When we’re stressed, and who isn’t, our bodies divert resources away from fighting microbes to fighting larger potential threats. That’s how your nervous system is wired. Tigers, rude bosses, or financial worries take precedence over microscopic life forms.

Speak Directly to Your Nervous System

Your nervous system is programmed by your prior life experience to automatically respond to threat via the stress response, while at the same time lowering immune function. Fortunately, we can intervene to update our programming to a more life enhancing response.

Here are a few suggestions to restore balance to your autonomic nervious system (ANS) that’s been upset by the stress response. These self-regulating behaviors take just seconds to perform. And of course, if you have the time, you can devote more time to restoring balance.

Breathe. I know it sounds like a cliche, but breathng really works. Just one slower and deeper conscious breath triggers the vagus nerve (that supports balanced immune function and anxiety reduction) and a whole cascade of neurological and biochemical balancing.

 

The challenge is to get out of your head and too much thinking (fueled by the stress response) and reconnect with the felt experience of your body long enough to take at least one, if not more, slow deep breaths.

 

With the help of biofeedback equipment, I observe how a single slower and deeper breath alters heart rate variability …. the autonomic nervous system …. and immune function …. within seconds.

 

Old Programing Negates Your Self-Healing Capacity

We’re all programmed (subconsciously programmed early in life) to believe that healing comes from the outside. Healing comes in the form of doctors and pills. And over time and with experience those beliefs can be amended to include more natural interventions as well.

The next step, or rather giant leap, in healing awareness is that it comes from within. The Polyvagal Theory uses modern neuroscience to validate our self-healing capacity.

The larger point here is that we can use the healing resources that best serve us in a given situation, whether it’s pharmaceuticals or more natural remedies, without ignoring or discounting our inner capacity for healing.

The Polyvagal Theory and other modern neuroscience are informing us that our inner capacity for healing should be activated first and then complimented by external interventions.

Take a moment with me right now to breathe. Tune into your heart and breathe in for a count of five while allowing your ribs to expand to the sides. And then exhale to a count of five. You can breathe in through your nose or mouth and then exhale through your mouth. Only one breath begins to reset and reprogram your nervous system and enhance immunity.

To enhance this process you can experience how it feels to place both of your hands over your heart. On the inhale move both hands away from your heart as you open your arms in a welcoming gesture. Then on the exhale allow your hands to return to your heart. You can experiment and see how one, two, or more minutes of this breathing process influences your mental clarity, mood, or emotional calm.

I trust that these suggestions are helpful in trusting and activating your self-healing capacity.