Stressed, Depressed or Feeling Blessed:
Restoring Coherency and Nervous System Balance
As I sit to write, I return from a day spent helping an 88-year-old friend go to the hospital for a surgery to replace a pacemaker. I believe it is healthy for people to go through complex medical procedures accompanied by a familiar companion who is an advocate, neutral observer and comforter.
When my friend came out of surgery and into the anesthesia recovery room, my husband and I sat with him. As my husband held his head and I held his feet, our patient friend said, “That’s very relaxing. You have a secret. That’s very relaxing.”
It was an interesting thing to say- that we have a secret. I think our friend meant that we were helping him to relax in a way that is unknown to many people. We have been trained to listen to the body’s natural rhythms and expressions of health and to support balancing and healing intentions that are arising from within. Our gentle touch and settled presence helped our friend to regain a relaxed inner state.
The thought of the upcoming medical procedure had been stressful to him. He had significant fear and talked of backing out many times. He had diarrhea several times as the surgery approached. He was unable to sleep. These are some of the common symptoms related to being in a state of stress.
When our body feels threatened, we respond with a protective state that either moves us toward a mobilization response- ‘fight or flight’ or an immobilization or ‘freeze’ response. These responses are primitive responses that long ago helped us to get away from tigers or survive natural disasters. They were meant to be short-term responses.
In our modern times, we often stay in these response states for long periods due to the nature of our modern stressors. A few of the basic signs we are in a stress state are: unclear thinking, emotional reactivity, inability to relax, depression, memory problems, digestive problems, sleep problems, muscle tension and stiffness, loss of sex drive, use of drugs to relax, teeth grinding, jaw clenching, and nail biting.
If we remain in a stress state for a lengthy period, it can lead to and worsen medical conditions such as: chronic pain, headaches, high or low blood pressure, heart disease, asthma, PMS, obesity, infertility, skin problems, autoimmune disease, irritable bowel syndrome, and diabetes.
When we gently held our friend, it helped his body to feel safe and let go of defensive responses to regain a new balance. As humans, we have many internal rhythms that give us an overall sense of inner body state. You might say that we are like a symphony of ‘biological oscillations’- heart rate, pulse transit rate, respiration rate, brain waves, Traube-Herring modulation.
When we feel threatened, we respond with a state that is meant to gear us up or down and to use the body resources for protection. The state feels agitated and stressed or immobilized and depressed. When we know we are safe, we enter a relaxed state where we feel peaceful and harmonious and have an opportunity to heal and rejuvenate.
These peaceful states are characterized by something called “physiological coherence”. The many parts of the body symphony begin to move in synchronization. This creates a powerful state of efficient and harmonious function of cardiovascular, nervous, hormonal and immune systems. This offers the opportunity for healing and reorganization.
All of us need to learn to relax and enter this state daily. There are a huge number of people in the United States suffering from chronic stress and the related diseases. This is a high-pressure, achievement based culture. For the body to re-regulate, we need to take time and make our health and our body a priority.
When people are caught in chronic or intense stress patterns, they often need outside support to access relaxation and a deep healing state. This is what craniosacral therapy is designed to do, to reconnect the client with coherency and the healing wisdom within. Often clients will say, “I don’t know what you did, but I feel better, and more relaxed than I’ve been in a long time.”
Here are some self-help suggestions to help you access coherency and natural healing states:
• Make your health a priority.
• Create a support team of friends and family where you feel safe and can play and relax.
• Consciously work out, walk, do stretching or quiet contemplation.
• Choose a good health oriented therapist as a resource for when you need it.
• Here are some simple self-help exercises that support coherency:
• Sing a song you love
• Remember a place or person you love and breathe that into your heart.
• Breathe in a positive emotion- and breathe out a positive emotion. Some possible emotions are joy, love, peace, forgiveness, wonder.
• Listen for Health Take some time to quietly sit. Notice your breathing. Don’t try to change anything. Let it change itself. Ask yourself the question, “What is healthy in my body.” or, “How do I notice Health?” When you notice one thing, acknowledge it and let the thought pass to make space for something else to speak to you. Do this for 5 minutes. If other thoughts come and go, let them pass also.
• Relaxation Breathing- Any form of breathing which accentuates the exhalation will encourage a relaxation or ‘parasympathetic’ response. Here are two simple ways to accentuate the exhalation.
1. Count as you inhale and notice the number. Pause for a count of three before you exhale. On the exhalation, double the count of your inhalation. Pause for a count of three and inhale. Allow your breath to change and when the inhalation count expands, double the new number for exhalation.
2. This exhalation exercise combines with a sense of ‘grounding’ or connecting with the earth. Notice your breath and each time you exhale, imagine you are extending tree roots into the ground. Let the roots grow deeper and longer with each exhalation.
I hope this knowledge and these tools will help you to make choices that create more coherency and feelings of wellness in your life.
Christopher and Mary Louise Muller are holistic practitioners in Murrieta and are available for private sessions. They teach classes through LifeShapes Programs locally and internationally.