3 easy ways to hack your nervous system to take you from stressed to calm quickly

The breath is part of our autonomic nervous system (involuntary) such as our heartbeat and digestion, but it’s also completely under our control too. We can’t stop our heart from beating or our digestive system from digesting our food, but we can change and control our breathing to make us feel better and that’s why regularly practicing conscious breathing throughout your day is an incredible tool that we can all use to help manage stress and anxiety.

There is a constant feedback loop between the mind, body and breath, when we feel stressed, panicked or anxious these emotions all change our breathing pattern. You might notice breathing becomes erratic, shallow, fast and up high into the chest. When we breathe this way we are activating our sympathetic nervous system, which is our fight or flight response, and this keeps feeding back into our stressed, panicked or anxious state.

This feedback loop also works the other way round = breath, body, mind. When we practice slow and conscious breathing, the body and mind will also slow down and become calm too.

Here are 3 simple ways to hack your nervous system to take you from stressed to calm quickly:

1.    Breathing slowly through the nose and doubling the length of the exhalation.

Breathing through the nose ensures we take in a controlled amount of air. When we are stressed or anxious we tend to over-breathe and over-breathing actives the nervous system. By extending the exhalation i.e. doubling the length of the exhale to inhale, this activates the opposite branch of the nervous system, which is the parasympathetic nervous system, and is our rest and digest response and this calms the body and tells the brain that we are okay, we are safe and it can relax.

2.    Breathe with the diaphragm.

Breathing with the diaphragm, which is our primary breathing muscle -located just below and behind the lower ribs, also activates our parasympathetic nervous system. By slowing the breath down, extending the exhalation and sending the breath as low as you can into the belly, has a deeply calming effect on the nervous system.

3.    Try humming!

By humming you activate the Vagus Nerve, which is the longest nerve of the autonomic nervous system and it’s the main component of the parasympathetic nervous system. It runs through the whole body starting from the brain, through the vocal chords and throat and the internal organs such as the lungs, heart, stomach, liver, kidneys, bladder and the gut. When stimulated it has the ability to relax every single organ it touches and is a quick way to access calm for the whole body.

Putting it all to practice…

Inhale through the nose for a count of 4

Exhale through the nose for a count of 8

Send the breath as low as you can into the belly.

Swap the exhalation for some humming.

Inhale through the nose for a count of 4

Exhale whilst humming for as long as you can. 

Repeat for 5/10 minutes and see how you feel!

Kelly@eleven.breathwork