Elizabeth Deboo At Live Well 50, we believe in healthy living through Lifestyle Medicine. The 4 pillars of lifestyle medicine revolve around nutrition, exercises, restorative sleep, and stress reduction. Prescription medications are used as needed after we have first optimized our lifestyle.
BREATHWORK Is The KEY!
- health
- calmer states of being
- best self
- best life
Ok…one of the keys.
I often describe the magic recipe for health, wealth, love, and happiness as dozens of floating puzzle pieces hovering just above the ground. When we begin to explore the possibilities of these puzzles pieces be it through diet, sleep, physical activity, our spiritual practices, our connection and services to humanity … we find through the journey and adventure a unique and magical combination that supports us from the inside out which allows us to express our wonderful selves into the world impacting everything and everyone we come into contact with. And even those we merely think about.
Breath…It is one of the things that literally unlocks possibilities.
I have found is that when working with people, most often they present to me in a very wild mental plain. The very first thing we attend to is getting them into their bodies.
HOW?
Breath!
When we exist in the mental plane we are stuck. Stuck thoughts, stuck in patterns, stuck in the external, stuck in the past, stuck in the future…stuck. PERIOD.
We simply must get into our bodies if we want to feel better physically, emotionally, and if we want to be able to access our superpowers of being human. Without being in the body our mind will be pulled and caught up in the cyclone of the external and our being will boomerang and be thrown off course by every single thought, impulse, notion, and even every inspiration.
Though it can be a rich and fascinating place to be, residing exclusively in the mental plane, we are baited down rabbit holes, drift into the ocean of every external impulse, and become easily disoriented.
The mental plane, the mind, as rich and useful and helpful as it is when we are grounded it is equally as frightening and anxiety-producing when we are not.
A recent client I worked with was truly suffering from the plague of the past.
Almost literally paralyzed by thoughts and fears. He is intelligent and outrageously intuitive but the paralysis of the mind and fears left him without the ability to access any of these robust qualities. This young man was trapped in his mind. The what-ifs, the should have’s…and in a place of terror and crippling anxiety.
Can you guess what the first thing we did was in the session?
Yep, you guessed it, breath!
Enter The Inner Balance Sensor, my favorite feedback tool to consciously calm the nervous system, shift to rest & digest and a great tool for learning to monitor physiology through heart rate variability. I know that may sound like something only your doctor might be able to do. Not so!
This young man caught on beautifully. He began aligning body, mind, and spirit, not attempting to stop, block, shut down, or mute any aspect of himself.
We began with breath (body), brought in the thought of gratitude (mind), transformed the thought into a feeling of appreciation (mind/body), breathed the feeling through the heart (mind & body), allowed this feeling to saturate the entire body expanding from the heart (mind/body/spirit) and then expanded gratitude and appreciation out from the heart through his energy field to other humans. Over and over again aligning Mind/Body/Spirit.
It really all comes down to being in the moment, letting go of the struggle, letting go of all the effort it takes to cling to ideas/thoughts/notions/stories of the past and future. It takes some discipline and a true desire to have things in your life be different. This desire is similar to the desire to “get healthier. Like diet and exercise, it takes practice, the formation of new habits, and lifestyle adjustments.
The payoff is big even with small adjustments.
And the payoff is fast! Because once you feel better and your brain and BE-ing catches on to that, AND mix in the prospect of naturally tapping into awareness with the breath, the mind/body/spirit will continuously give you cues and prompts and reminders to access the calming, centering and aligning effects of conscious breathing.
Only the present moment is the truth. It is what is. All the other stuff is not what IS, right now. The other stuff is made up. Think of the present moment as a vacation from worry, a retreat from anxiety.
Our brains are brilliant. Our minds are equally magnificent. But when they override the NOW, they become a landscape for the biggest circus in town. When they override the connection with the body, humans will live in terror. It is fear that drives anxiety and stress. It is fear that drives insecurities and doubts and blocks our best selves. It is fear that can be sat with and befriended through the present moment.
In that terror & fear, some of us shut down, some of us numb out with substances or distracting addictions, some of us are paralyzed in overwhelm, and some of us experience all those things at different times.
The idea is to take this biofeedback strategy and apply it to life.
This young man’s homework was meditating specifically with the heart meditation that guides into the body and expands into the subtle body, yet still, maintains the groundedness.
We feel the safest in the NOW. We feel the safest when we are in the body. For obvious reasons, we feel safest when we are breathing. Breathing becomes fanciful yummy whipped cream when we connect our consciousness to our breath. This is where we find our superhumans powers. It is where we access ourselves as spirit, our intuition, our greatest capacity for health, our unity with all, and can express our true nature as eminence of Spirit abiding on Earth sharing our gifts and services with others.
Click here for details on The Inner Balance Sensor
BreathWork …What We Know For Sure:
- More ease and inner peace
- Better sleep
- Less friction in relationships
- Less worry
- More alertness
- Better focus and decision making
- More positive attitudes
- Increased composure and calm
- Deep breathing can help lessen stress and anxiety
- Breathing deeply and slowly from the gut, sometimes called diaphragmatic breathing signals the nervous system to calm down
- Deep controlled breathing to shift the nervous does take practice
- The more you breathe consciously to calm the nervous system the more efficiently it works
Due to many factors such as extraordinary busyness of life, over-scheduled, overworked, and an overstimulating environment, our nervous systems have shifted from being in rest and digest to being in a chronic state of flight or flight. A chronic state of stress has a huge implication in the health of the body including the following big hitters:
- Diabetes Type II,
- Heart Disease
- Digestion Complications
- Autoimmune Syndromes
- Sleep Disorders
- Chronic Pain
- Anxiety
BREATHWORK…In-depth as It relates to my offerings
Deep breathing is the key to accessing health, calmer states of being, and ultimately to being your best self, living your best life.
Breathwork is instructed and utilized in all sessions as a tool to teach the empowering ability to shift and calm the nervous system. Often it is the first intervention, the quickest and most accessible method to calm the nervous system while in session with adults and children, the gateway to meditation, and almost always an aspect of homework.
Breath Work is a general term that describes any type of therapy that utilizes breathing exercises to improve mental, physical, and spiritual health and well-being. It is the conscious engagement and at times controlling of breath to influence the nervous system inducing a calming state.
Breathwork & The Inner Balance Sensor
A biofeedback tool also used is The Inner Balance System. This system was originated by the well-known and cutting edge research center, The Heart Math Institute.
This biofeedback method uses visual, auditory, and felt senses to align the body, mind, and spirit. Aligning and calming the nervous system gives access to those best self qualities of compassion, love, generosity, kindness, contentedness, and peace.
It is not hard to feel overwhelmed, anxious and chaotic in our seemingly frenetic world. The Inner Balance System is a training tool that teaches a shifting of the nervous system, replacing overwhelm and anxiety with physical and emotional balance, inducing a state of “coherence”, a term coined by The Heart Math Institute.
Being in a state of coherence with the use of the Inner Balance Sensor replenishes your energy from that all too often the state of fatigue. It helps to balance emotions for improved personal, work, and worldly relationships. It profoundly improves focus, composure, concentration, and mental performance upon learning to shift and refocus.
How It Works:
The Inner Balance System is a sensor that is connected to your body by clipping it lightly onto your ear. This sensor is connected to an app through Bluetooth. The sensor incorporates an advanced heart rate monitor that measures subtle changes in your heart rate rhythms called Heart Rate Variability (HRV). HRV is a measurement that has been used in the study of the meditation research community for years. HRV measurement reflects heart-brain interaction and the dynamics of the autonomic nervous system.
The autonomic nervous system is the window into the physiology of the states of rest and digest (calm/peaceful states) and fight or flight (stress response) in your body.
From the Heart Math Institute:
Coherence Breakthrough
Inner Balance is based on “the coherence breakthrough”. Coherence is a state of synchronization between your heart, brain, and autonomic nervous system that has been proven to have numerous mental, emotional, and physical benefits. You can think of coherence as a simultaneous state of relaxation, readiness, and revitalization. Some refer to this as a balanced state of composure or poise. Coherence improves performance, health, and emotional well-being.
- More ease and inner peace
- Better sleep
- Less friction in relationships
- Less worry
- More alertness
- Better focus and decision making
- More positive attitudes
- Increased composure and calm
Experience the Difference
When you experience stressful emotions such as frustration, anxiety, irritation, and anger, your heart-rhythm pattern becomes irregular and incoherent, negatively affecting your health, brain function, performance, and sense of well-being. When you experience renewing emotions such as appreciation, dignity, joy, and love, your heart-rhythm pattern is more ordered and coherent.
Breath & The Nervous System
What we know for sure:
- Deep breathing can help lessen stress and anxiety
- Breathing deeply and slowly from the gut, sometimes called diaphragmatic breathing signals the nervous system to calm down
- Deep controlled breathing to shift the nervous does take practice
- The more you breathe consciously to calm the nervous system the more efficiently it works
We don’t often think of our breath. Yet, it is always with you, always there, and as long as you are alive, the breath breathes itself through a magnificent and miraculous sequence of events, reflexes, and networking of the nervous system.
How you breathe when you consciously and purposefully connect to your breath can have a huge impact on your physiology and your emotional state, both being intertwined for an ultimate effect on your stress levels.
When you are stressed or anxious, breathing tends to be irregular and shallow, your chest cavity does not fully inflate making it difficult to bring in oxygen. Because it does not inflate fully, it also does not deflate fully., creating a vicious cycle of not being able to get enough air in.
Breath Work is a practice that enables more airflow into your body calming the nervous system, reducing stress and anxiety. There are also huge implications for pain relief as well as improving mental acuity, concentration, and focus.
Breath is the key to the body’s stress response
A quick nervous system tutorial:
Your autonomic nervous system (ANS) is the peripheral part of your nervous system that controls automatic responses in the periphery of your body, controlling automated bodily actions such as heart rate, breath rate, digestion, dilation of your pupils, and where blood is shunted as needed.
One part of the ANS is the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS). This arm of the system, otherwise known as the fight or flight system, is in charge of reacting quickly, it saves our lives when needed as it gets and keeps us out of harm’s way by increasing heart and breath rate, pupillary dilation so we can see well to get to safety, shunts all blood from the digestive system to the skeletal muscles to make it possible for us to MOVE to safety.
In contrast, we have the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS) otherwise known as the rest & digest arm of the ANS. The parasympathetic system shifts all bodily actions towards rest and digest: pupils with normal dilation, blood is shunted to the center of the body for digestion; heart rate and breath rate is slow/normal. Our emotions are calm and we can easily fall asleep when the PNS is dominant.
Key takeaway: These two arms of the nervous system are inversely related. This means that when one is dominating, the other quiets. When you activate the fight or flight response the rest and digest response will go quiet because they have equal and opposite jobs in the body.
Ideally, the parasympathetic nervous system will dominate our existence upwards of 90% of the time. For many, if not most of us, we do not need to be in flight or fight. We do not need to be in survival mode as we live out our lives.
Due to many factors such as extraordinary busyness of life, overscheduled, overworked, and an overstimulating environment, our nervous systems have shifted from being in rest and digest to being in a chronic state of fight or flight.
A chronic state of stress has huge implications for the health of the body including the following big hitters:
- Diabetes Type II,
- Heart Disease
- Digestion Complications
- Autoimmune Syndromes
- Sleep Disorders
- Chronic Pain
- Anxiety
Deep breathing is the key to access health, calmer states of being, and ultimately to be your best self, living your best life.
Let me know how I can help you, guide you, and encourage you. I’m here
With love,
Elizabeth
