNS and PSNS are not mutually exclusive. In most organs, both systems are simultaneously active, producing a background rate of activity called the, “autonomic tone,” – a balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic inputs. This balance shifts, like a sea-saw, one way or the other, in response to the body’s changing needs. Some organs, however, receive inputs from only one system. For example, the smooth muscles of blood vessels only receive sympathetic fibers, which keep them partially constricted and thus maintaining normal blood pressure. An increase in sympathetic firing rate causes further constriction and increases blood pressure, while a decrease in firing rate dilates blood vessels, lowering blood pressure.
The autonomic nerve pathways, from the control centers in the central nervous system to the target organs, are composed of 2 neurons, which meet and synapse in Autonomic ganglia. Accordingly, these neurons are called preganglionic and postganglionic. Take 5 minutes a day to breath slowly In the SNS, the preganglionic neurons arise from the thoracic and lumbar regions of the spinal cord; their fibers exit by way of spinal nerves to the nearby sympathetic chain of ganglia. Once in the chain, preganglionic fibers may follow any of 3 routes: ● ● ●
Some fibers synapse immediately with postganglionic neurons; Some travel up or down the chain before synapsing; Some pass through the chain without synapsing – this third group continues as splanchnic nerves to nearby collateral ganglia for synapsing instead.
From the ganglia, long postganglionic fibers run all the way to target organs. The SNS has a high degree of neuronal divergence: one preganglionic fiber can synapse with up to 20 postganglionic neurons. Thus, the effects of SNS tend to be widespread. In the PSNS, the preganglionic neurons arise from the brainstem and sacral region of the spinal cord. Preganglionic fibers exit the brainstem via several cranial nerves and exit the spinal cord via spinal nerves before forming the pelvic splanchnic nerves. Parasympathetic ganglia are located near or within target organs, so postganglionic fibers are relatively short. The degree of neuronal divergence in the PSNS is much lower than that of the SNS. Thus, the PSNS produces more specific, localized responses compared to the SNS. You know that feeling you get when you’re anxious or scared or angry and you can feel your body start to spiral out of control almost like you’re falling out of a plane without a parachute well stick around because I want to tell you about the built-in emotional parachute that your body has and how you can deploy it whenever you feel the need. This section is to let you know about your body’s natural and trainable counteracting response to the fight flight or freeze response. Anxiety isn’t just in our mind but it’s also very much manifested in our body; now there are a lot of things you can do to help pull yourself out of the, “fight or flight,” freeze response.
Here are four simple ways that I feel work best to calm you down and to soothe that anxiety response so we’re going to cover; ● ● ● ●
Deep breathing. Peripheral vision and softening the eyes. The valsalva maneuver. The yawn.
But first let’s talk about a little biology for context so our bodies have what’s called the autonomic nervous system this part of our nervous system automatically regulates breathing heart rate, blood pressure and a whole bunch of other stuff when we experience a stressful situation the autonomic nervous system kicks on that fight, flight,freeze response which is also known as the sympathetic response this response is automatic and it controls how much cortisol and adrenaline are released into our system. It increases our blood pressure and our breathing rate; Your hands may start to sweat, your stomach may clench up or your voice may start to shake just a little bit. These are the physical manifestations of anxiety. However our brilliant, wise, beautiful body has a counterbalancing force called the parasympathetic response and that’s para as in parachute and this is the body’s natural way of slowing down and creating a sense of calm and safety. So it works like this; If your brain thinks that you’re in a dangerous situation whether that’s a tiger attacking you or just public speaking your body may trigger the fight flight freeze response, but when the dangerous situation is resolved and your brain knows that you’re safe your body then triggers this parasympathetic response which is also sometimes called, “rest and digest,” it’s called this because as your body starts to relax and transition from that fight, flight, freeze response other systems in your body which had temporarily been switched off. Like digestion, these come back online and they start functioning normally again. So your breathing automatically slows down, your immune system turns back on and you’re able to relax, calm down, and your body has time to heal. Now this is how your body naturally transitions between these two states and as i’ve said it’s all automatic so it may feel like this is all out of your control; but with some training you can actually teach yourself to kick on that parasympathetic response and to do that you first need to know about your vagus nerve.
The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in the autonomic nervous system and this nerve does two really important things; ●
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First it can trigger that parasympathetic response that we want, “rest & digest.” Second it transmits signals in both directions so that means it can send information from your brain to your body, about whether to be stressed or calm.
Then it sends information from your body to your brain about whether to be stressed or calm. So when we practice these bodily calming techniques we actually send a message along the vagus nerve from our body to our brain saying that things are okay, that we’re safe and that in turn calms our stress and our anxiety. So now let’s go over these four body calming techniques that will help you send these calming signals from your body to your brain and better help you regulate your emotions in stressful situations. VAGAL TONE Let’s talk about vagal tone, vagal tone is a measure of how strong your parasympathetic response is, it indicates how good your Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) is at calming down. Just like muscle tone in your arm would indicate how much you exercise your arm, vagal tone is a measure of how much you use your parasympathetic nervous system and how strong it is.So to start first I'm going to tell you how to feel your vagal tone and you’ll be doing this by noticing your heart rate variability. First find your pulse on your wrist or if you hold really still you should be able to feel your heart beating now close your eyes so you can focus and breathe in and breathe out very slowly, pay attention to what happens to your heart rate when you breathe in and when you breathe out. Okay did you notice that when you breathe in your heart rate increases and when you breathe out slowly your heart slows down that is heart rate variability. For people who have a stronger vagal tone their heart rate slows down even more on the out breath than people who have a weaker vagal tone and just like exercising your arm muscles you can exercise with deep breathing to strengthen your vagal tone.
Higher vagal tone is associated with better general health, it leads to better blood sugar regulation, better heart health, improved digestion and a reduction in migraines; most importantly it improves emotional stability and resilience. Lower vagal tone is associated with mood instability, depression, PTSD, diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome, cognitive impairment and inflammation. DEEP BREATHING So you’ve probably heard that deep breathing helps with stress and anxiety and this is why deep, slow breathing helps to increase your vagal tone and trigger that parasympathetic response through the vagus nerve. You may feel yourself relax when you do it, you may notice that you start to salivate or that your eyes may soften and that’s all thanks to how deep breathing and vagal tone affect that vagus nerve. So practicing deep breathing and especially those long slow out breaths can help you soothe that stress response. It can train your body to be better at kicking on that calming parasympathetic response. So deep breathing is a really helpful skill for people with anxiety disorders and PTSD. So I just mentioned that your eyes soften when you take deep breaths. I don’t mean that they become squishy or something like that but rather that they lose focus on any one particular thing they relax and your focus shifts from a specific visual point to more of your peripheral vision and everything around you. So you’ve likely experienced eye softening when you’ve been lost in thought or daydreaming; your eyes are open but they’re not really looking at anything and this is what I mean when I say your eyes soften. Now these nerves here three and seven from the parasympathetic system control our eyes. You may have heard of the term tunnel vision? That’s where your vision seems to get really narrow when you’re stressed and again your brain is sending signals along that vagus nerve to get into that fight, flight, freeze response. Well it turns out that tunnel vision is a sympathetic response and again that’s part of the fight, flight, freeze and when we soften our eyes we can trigger a parasympathetic response meaning we can use our body to send signals up the vagus nerve to the brain and tell it to calm down. Now Buddhists and Yogis have known and practiced this for centuries.
PERIPHERAL VISION AND SOFTENING THE EYES So here’s the second way to trigger that parasympathetic response;So start by softening the muscles around your eyes; so if you don’t know how to consciously do that you can start by squeezing them shut and then consciously like relaxing them to gain more awareness or you can just gently touch the side of your eyes, you can gently close your eyes and then open them really softly. Try to expand your awareness out to the sides of your vision while keeping your eyeballs straight ahead so you can keep looking at the screen but then just start to notice what’s out to the side and using that peripheral vision is a way to trigger that calming parasympathetic response. VALSALVA MANEUVER A third way to calm anxiety is to increase the pressure in your chest cavity; this is called the valsalva maneuver. You can plug your nose and close your mouth and push out as if you’re gonna exhale or like you’re going to stifle a sneeze. The vagus nerve actually comes into contact with your pelvic Floor; ● ● ● ● ● ●
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Sit down or lie down. Take a deep breath and hold it. Pinch your nose shut. Close your mouth. Bear down hard, as if you’re trying to go to the bathroom. While you’re bearing down, breathe out like you’re trying to blow up a balloon or stifling a sneeze. Strain hard for about 10 to 15 seconds.
If it doesn’t work, wait for at least a minute before you try again. Bearing down is another way to stimulate that nerve and to send signals to your brain to calm down. To trigger that parasympathetic response try; Breathe in for five seconds, then hold it and bear down for five seconds (contract the abdominal muscles and the diaphragm). Now you don’t need to push hard, you just need to create a little pressure in your chest and then finally breathe out for five seconds. Do this once or twice in a row breathing regularly in between so you don’t get light headed and this can help trigger that vagus nerve.
YAWN Finally the fourth action to trigger that vagus nerve is to yawn so my favorite way to do this is to make the R sound, open your mouth really big and try to lift your soft palate in the back of the roof of your mouth there’s a decent chance that this is going to make you yawn. Or you can even try a fake yawn to trigger that response, this action makes me sleepy and relaxed almost every time. Have you ever noticed how if a dog gets super hyper they’ll start doing these huge dog yawns as they calm down. You know how yawns are contagious. That's because yawning is actually a herd behavior. These contagious yawns keep the pack from going wild with excitement. These yawns send a message between dogs to each of these animals' vagus nerves to say, “chill out, calm down, you’re okay.” So those four quick ways to trigger the parasympathetic response but there are a bunch of other techniques to try. Learning to turn on that parasympathetic response could be a great skill to have when dealing with anxiety disorders, PTSD, depression, and stress. If you are at your desk just take five minutes out of your day and do some slow steady breathing. If you know someone who could benefit from these skills please share.
Read more in You Wanna Take A Ride? Written by the author Brian Luke
So this is a little of what I and A Better Way are all about, I
hope you enjoyed the read and throughout the booklet you were able to take something away to practice in your own daily life. The main take away from this read is to understand that when you are stressed your body is in sympathetic mode,
Fight or Flight and therefore unable to rest and repair.
So it is extremely important to know, learn and practice techniques to get your body into Para sympathetic mode, Rest and digest, so that it can recover and build both body and mind.
Feel free to join A Better Way Facebook Group Read more inspiring articles that started the whole process here at A Better Way Blog Some of my favourite Guides, tools and activities Thank you, Thank you, Thank you Brian Luke
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