Hello. It’s Barb Earle Neurotransformational Coach and health and well-being expert on a mission to help you get to know your brain better and why it matters.
Welcome to day three in this month’s special edition entitled Boost Mental Health and shift your perspective—pandemic related or not!
To help remember it more easily, I call it the Four Ps:
Pause. Perspective. Practise. Patience.
This week we are focusing on Pause. How did it go yesterday? What happened when you paused and named your emotion?
What did you notice? Ready for another layer to reinforce the first step called PAUSE?
A gentle reminder, if you simply pause and do nothing else you are still boosting your mental health by managing the impact of stress-related, emotions.
The next layer after pausing and naming your emotion is to:
Notice your breath. More than likely it’s at a fast pace and comes with a rapid heart rate. This is a natural and normal reaction. Your brain and body are preparing for a possible threat, you are getting ready to flee, fight or freeze. Unfortunately, our body tends to overreact to non-life-threatening stressors such as getting stuck in traffic, being at home with your family 24/7, and job or no-job-related pressure. At the same time, we can respect that we are human beings with an enormous range of emotions, we really don’t need to experience a deep intense reaction to situations.
Here’s what to do:
With the onset of stress-related emotions:
Pause, Name Your Emotion and now add some time to notice your breath.
Do this for as long as you wish. When you reach a point where it feels like you can modify your breath, try this: Lengthen your inhale slightly and lengthen you exhale slightly. Repeat this until you start to feel less tense and calmer.
That’s it.
Noticing and modifying your breath activates the part of your nervous system responsible for undoing the impact of those emotions. Your heart rate decreases, your blood pressure comes down, the angst in your stomach subsides and your breathing rate goes down. It literally puts your brain and body into a ‘rest’ state, bringing you closer to an effective solution.
And, yes, you also get closer to the region of your brain responsible for reasonable thinking.
Your mission today is to Pause • Name Your Emotion • Notice your Breath and if possible modify it.
Let the neuroscience of your brain and body do the rest.
Join me in the next post as we look at the last layer to help enhance this action called PAUSE.
Until we meet in Person.
Brain to Brain.
Heart to Heart.
Ciao!