The 5 Resets by Dr. Aditi Nerurkar M.D

Author:Dr. Aditi Nerurkar M.D.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

You’ll notice that as you practice diaphragmatic breathing, you start to take slower, deeper breaths from your belly area rather than from your chest. Because slower, deeper breathing can’t coexist with anxious, shallow, and quick breathing, when you actively practice diaphragmatic breathing during stressful or overwhelming moments, you’re dialing down your stress at the exact moment you need it.

Ryan, my patient from Chapter 3 who was a music industry executive, called me from London one afternoon. He was in a panic. “I’ve been sleeping much better, doing my daily prescribed walk and playing my guitar almost every day. It’s been great,” Ryan told me. “But I still have this anxiety in meetings and talking to other people. I’m supposed to connect in person with radio producers before the show today, but I’m dreading it. I’ve been kicking myself all day for being weak. I never used to be this way.”

Over the phone, I could hear Ryan barely able to catch his breath.

“Okay, Ryan,” I calmly said, “let’s slow down your runaway stress right now. I’m going to teach you how you can overcome your fight-or-flight response and let your rest-and-digest response take over.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“We’re going to use your biology to work for you rather than against you so you can feel calm going into today’s meetings. You’re beating yourself up because your biology is actually trying to protect you.”

Over the phone, Ryan and I practiced diaphragmatic breathing together. I asked him to place his hands on his belly, and to make sure his breath was traveling down from his chest into his belly such that he could feel his belly rise and fall with his breathing. In his acutely intense moment of stress, Ryan was learning how to activate his parasympathetic nervous system.

The parasympathetic nervous system leads to your “rest-and-digest” response. It works in direct opposition to your sympathetic nervous system, which governs your stress pathway through your fight-or-flight response. The really helpful thing is that these two systems are mutually exclusive; they can’t be active at the same time. When the sympathetic system is dominant, you feel the effects of high stress. When the parasympathetic system is dominant, you feel calm. It’s a see-saw effect because they both work in tandem. And the effects of each system are almost immediate.

Ryan and I did a number of deep breaths together, and then I taught him how to do the Stop–Breathe–Be technique and encouraged him to use it right before he went to meet with each radio producer.

Ryan’s breathing calmed down over the phone. “That worked fast! Thank you! I’m adding that to my new Rule of 2.”

Later that day I got a message from Ryan that his new breathing tools had worked beautifully and he had soared through his interactions with the people he had to meet that day.

Like Ryan, your stress will incrementally decrease over time through the strategies in this book. The tea kettle of stress is all about opening the valve and allowing your brain and body to slowly release the buildup of high stress.

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