Many Satori students have mentioned that their weekly yoga class is the only time in the week that they actually slow down.

This week is all about stress and self-regulation.

I know we are now passed Thanksgiving, but Christmas festivities are on their way.

Think of learning to self-regulate as training for the lunacy of pre-Xmas season ahead.

You are, no doubt, already aware that stress heightens our perception of pain (more on that and what we can do to change that in this week’s Pain Care Yoga follow up).

Did you know that stress also changes the way we recruit and use our muscles – changing our body mechanics, compressing our joints (think friction that leads to pain!), and making us move like a tin man instead of a human creature?

(More on stress-related dysfunctional movement patterns in Core Restore class e-mail.)

When they are playing or hunting, wild animals – and also our pets! – go all-out and then lie down to rest or nap immediately.

They are able to go from running and jumping at full speed (being “busy”) to relaxation in moments.  Contrast this with our inability to downshift adequately – after an activity, and for some of us, ever (as in insomnia, for example).

We are really great at using caffeine, sugar, smart phones and other stimulants to fire us up (especially at that 3-4 PM drag hour), but we are very bad at downsizing our flames and downshifting our nervous system.

As mentioned above, stress, compounded overtime, can lead to all sorts of physical, psychological, and neurological changes.

So what can we do to go from a state of high alert of fight or flight state into a rest-and-digest mode?

One of the easiest things to do is to regulate our breathing by lengthening exhalation.

Robert Sapolski, in his fantastic book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers explains why long exhales help us downshift from a stress state into one of relaxation and restoration:

“When you exhale, the parasympathetic nervous system turns on, activating your vagus nerve in order to slow things down (this is why many forms of meditation are built around extended exhalations).”

Saploski states that it is imperative to down regulate way more often than we do, preferably at the end of each physical or psychological stressor, so we can train our nervous system to successfully self-regulate. Nervous system self-regulation is, of course, at the very heart of Pain Care Yoga.

~Notice your breath.

~Lengthen and slow down your breathing.

~Take deep, slow breaths in from the diaphragm, which means your belly should expand more than your chest. Take even more time exhaling, letting yourself deflate like a balloon.
 

~Take 15 breaths like this (slow in, even slower out), and then do a single inhale hold (breathe in and hold for as long as you can without passing out!) and then a single exhale hold.