27 Jul Conserving Your Cortisol Response
Your cortisol response is your stress response. Your cortisol response is directly related to your brain and gut. Our previous post The Brain Brain Connection talks briefly about how our gut and brain are connected, spoiler, we actually didn’t mention a third brain, maybe in another post! The key to remaining stress free is controlling what and where you allow your cortisol to be spiked or released. Cortisol really needs to be reserved for real life/death situations, only thing is we are running in overdrive and burned out and cortisol if continuously spiking. The goal would be to recognize WHICH situations demand the actual use of cortisol. Cortisol has its place, but not for everyday life.
WHAT ARE YOU FOCUSING YOUR ENERGY ON?
Have you heard the phrase “energy follows intention”? What are you focusing your energy on? What do you want to focus on? The goal would be to focus on follow the oxytocin flow, not the things that make your cortisol spike. Many mentors, speakers and coaches have shared similar statements like this one from Tony Robbins: “Where focus goes, energy flows. And where energy flows, whatever you’re focusing on grows. In other words, your life is controlled by what you focus on.” Stress can control you OR you can control stress. If you are focusing on worry and stress and focusing on the future versus staying int he present, your stress is in control of you. We have to be judicious about what and when we allow to stress us out. Each stress event is spiking cortisol doing damage to our psyche. mood, and physiology. People are walking around in a constant cortisol spike of the stress responses fight, flight freeze or fawn. The fight, flight, freeze and fawn are reactions and are to be reserved for life/death and emergencies situations. We need to learn to over respond versus react.
WHERE DOES STRESS COME FROM?
Where is stress coming from? How are we informing our brains with or of stress? Where is the information and data being gathered from and how is it delivered to our brain? We will need a little anatomy lesson first. Previously we talked about the VAGUS NERVE for rest & digest . Review this link for some simple things you can do to help strengthen your response and recovery time from FIGHT & FLIGHT by stimulating the vagus nerve. Dr. Anjana Kundu used to say that “all pain is in the head because all pain IS indeed seated in the brain, but now I say – all pain is in the head (brain) or the gut [brain] or more likely both!”
Are you receiving the message and what are you doing with them?
Am I experiencing stress? Now listen. How is the body (gut), brain (head) and heart (feelings) responding?
Stress and pain is a signal to pay attention as something is attempting to “hurt you” and attack on your nervous system.
EXERCISE: Start to notice what part of your body is feeling stresses and what you may be currently experiencing, for example, tension in your shoulders may be from feelings of carrying the weight of the world om your shoulders. Sound familiar? Once we are able to understand the stress response we can start to make subtle shifts in managing stress. Questions you can start to ask yourself to build awareness:
What do we perceive as stressful?
How do you respond to stress?
How do you interact with stress?
How do we relate to stress?
“What you resists, persists“
Carl Jung
When we don’t resist and push away the stress and pain we are then able to transform it. Learning to listen, slow down we are able to better RESPOND and not REACT.
HOW DO YOU RESPOND versus REACT?
First we have to identify the messages and data that is coming into our brains: head~gut~heart. The body will “talk” in languages of these three brains. Words will come from the head brain, emotions will come from the gut and feelings will come from the heart. Stress may be manifested in our head brains through overthinking, for example, and in the body through pain. We also receive messages with our intuition, the gut feelings we talked about in The Brain Brain Connection. What we do with each of these energies is up to us (see above about what you can control and what controls you). Focusing on a RESPONSE that is oxytocin based versus cortisol based is a good start. Can you think of some ways and time you know when the oxytocin was flowing in your body? For parents it might have been the birth of baby, for childfree persons it may be celebrating a milestone with friends. Oxytocin is the BONDNIG hormone. so ANYTHING that has to do with BONDING with another and expanding our purpose will release oxytocin! Even THINKING about reaching out wit a friend according to Dr. Kundu is enough to stimulate the release of oxytocin! WOW! Powerful stuff! Other ways oxytocin is released is:
- Doing something to help someone else
- Be of help and let yourself be helped
It’s no wonder oxytocin release feels so good, biologically it also helps to release muscle tension and increase blood flow to all areas of the body.
Do you find this connection fascinating? Did you like the exercise above? Did you find it helpful in exploring your body~mind connection? If you would like to explore that further you may be interested in Body~Mind Coaching with our ICF trained Coach Vivian. Contact Tao to see if coaching is right for you 732-775-1550 or email us directly at [email protected]