Befriend your body Podcast

Trusting vs. Tightening!

How do you live your life? Open and trusting, expecting good and doing good? Or, do you live tight and braced in your bodies muscles, tense, scared and closed off to anything new? Or anything you are unsure of and don’t want to try.

 

Life can be stressful and frightening. The News only seems to focus on dangerous situations, criminal activity, and the selfish crazy antics of politicians. And, we are bombarded with news and negativity every where we turn. It pops up on our devices and social media. It can seem like we can’t get away from it.

 

But so much more of life is good, positive and safe. People are being kind and helpful to others by the millions but that rarely makes the news. Which is very sad and perhaps why we are such an addicted, stressed out nation.

 

So what can we do? We can deliberately focus on the good to be found in daily life. Take the analogy of a radio dial, if you don’t like the station, change the channel. The more we focus on the good and safety to be found, the more relaxed our bodies will become. This allows us to open to life, newness and possibilities. Which I would suggest makes life worth living. 

A Racing Mind is not your Friend!

One of the challenges of our fast paced busy lives is that we have so much stress we have trouble calming and settling down. When we move too quickly our bodies go into stress mode and too much adrenaline and cortisol are released into our nervous systems. (I.e. think of a car with the gas pedal all the way to the floor.) The racing mind is one of the consequences of this situation. When the mind races it is very hard to settle back down.  

There are two main ways to calm down our minds and bodies. One is called Top-down processing, and the other is called, Bottom-up processing. Today’s podcast will give you examples of both ways to calm down and feel more relaxed and joyful. We will also do a bit of guided imagery to calm the racing mind using the example of a monkey in a banana tree. Most people find guided imagery calming and enjoyable. Listen now. For many more helpful tools and meditations and imagery go to www.headspace.com

I HATE CONFLICT!

What you you think about conflict? Do you feel it is important for a healthy relationship? Do you think of it as a necessary evil, or do you avoid it like the plague? 

Conflict is a normal part of the human existence and fearing conflict just adds an unneeded amount of stress to our minds and bodies. Unless the person you plan to have conflict with is a sociopath or a raging manic, conflict should not be that difficult or frightening. Whenever 2 people want different things there will be conflict. Because we are human we will rupture our relationships and conflict resolution is one of the ways we repair that rupture.

Today I will share 4 simple concepts to focus upon when you are preparing for conflict. Following these 4 steps will allow you to engage in conflict resolution from a more calm, grounded perspective. 

ABCDE -A means to conquer worrying!

No, I am not reciting a portion of the alphabet but sharing a CBT helpful exercise from a famous 20th century psychologist. Today’s podcast is about the anxious, racing mind. And, about our tendency as humans to fret, obsess and worry. 

While I talked about worry in the last podcast, I did not share much about how to specifically deal with an obsessive thought loop. So today we talk about what to do to make the worry evaporate. ABCDE is an oldie but goodie exercise from Albert Ellis. He came up with this exercise to help his clients learn how to use their minds to refute worries, and to help their bodies feel better quickly. This exercise is a means to keep the mind working for us rather than wasting energy in useless, fretting worries.

Give this a try with your own stressful situations and worries. Let us know how you do!

Love & Anxiety, Part 3

Many people struggle against worrying and being stuck in negative, fearful thoughts. This is a big problem, and a time-wasting habit. The bad habit of negative “future-izing” or worrying, can ruin our happiness and over the years, our physical health.  

As we continue our series on Love & Anxiety, I will share some simple brain anatomy. I will tell you about the Brain Stem, the Limbic system and the Cerebral Cortex. A lack of understanding of how these brain regions work allow us to stay stuck in spiraling loops of high anxiety or debilitating stress. Learning how to keep the brain stem out of “danger” mode evicts anxiety and decreases stress hormones. This translates into a peaceful life and a relaxed and calm body. Listen and notice how this can help you in your daily life.  Please write in with any questions or concepts you would like to better understand. I prefer responding to what my listeners find compelling and interesting.

Love & Anxiety -Part 2

Today we are continuing the new series; Love & Anxiety. Where we focus our attention is the second critical factor in how much anxiety we experience in our daily life. And, if love calms or causes anxiety.

Many people struggle with looping negative thoughts or worrying. On a regular basis the mind is spinning out awful scenarios that usually are not even realistic. When we focus on scary thoughts, our primitive brain regions turn on stress hormones. These hormones cause internal sensations of high anxiety and stress. This causes a chain reaction of feeling more anxiety and this reinforces the negative thought focus.  Rich Hanson’s research found our brain’s have a bias toward negative information. So we must work to focus on the positive aspects of our life.

Love & Anxiety Part 1

If you have listened to the previous podcasts you will hopefully understand better how your body and your physiology work hand in hand. Either to calm and relax you, or to stimulate, motivate or stress you out.

To build on those concepts we are starting a new series of podcasts about Love & Anxiety. Taking the physiological ideas and fleshing them out. I.e. how they impact your daily life.

Love & Anxiety have a complex relationship. Love is often the quickest and best way to calm anxiety. But love can also cause anxiety. Our early relational history has a great impact on how we experience other people. Do they feel safe and good, or dangerous and scary. Attachment theory has been around for almost 80 years. Today's podcast is about attachment and how we take in (or don't take in) love. And how that impacts our anxiety levels.

Simple breathing tool for evicting Anxiety!

In this podcast we will take a break from the more academic and didatic material and share a very simple but very effective tool for reducing Stress levels and the amount of anxiety we often experience in our bodies. This tool can be utilized when we find ourselves feeling anxious or it can be done regularly as a way to prevent anxiety levels from climbing. It is a breathing exercise called 4-7-8. I have had clients report it has helped even during a panic attack.  Enjoy the podcast.