A dysregulated nervous system, often stuck in a "fight or flight" state, can be reset using a quick, rhythmic technique involving breath and bilateral stimulation to restore a sense of calm and control.
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foreign
[Music] okay so you may have heard this term disregulated nervous system but what does
that actually mean and most importantly what can you do about it hey I'm Ben Ahrens co-founder
of re-origin® where we teach you how to reclaim your health by retraining your brain and in
this video I'm going to share with you a pretty quick technique that you can use to essentially
reset a nervous system that's been dysregulated and do it in under 60 Seconds so first what
is the nervous system well we have a central nervous system which consists of the brain
and spinal cord and then we have a peripheral nervous system which is all of the nerve endings
that Branch out throughout the body that stem off of the spinal cord in this case we're
really talking about the central nervous system as that is the main resource allocator and
sort of control center for all of these other various organ cells and systems in the body
that need to be coordinated in certain ways in order for us to feel at ease healthy and
what we basically know as homeostasis now you may have heard that the nervous system
has these two main branches the sympathetic and the parasympathetic now the sympathetic
branch of the nervous system you can think of as this part of you that's fight or flight
that gets you energized and basically shunts all of these bodily resources like blood and
oxygen and nutrients to the extremities to your muscles and limbs to mobilize you for
action you've I'm sure heard the classic analogy of being chased by a saber-toothed tiger if
we were back in Paleolithic times the sympathetic nervous system would become activated to help
you avoid the threat so obviously this is a good thing we want to have this if we're
crossing a street and a car whizzes by or something happens we need to escape the area
we need this fight-or-flight mechanism intact to get us out of danger now the nervous system
never just wants to bring you up and leave you there it always wants to give you a Fail-Safe
or a mechanism for coming back down to Baseline to that homeostasis and that we call the parasympathetic
nervous system and a good way to remember that is by the word power you can think of
the word parachute it's meant to slow you down return you back to the ground sometimes
however if we've been dealing with ongoing stress or chronic illness or anxiety for a
long period of time the brain can effectively effectively learn to over protect the body
it can even become somewhat sensitized to regular stimuli and things in the environment
and set off that it's like setting off a car alarm when in fact there's no burglar present
when that's the case we say that the nervous system may be dysregulated meaning it's throwing
out these survival outputs based on neutral or benign inputs and just to be very clear
here the sympathetic nervous system or that state of fight or flight is not bad I know
there's a lot of conversation that we want to avoid fight or flight or get out of that
state of course what we want is to avoid spending the majority of our time there we want to
spend the majority of our time in that parasympathetic that calm rest and digest state where those
bodily resources can be freed up and made available for long-term healing building digestion
and procreation so the dysregulation or the problem comes in where somewhere down the
line our brain and nervous system may have gotten the message wrong and is now continuing
to keep us in that fight or flight State beyond the period where it's really necessary and
what that feels like can be like elevated heart rate nervous can feel like I'm tired
and wired you can feel like there's things going on in the back of my mind that I I need
to attend to such that if I don't attend to them everything might collapse right some
of it can be that subtle feeling of like did I leave the coffee pot on all of these types
of things may be indicative of a disregulated nervous system or what we also refer to as
limbic system dysfunction now the good news is that the same way that your brain learns
to over protect you it can also learn to come back to Baseline and I have a separate video
on this if you want to search limbic system dysfunction with reorgan that video will pop
right up and we'll put a link in the description below but for now what do you do when you
notice that your nervous system may be dysregulated well the number one thing is to know that
the brain and nervous system likes order whenever we feel like we've been thrown for a loop
or we've blown a fuse is how some people refer to it it can feel like being thrown into chaos
our mind our thoughts are ping-ponging around and it's hard to get a handle on ourselves
so think of it like a car that's kind of careening down the highway and instead of sitting in
the driver's seat we're just sitting in the back seat going along for the ride and what
we want to do of course is climb our way back into the driver's seat get our hands on the
wheel and essentially come back into that feeling of Safety and Security where we know
we have control so there's a few simple ways to do that and one of them is deep breathing
specifically taking a breath with a double inhale at the top and a long exhale at the
bottom I'll give you an example and I'll explain why this is so effective so it looks like
once more
[Applause] so you see I inhale for a count of three or four and then at the very top
I sniff in a little bit more air and then let it go so a couple of things are happening
here one we're actually getting a little bit more oxygen into the lungs which we know oxygenates
the blood and the brain and can help us to focus so kind of like in martial arts when
they do this type of breathing it puts a little bit of adrenaline into the bloodstream and
can help sharpen our sense of focus so our focus goes from ping-ponging all over the
place to more centered now the second reason is that the brain really likes Rhythm especially
when it feels like it's been thrown into chaos one of the things that can help us climb back
is following a rhythm and for this reason putting on a song or something that has a
strong beat or a steady Melody can be great but even creating that rhythm with your breath
with your body can give your brain something regular to latch onto so it doesn't feel so
out of control or out of sync now another layer you can add to this is bilateral stimulation
so this can be done by snapping fingers of your opposite hands so going back and forth
and what we're doing here is we're now engaging the left and right Hemisphere and giving your
brain something concrete to focus on again it's rhythmic it's easy it's kind of enjoyable
it's interesting and lastly we can bring our hands to meet in the middle and we can put
this whole sequence together so I'm going to share with you now the technique that I
like to use to quickly in 60 seconds or less get myself out of that fight or flight feeling
disregulated State and back into calm homeostasis I'm just going to demonstrate it then you
can practice this on your own and share in the comments below if you found this effective
for me it consists of the first part is taking that long inhale with the the double inhale
and long slow exhale followed by a snap with the right hand a snap with a left hand and
a clap in the middle it looks like this bear with me here foreign [Applause]
[Applause] in if you like
once more
there you go so that's something that I would do for about a minute as you can tell it incorporates
all of those different aspects of breathing double inhalation long exhale bilateral stimulation
and Rhythm putting it all together in a kind of neat little sequence give it a try let
me know how it worked for you if you have any questions or comments drop them in the
comment section below and I really look forward to hearing from you foreign
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