Take a stroll with me for a minute. Here we go … Last night you completed your typical nightly routine; Took a shower, brushed your teeth, washed your makeup off and maybe you even took a few extra minutes to use your favorite charcoal face mask. You put on your favorite fuzzy pajamas, because it was cold here in the midwest last night, and you slipped between the sheets ready to get some shuteye.
Your head hits the pillow and your brain fires up. BAM!
Thoughts from the day start flooding in. Things you didn’t check off your to-do list, rehashing conversations in your head, wishing you would have said this and not that, tomorrow’s agenda piling up, and now you’re stressed out because you know you won’t remember everything when you wake up in the morning. You feel the anxiety start to rise from the bottoms of your feet to the top of your head. Your heart is racing, you’re starting to feel like you can’t breathe, you kick off the covers because now you’re getting hot, uncomfortable and agitated because you know it’ll be every bit of an hour or two before your nervous system simmers down and you can finally get to sleep, resulting in exhaustion, again tomorrow.
Did your heart rate increase just reading that? Can you feel the agitation in your stomach? Yeah, me too! Let’s talk about what just happened.
The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) is built of two parts: Sympathetic and Parasympathetic.
Your Sympathetic Nervous System is the part known as “fight-or-flight”. In this state, your body is releasing high levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and you are essentially running off adrenaline. Energy and blood flow are being shunted to the organs needed to protect you. Your body experiences an increased heart rate, higher blood pressure, faster respirations, decreased motility (movement) of the large intestine, pupillary dilation (so you can see better) and perspiration (sweating). This allows you to be faster and more alert. Think caveman running from a lion.
The Parasympathetic Nervous System is known as the “resting-and-digesting” portion of the nervous system. In this state, your body is relaxed. Heart rate decreases, sphincter muscles are relaxed to stimulate digestion, you salivate, lacrimate (produce tears), and pass bowel movements. This is also where sexual arousal takes place. If you don’t spend time in the parasympathetic state you can’t make rational decisions, sleep, poop, or enjoy sex.
Now back to our story. For the majority of Americans, we spend that majority of our time in “sympathetic dominance” . You could also say the body is stuck in the high cortisol, “fight-or-flight” state or the sympathetic nervous system. As a society, we don’t spend nearly enough time in the parasympathetic (resting) state, and I think it really shows.
So what do we do about it? There are so many tools we can use to shift the nervous system, but this one is my favorite. A simple trick that I teach all of my clients to use in times of stress and anxiety:
How to Perform Box Breathing
Breath in through your nose for 4 seconds.
Hold your breath for 4 seconds.
Breathe out deeply through your mouth for 4 secondS (or longer).
Hold your breath for 4 seconds.
Repeat the sequence 10 times.
Research suggests that diaphragmatic breathing exercises work to decrease cortisol while improving attention span and mood. Essentially, pushing you into the relaxed Parasympathetic Nervous System state.
You can box breath while you’re standing at the kitchen sink, driving in traffic, before a presentation at work, or while you’re laying in bed at night. It’s free, easy, and most importantly, it works!
Try it out, and let me know what you think in the comments!
Need more tips on sleeping through the night? Check out 10 Steps to Deeper Sleep.