How to increase your natural ability to heal

Our body is a complex system. It tries to maintain balance. One of the primary systems is the Automatic Nervous System (ANS).

Why talk about the ANS? Our ANS has control over the flight or fight response (The sympathetic system). The way we live, the kind of stimulus we have, activates the fight or flight far more often than any other time in the history. We run our system to the ground by living in a fast pace world full of demands and stressors. As a result our mind and body wear down.

We lose our well-being.

There is another system in place as a balancing factor to the fight or flight response. We call it the parasympathetic system where we get to rest, digest and heal. The keyword here for us is to heal.

If we want to improve our mental and physical health. Improve our well-being we got to find ways to switch off the alarms and allow ourselves to be.

What we need is to help ourselves find that space in time. That space to reflect to be calm and peaceful.

It’s never been more crucial for us to make that time to calm our mind and body down. The healing then takes place automatically in all levels.

PS: It’s my name day today. I am offering a free distant healing Reiki session to the first two who contact me

Episode Notes

0:09 Intro
0:22 The Emotional Brain
0:30 The Automatic Nervous System
0:48 Why talk about the Automatic Nervous System (ANS)
0:59 We live an unbalanced life
1:11 We need to calm and relax more (Entering the parasympathetic system more)
1:26 ANS: Primary control Fight or flight and regulating the body
2:05 ANS: Sympathetic system and Parasympathetic
2:09 Sympathetic: fight or flight
2:19 Parasympathetic: Rest, Digest & Heal
2:29 Dance and balance of 2 systems
3:14 Characteristics of sympathetic system
4:03 When we are calm we heal
5:06 Both system are there for balance
5:10 Running our systems to the ground
5:26 There is no difference between real imminent danger vs imaginary danger
5:35 Driving the Car to the edge
5:59 From physical threat to mental threat
6:54 Fight or flight is meant to be short lived
8:53 Mind body connection
9:07 How we experience the world
9:36 Allow healing to take place
9:45 You are safe
10:00 Emotional brain can fire from within
10:34 Breathing is key
12:12 Allowing ourselves to heal
12:42 Outro

Transcript

Welcome to another episode from inside treasures. My name is Phoebus and I love to challenge myself, and those around me for the purpose of growth. This podcast is about helping you to heal, to change and to grow.

In the previous episode we talk all about the emotional brain, and how thoughts can affect our behaviour. And our well being.

In this episode we’re going to talk about the automatic nervous system and how that ties in with the limbic brain, which is the emotional brain, and how the two work together, how that affects our perception of the world and our well being.

Why am I willing to go into automatic nervous system, what is it all about why is it so special and why is it useful to our efforts to changing and growing and healing. I feel that the way we live in general is in balance.

We’re after under chronic anxiety chronic stress about warring under fear. This way of living puts us in the fight or flight response when we try to find calms when we try to find inner peace.

What are we looking for. We’re looking into entering the parasympathetic system. The rest and digest what we can get to come down for yourselves and heal the automatic nervous system is primary mechanisms to control the fight or flight response.

And as a powerful part of our physiology, and it plays a crucial part in our emotional life. In the previous episode when we talked about the brain. There’s also part of the brain called the hypothalamus, which is just above the brainstem.

And this along with input from the limbic system, it works together into regulating the automatic nervous system. Now the point of the system is to regulate regulates our body that regulates bodily functions such as the rate of a heart.

A digestion, or respiration and certain reflexes. Automatic nervous system is split into two main parts, the sympathetic nervous system, which is the fight or flight response, and usually gets triggered when there’s danger when the stress ones is fear, anxiety, and we have the parasympathetic nervous system. The rest and digest, also known as feed and breed system, which has to do with eating with growth with reproduction.

There’s a natural dance and balance between the two systems, one system usually activates a physiological response, while the other one will inhibit official logical response. As I said earlier the sympathetic system is set to mediate between the fight or flight response. And once we’re calmer, the parasympathetic nervous system restores the order in the body, and it turns the body back into normal functioning.

There’s no good or bad with either of the systems, they’re both very useful very useful for our well being, they’re very useful for us being alive, being safe, maintaining a balance. And that’s why the two systems can work together to ensure our survival and growth and reproduction. What are the some of the characteristics of the sympathetic nervous system. It promotes the fight or flight response.

So if there’s a perceived danger, we will prepare for fighting, or fleeing or freezing. It’s something that will get us into action. In order to preserve our life. So if there’s a lie on the boxing, there’s a predator, a sympathetic system reacts to that danger. It’s like fires certain responses for the body to be able to adapt and act quickly. And what does that do basically it tells her body.

Again, through the brain, through the nervous system into the organs, we get release certain chemicals. We have all those chemicals in our blood that get released through the body that put us in a state of fighting, or flying. Let’s move to the parasympathetic nervous system, its role is to activate the repair mechanism of the body.

In other words, when we’ll come and relax. Well, within our zone of feeling safe. This is when our body heals. This is where a body is at its best. But when it comes to our daily life. How many times do we really truly need to be in the fight or flight response.

So in summary, we said we have the sympathetic system and the parasympathetic system sympathetic system enables a fight or flight, which in the last episode we talked about the amygdala. We talked about the danger, the siren the alarms go off in order to make us able to adapt and respond to danger. And again, when there is threat and danger that system is super useful.

On the other side the parasympathetic system is the rest and digest and allows your mind to calm down to be yourself, to find inner peace, and to feel more connected with ourselves and the world.

Both of the systems that help the body maintain a balance. And what I see very often is how much we’re running these systems to the ground. We’re so much in the sympathetic system the fight or flight response by there is through anxiety, through fear, through anger. And we poison our blood, and we destroying ourselves.

There’s one difference thing between extreme imminent danger, and a different one. When we perceive danger where there isn’t one. It’s like we have a car, instead of driving it normally we’re ramming, all the way to the edge, and we keep doing that it’s not like we drive normally and then we drive fast and then maybe we drive slow, we just constantly driving with limits, and that’s what I feel we do a lot with our bodies and it taxes the body.

Never Ending work, our blood pressure is constantly up our cortisol is constantly firing adrenaline is always in the blood. Whether it’s about worrying about money, about our children, our cut our job getting angry and road rage, whatever it may be. that is firing off or fight or flight response. It doesn’t really matter.

And as you’re seeing again I’m going from the physical, the physical threat into more of the mental. If I’m catastrophising in my mind, and firing off my emotional brain and saying the world is so bad and so many things are going to happen to me that they’re bad. That puts me in a fight or flight response that bans me, energy, and it’s not helping me achieve anything. It’s not helping protect myself. I perceive it as being protecting myself.

There’s too much, environmental stimulus days from the outside and both from within. But causes us to spend too much time being the fight or flight. Usually, it’s a fight or flight response. It’s meant to be for short lived physical danger, but also with the continuation of the threat, and danger. We can keep that system on and activated on long term psychological and emotional stressors.

And that’s why this whole thing is important. The body will respond in a similar way. Whether it is external threat or internal threat within our mind whether we are observing the threats or someone else being in danger. For example, whether we’re watching a movie, a scary movie, an action movie, while we’re watching action movies and all of a sudden we for heart racing, because we’re in it.

The effects on our brain are real. The effects on our physiology, they’re substantial. We know that this thing we’re watching is not real. But again, you got the news and thought is real, isn’t it, they got us, we got the war. I got to violence, pick up viruses thinks that put us on edge, things that make us feel threatened.

And that’s the key. Whether it’s real or imaginary re-enacted doesn’t always really matter because it’s a response within our own world within our reality. And what does that do to us. When does that put us. It puts us in a fight or flight. That becomes nerve racking, it becomes a huge stressor for us.

What can we do every week. I have to, to work 15 hours a day. This is taxing on myself this is taxing on my system, this becomes a threat from being something like a creative outlet, all of a sudden is a threat to my well being. And this brings me to the mind body connection.

And that is the reason I spent the last two episodes going over physiology of the brain, the nervous system. This is about our body, how we react, how we experience the world. And basically, balmy meditate one we are mindful, the things that put us in balance. Usually, enable the parasympathetic nervous system. And that’s why that’s important for us to understand.

Okay, So it’s very easy for me these days I’m an environmental way to be allowed to in the fight or flight, and I need to come back, come home and recover. I need to find ways to allow this repair mechanism natural healing way to take place.

And the best way to do that is for me to understand, thumb safe. Not in a logical way in official logical deploy everything around me right now. I’m safe as I am. Then he helps us with the mind body connection to understand that the emotional brain can fire off from within the kind of images that kind of sounds the kind of self talk that we have, how we visualise things how we project things about the future, how we project things about ourselves.

And when we run and rerun we run certain scenarios that puts us into the fight or flight from within. There’s no external danger come in, perform within we’re putting ourselves in that breathing mindfulness meditation, helps us reclaim that order within our system within our bodies.

What we’re finding with breathing is that it’s part of two systems. one is the automatic nervous system we just described, and the other one is a somatic nervous system. So automatic nervous system allows our breathing to keep going, without our conscious awareness.

But the somatic nervous system allows us to control our breathing. But we don’t have to think about breathing when we concentrate on our breathing. We come home, we come in the present, come in the now. And when we regulate the breathing consciously, we learn to slow it down to an extent that is still pleasant and useful.

What happens is, for instance to affect the parasympathetic system. I might be all nervous and upset and excited and all these things in my heartbeat can be going on my breathing can be shallow and quick.

What happens is, if I decide to switch back to my breathing, stop breathing deeply breathing and heart rate, are very closely related. You know, for example when we’re running our breathing goes up our heart rate goes up, and our breathing slows down a heart rate slows down.

And when that happens, force the system says there is no imminent threat. Now I can truly and fully, relax, were safe, where Okay, now I can heal and allowing ourselves to heal, not only physically on a physical level, but also emotionally, and also not fots meditation practice in the silence, focusing on breathing. This allows our mind and body to calm down.

To restore themselves. Because, as our body, chills when it’s common relax. Sometimes our mind.

Please share this podcast with anyone you think may benefit.

Until next time, let peace guide your life, love guide your heart and region guide your thoughts.

Photograph by Andy Holmes @ Unsplash

PS. If you want to find stillness in your life and connection with yourself. Join the online Finding Stillness self-paced course.

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