It was a rushing kind of day. I was rushing out of work to pick up my step-kids from school, and I knew that as soon as we got home that I had to rush through a couple tasks before I had to rush off to the airport to drop off a family member.
After I got home from the airport I would be rushing through chores and dinner just to get enough time to work out and then maybe I could make some progress on another project before going to bed in time to get enough rest for another busy day ahead of me.
I was already tired from rushing from task to task at work because there’s never enough time in the day to finish the mountain of responsibilities I have at my job. I rushed to work in the morning because I slept in, and I woke up late because I was tired from rushing the whole day before.
I rushed through lunch to make a quick phone call before returning to my unreasonable workload. I didn’t have a second to breathe the whole day, and I knew that I would be fighting traffic the whole way to the school to make it on time, and I was tired of rushing and tired of dealing with constant stress.
Sound familiar? I sat in my car and called a self-time-out because I knew that if I didn’t get my body and my mind under control that things would go from bad to worse. I knew that I’d be frustrated and wouldn’t be a good influence on the kids. I knew I’d be resentful at the world for the unfairness of it all and I’d be stuck in a crappy mindset all day.
I had to get my shit together before it started running my life.
The past few days had been insanely busy, and I was aware of the toll it was taking on my body. My heart rate was way too high to just be sitting in the car, and it had been unreasonably high all day. My watch was telling me I was under a lot of stress, and unfortunately, my crabby mood was a perfect reflection of that unrelenting stress.
I had to regulate my nervous system.
So, I decided to employ a crushing combo. If I had to be stuck in traffic for 30 minutes as I drove to the school, then I would use that time to regulate my nervous system. I made a resolution to box-breathe the entire way there.
I started the breath work activity on my watch, started my car, and took off.
It was difficult to keep in rhythm with the vibrations of my watch. Every 4 seconds my watch would vibrate, telling me when to inhale, hold, exhale, and hold again. Repeat. But my mind was still in overdrive thinking about all the things I had to do, and I lost rhythm more times than I can be proud of.
But I stuck with it. I persisted and eventually the discomfort melted away. My body started calming down. My deep breathing opened up my body which had been tight and constricted from all the stress. I felt the muscle in my chest and rib cage and neck relax as I breathed deeper and deeper. My mind stopped racing, and every time I had a distracting thought, I just turned my attention back to my breath and back to the road.
By the time I pulled up to the school I was feeling calm and controlled. My heart rate was back to normal and even when I reengaged with the world as I picked the kids up, my sense of calm didn’t leave me. In fact, I had the mental energy to be present with the kids and my sense of humor returned.
I still got all the things done and I didn’t feel drained or frustrated, and it’s not because I’m some sort of superhuman. I was obviously dealing with the same frustrations and stress that most people deal with on a daily basis, but I used the most effective and easily available tool that I always have at my disposal to my advantage.
I regulated my nervous system, and all it took was my breath.
You see, the breath is the middle-man between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, and when you run around stressed out all day, every day, it takes a major toll on your body to be in sympathetic dominance. You can’t run in fight or flight mode for too long without your body breaking down.
The breath is one of the only bodily functions that we can take from automatic control to manual mode and influence the other systems of our body.
Slow and deep breathing triggers the body’s relaxation response by simulating the vagus nerve. That simulation the autonomic nervous system from the fight or flight mode to the rest and digest mode. The result is that your blood pressure lowers, heart rate slows down and stress hormones are reduced, calming the body and mind.
You can induce that response if you just have enough willpower to regulate your breathing for a couple of minutes.
The importance of this mind and body relationship is highly underrated and often overlooked by many because the woo-woo science community has driven many practical people away from the application of breath work by either over-complicating such a simple thing or by mystifying breath work to the point that its considered “weird” or “silly” by normal people. But the woo-woo people are into breath work because it works!
The alchemists would explain this relationship between body and mind by using the Principle of Correspondence. When you calm the body, you induce a corresponding mental state. When you calm your mind, you induce a corresponding physical state. As above, so below. As below, so above.
Try and remember a time when your body was very relaxed and your mind wasn’t also relaxed. Try and think of a time when you were in a state of mental peace and your body was on overdrive. It doesn’t happen because the body and mind have correspondence. They influence one another to a great degree. That’s not woo-woo; it’s common sense.
You don’t need anything outside of yourself to regulate your nervous system. If you can tap into breath control, you can take your body from a sympathetic state to a parasympathetic state with just a little bit of time and a little bit of willpower. You can regulate your nervous system yourself.
Below I will link other mediation and breathing exercises that you can use to regulate your nervous system and develop your concentration.
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Unlock Calmness with Box-Breathing: A Powerful Guide