How to Be the Love You Seek by Dr. Nicole LePera

Author:Dr. Nicole LePera
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

As you see, many of the things that will benefit our sleep are actions we can take throughout our day to set our body up for rest at night.

PHYSICAL MOVEMENT

Physical activity allows us to harness our energy and move it through our body, reducing our feelings of anxiety, stress, and even depression while regulating our nervous system. Regular movement can help release painful emotions and stored trauma, rebuild muscles, and rewire neural circuits in new ways.

Gentle exercise like yin yoga, stretching, and walking can help calm our nervous system when we’re in fight-or-flight mode. Vigorous exercise, on the other hand, can stimulate our sympathetic nervous system when we’re in a freeze or shutdown state. As anyone who’s experienced a good, sweaty workout may already know, physical activity releases endorphins, chemicals that help our nervous system cope with pain and stress.

The way you move your body doesn’t have to resemble any type of traditional “exercise.” Even the gentlest forms of movement and stretching provide benefits. And doing something you enjoy, whether it’s dancing in your living room, playing a fitness-based video game, or running around the yard with your dog or children, will make you more likely to move.

Personally, I like to stretch for fifteen to thirty minutes daily, sometimes by taking a YouTube yoga class (Yoga with Adriene and Travis Eliot’s yin practices are my go-tos). I try to get in a long walk and a more vigorous workout every few days and make a point to carve out small moments for more playful activity like dancing to a favorite song or hitting a tennis ball against my garage door.

You can even start to use exercise in an intentional way to calm your nervous system, specifically choosing your movement based on the stress response you’re experiencing.

For fight, flight, or fawn, you want to activate your parasympathetic nervous system. The best way to do so is with gentle movement like stretching, walking, yin yoga, tai chi, or qigong. You don’t need to practice for hours; start with ten minutes of any movement that you can do at home, at work, or anywhere else you feel safe. Find a private, quiet room or go outside if you can’t find a safe space indoors. If you’re new to yin yoga, tai chi, or qigong, you can practice with videos provided by amazing teachers who share their gifts on YouTube for free. Learning a few moves of the one you like best will enable you to practice in the future without having to look at a screen.

For freeze or whenever you feel dissociated or shut down, you want to activate your sympathetic nervous system. The best way to do so is with vigorous or intense movements like sprinting, jumping rope, walking briskly uphill, lifting heavy weights, cycling at high RPMs, or playing tennis or basketball for ten minutes. You can try vigorously shaking your body for five minutes by waving your arms, swinging your legs, and rotating your core at the same time. If

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