“Do you think it is possible to change the status quo of the nervous system? Can it become less sensitive? Less reactive?”

 

~ Lisa, Satori student

In one of the spring workshops, Lisa asked me if I thought healing a badly shaken nervous system was possible.

The truth is, I’ve been asking myself the very same question since the summer of 2019. All hell broke loose that year as I fought to survive six weeks of never-ending panic attacks. Many times, I didn’t think I would get through it…

Once I recovered some semblance of logical thinking, I began to ask myself what had happened. More importantly, I wanted to know how to prevent this from happening again. I certainly didn’t want to experience this nightmare ever again…

Counselling was truly a godsend.

It opened my eyes to how sensitive and reactive my nervous system was and how little I understood myself. Meditation training also came in handy, but it had its limits.

As anyone with anxiety knows, trying to sit for a meditation practice while the mind is doing its wild squirrel dance is ONE hell of a challenge. And, as helpful as it was, counselling didn’t change my thinking, behaving, and breathing patterns that were re-traumatizing my already extremely sensitive nervous system.

If you ever had a panic attack or a patch of extreme stress, you are already familiar with the muscle tension and cramping that comes with it.

Stress shifts our breathing muscles into a panic mode, completely changing how we breathe. Regular, relaxed breathing moves mostly the lower part of the torso – the rib cage and the abdomen – while stressed breathing circles predominantly around the upper body.

Over time, the muscles involved with the upper body breathing – around the neck and shoulders – lock into the habits of overuse. These muscles aren’t built for long-term use, so they become incredibly tight when continually called on to aid breathing.

This neck and chest breathing becomes a breath trap because it prevents us from accessing the diaphragm-assisted calm-inducing breath. In a classic chicken-or-egg situation, shallow, rapid breathing perpetuates anxiety and retraumatizes the already sensitive nervous system with every breath we take.

At some point, I realized that I was going around in circles.

I felt good after therapy sessions but returned to my anxious, reactive self once their afterglow faded. I knew I needed a different way to regulate my nervous system, a method that wasn’t reliant on cognitive processing or intellectual analysis and delivered changes that would stick.

I found that in my breath.

I learned that it is possible to influence stress response through breathing. With enough skill and patience, one can begin to reshape the base state of the nervous system, restoring its resilience and stability.

This process hinges on our ability to access full, complete body breathing.

Recovering the ability to access all the different parts of our remarkable breathing system is what Breath Express classes are all about.