Exercise and emotional regulation
Your beliefs about a technique are more powerful than the technique itself.
Last week I sent you a deep dive all about exercise and regulating the nervous system which lead to a few interesting conversations with clients and subscribers.
One of the reason evidence is so important to me, is because I get to be clear on what advice I give my clients and wider audience. I also get to be less wrong about things. A great aim for existing in a world that is determined to misinform us. I wrote more about that here.
Some people think that I am against techniques like breathing exercises, meditation and somatics and wish to see them exorcised from wellness. I’m not. I want these techniques to be communicated with a recognition of their limits in terms of evidence based practise. That’s all.
Language is incredibly important and how we use it matters. Misinformation thrives when it can sound scientific. Talking about nervous system regulation, as hopefully my previous deepdive expressed, is a fairly nuanced and expansive topic and when it comes to things like somatics, these techniques are about self management and regulation of emotions. It is how you feel about your nervous system responses that they aim to change, giving you space to allow your execute brain to take over from your amygdala - the feral raccoon arse hole bit of your brain that tells you the world is fucking ending at every opportunity.
So let’s talk about it.
For the purpose of this deepdive I will use the term ‘mindfulness techniques’ to encompass all mind body protocols that include (but not limited to) breathing exercises, meditation, journaling and somatics.
Today I’ll be aiming to answer, what is the automatic nervous system? How does your nervous system play apart in arousal and calming the fuck down? What happens when you can’t calm the fuck down? What are emotions? How do mindfulness techniques play a part in emotional regulation? What are the limitations?
Let’s fucking go.
If you didn’t already read more about the nervous system here and the fight or flight response, stress and allostatic load here.
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