The Power of Reset: Activating the Shift from Stress to Balance

Deborah Thurley speaking at the Emotional Intelligence Online Summit in 2020 for People Builders and the Emotional Intelligence Academy on the Power of Reset.

11:30 - What we think about has a lot to do with how we are feeling

12:45 - The world has tilted and stress is a big part of everyone’s life right now

13:55 - Introduction to the Pause and Reset

21:30 - Humans are very adaptive at dealing with stress

22:53 - The Anchor Breathing Technique

29:00 - It’s a function of the mind that when we are relaxed our mind wanders off

35:10 - Further research papers and references

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

What we think about has a lot to do with how we're feeling.  

This is critical for us to understand because this is - whether you like it or not, whether you care or not, whether you're aware or not - what helps drive the emotional roller coaster. 

When we’re feeling whatever, it is that we're feeling, we can get emotionally triggered by the combination of what we're thinking and what we're feeling about what's going on in our life. What triggers us are all these external stimuli of people, events, situations, things, and even results. So, when a result goes our way, we feel good; If it doesn’t, we somehow get that feeling inside of not being good enough or failing. The point of all of this is to show how these feelings and emotions lead to our behaviors and actions or reactions. We can very often have a range of emotions and we tend to notice it most when we're triggered. This reactivity is something that we need to be aware of, and we need to understand what state we're in so that we can work with that.  

The world has tilted and stress is a big part of everyone’s life right now 

The world has tilted and well, it is as it is right now for all of us, but it's very changed from a year ago or even a few months ago. So, with the pressures that we're under, it's very easy to be overloaded, feel under-resourced and overwhelmed. Tiredness, exhaustion, and stress are part and parcel of many people's lives right now. That means that we get quite quick to become upset, frustrated, irritated and angry - all of those emotions that flood us when we're feeling pressured or under-resourced.  

We all had to deal with quite a lot of strange and unusual events in our lives recently, so this might be something you're familiar with.  

Looking a bit like this little mouse 

When actually what we want to do is reconnect with this peace and this positivity. We've learned a lot about positive emotions over the last, 24 hours with various speakers bringing in the work on positive emotions.  

Introduction to the Pause and Reset 

My job today is to introduce you to the pause and the reset and why this is so relevant and why it's so powerful, especially at the moment when we are being triggered and when we are under pressure in this rather strange time.  

I want to tap a little bit on Mindfulness. I am a mindfulness educator, teacher and instructor, and I bring that into this basket of Emotional Intelligence and Positive Psychology.  

Mindfulness in its simplest definition is noticing what's happening right now and then noticing not just what's happening, but what's happening on the inside, in our inner landscape, and what's happening around us.  

So, the stimuli that I was talking about- these people, events, situations, circumstances, results- all of these contribute to our human experience, our lived experience, and the perceptions that we have every day of our life. We either don't notice or we do notice and we start to wake up to who we are being in this amazing, storm of life - sometimes it goes our way and sometimes it doesn't.  

It's like: 

 “How do we anchor ourselves?” 

 “How do we pause and create that moment of reset in the middle of everything that's going on around us?” 

 So, I'm going to lean a little bit into Mindfulness and also lean a bit into Positive Psychology.  

The point of all of this is: How do we intentionally, with awareness, create a pause for ourselves when we need it? 

Let’s take a look at the emotional rollercoaster of life; when we get this push from life- whether it's something that we hear, see or connect with through our senses - we can either have a positive moment or we can have a negative moment (if we're talking just very basic.)  

Of course, there's a huge range (I'm not saying anything as good or bad) but if we are talking about this positive and negative context, the emotional roller coaster can watch us slide down.  

So, we can have a lovely positive thing here and there, yet when something happens, we can slide down the emotional roller coaster and can sometimes end up getting a little bit stuck. 

Mindfulness will invite us to be aware of the process - what's happening in each moment of this slide down and this climb up. And it's the climb up that’s actually very interesting to take charge of. So, the pause and reset thing is about: how do we take charge of all these for ourselves?  

When we’re stuck in a negative situation and having a bit of a drama there, what we really need is a toolkit that helps us recognize for ourselves that we need to throw it on that anchor line, and we need to wake up to where we are at and do something about it, instead of waiting for someone to say: “oh, you poor thing” or “gosh, I see that you're having a bad day. Let me help you.” 

So, this whole pause and reset, isn't passive. It's not just theory. It's about saying: What are these steps that I can take for myself when I need to and it's about how do I move from this negative emotional space and how do I bring myself across to the positive? 

Now, I’m going to teach you how you can go from feeling stuck in a negative space and move into a positive space (we’re talking about inside yourself) for your own inner wellbeing.  

There are two parts of our physiology where our emotions live.  

The first one is the Parasympathetic Nervous System. It’s a branch of our autonomic nervous system, which is our restorative system. It restores our balance and helps us to reset. This is where we heal. This is where our heart rate normalizes. This is where our blood pressure drops and normalizes. This is where our digestion and all our body functions are optimized and functioning well. And this is where positive emotions -like love- are born. Positive Psychology builds this for us.  

The second one is the Sympathetic Nervous System. This is what drives the fight- or-flight response (removed the freeze as the freeze response belongs to the parasympathetic nervous system).  

Stress can be really good for us. It can motivate us, it can trigger our tend-and-befriend stress response, it can trigger our learn and grow stress response. 

This particular piece about the pause and reset is about how do we manage when we go into fight, flight or freeze - when we have stress come up and we feel that it's detrimental to our wellbeing. This type of response comes out whenever we feel the threat challenge. When something is threatening us, we feel under-resourced, we feel that we're not up to the task; in some way we're resisting or feeling under-prepared. So, this is the typical stress response we get when we feel under threat.  

Back in the day, it was all about the saber toothed-tiger; it was all about survival. So, even this threat response has a profoundly beneficial impact that keeps us safe and alive. But what happens in modern day times is that we often find ourselves triggered by events such as an email, a bad report, a snipy comment, or whatever it is that's going on with people around us or that we're connecting with. So, we need to be careful that we don’t get stuck in stress.  

Humans are very adaptive at dealing with stress 

A lot of people live in this chronic stress state and don't decompress and don’t release this stress effectively. And we adapt. So chronic stress can become quite adapted because humans are very adaptive at dealing with stress; it comes in and we go:  
“fine, we can manage.”  

So, we manage stress and then more comes in and we go:  

“Fine, we can manage that as well.”  

And we get these higher, more elevated levels of stress building up. 

For wellbeing, flourishing and thriving, we need to be able to bring ourselves over to our parasympathetic nervous system. This is where we go into restore balance homeostasis. It's absolutely critical that we train ourselves to be able to come to our parasympathetic nervous system when we need to and when we want to. We don't wait for life to put us there. We bring ourselves there and then we build this for ourselves.  

The Anchor Breathing Technique 

I want to introduce to you an actual technique, which is one of my go-to techniques. It's a beautiful and simple technique that works with the breath. It's called the Anchor Breathing Technique. You can use this technique anytime and anywhere. I’m going to teach it to you now so you can take away one way of switching states for yourself. 

This technique will only take a minute or so.  

The first thing you will do is to put everything that you are holding down.  

Sit comfortably, allow your back to be supported. 

Let your shoulders and arms relax 

Put your hands to rest in your lap. 

Then close your eyes and relax.  

And with your eyes closed, just bring your awareness to your breath. Notice that you are breathing. 

Tapping your awareness, pay attention to your inhale and feel the air as it flows through your nose, coming aware of that flow of air as you breathe it in and notice how your chest or your ribs or your belly expands and lifts with that inhaled breath. 

Then, pay attention to your exhaled breath. Notice the air as it flows out through your nose.  

Notice how the front of your body gently softens and relaxes with the exhaled breath. 

If your mind wanders off into thinking as it may well do, just become aware and gently gather your mind and attention back and refocus on your breathing.  

Continue with this focus on your inhale and exhale until you feel relaxed (about a minute will do, you can use a timer/alarm to prompt).  

Then allow your eyes to open.  

Grab a pen or a pencil and make a note for yourself  

How do you feel right now just by paying attention to your breathing? 

As you answer the question, please take note off your emotions and your feelings. 

Since I cannot see what you’re writing, let me share with you some of the feelings and emotions that people from my workshop classes have reported. Hopefully, you’ll see some of these in your own list or that you will also have a sense of this: 

Calm    Quiet    Quiet Inside 

Relaxed   Rested   Secure 

Calmer  Focused  Anchored 

Sleepy   Less Tense   Peaceful 

Smiley   Secure   Refocused 

Grounded    Light    Aware 

And if you can notice, all of these feelings live in the parasympathetic nervous system branch of our autonomic nervous system.  

Sometimes people report feeling focused on the back of just being with the breath. I'm curious to know if you felt your mind wandering off into thinking: Were you able to stay focused or did you have that mind wandering piece?  

Probably you did like everyone has. It's a function of the mind that when we are relaxed, our mind wanders off. When we're stressed, our mind wanders off.  

So, if your mind wandered off, just be aware that that is normal. Part of mindfulness, attention and focus training is to notice. So, if your mind wanders off, don’t be upset about it but instead, gather this wandering mind back and place it on the point of focus. So, the work of mindfulness and training is all about building awareness and enabling you to gather your wandering mind back and placing it on the point of focus.  

Now, I want you to notice the kind of emotions that live, build and grow in our parasympathetic nervous system compared to the kind of emotions that live when we are in sympathetic fight, flight or freeze mode.  

There are two pieces that want to share with you now. 

Let us talk about the breath 

When we’re breathing in a quiet and focused way, you may notice that your breath is a bit smoother, maybe a bit deeper, maybe a bit more relaxed. In our bodies, we have this ribbon of breath- inhale, exhale all the time. And depending on where we are in the system, it can change. If we’re in the sympathetic system, this breath can get quite short and sharp. We can even hold our breath when we're under threat and we feel very much on the back foot.  

So, the breath technique is as simple as when we're here in stress, chronic stress or acute stress, we pause and we reset by simply taking the breath from the parasympathetic nervous system - a breath that is smoother, deeper and more relaxed-then plug it in.   

The simplest thing about taking this breath when we're feeling stressed and irritated is that we trigger the move into the parasympathetic nervous system. We actually switch states. So, this whole thing about pause and reset is knowing that you can switch states anytime just by focusing your attention on your breathing and establishing the smooth, slightly deeper, more relaxed breath. When we do that intentionally, consciously in this state, it has this incredible effect of bringing us over into our parasympathetic nervous system restorative balance homeostasis.  

And a very interesting thing happens:  

So, if our behaviors and actions come right on the back of how we're feeling, then what kind of behaviors and actions do you think would come when we’re in a positive state, operating from the parasympathetic nervous system? Say for example, someone you love – like your partner or child- or a colleague walks in the room and talks to you, you feel rested, peaceful and calm. You feel like everything’s good -life’s good and you’re good. However, if you are operating from the sympathetic nervous system, your actions and words would be profoundly different – they will be coming from a space of being irritated, frustrated, angry, and upset. 

So, it's our work, I believe, to wake up and be aware as to what space we are operating in (are we operating from a negative space or from a positive space?), And if we see ourselves operating from a negative space, we need to choose whether we're going to be there for a bit longer, or whether it's time to shift ourselves out. 

And it’s not to say that being in the sympathetic nervous system (negative space) is bad, but it is to say that we have the power to consciously and intentionally switch states.  

And this is a tremendously empowering piece and I want to share this with you so that you know this, because somehow, it's not really taught. 

I actually believe fundamentally, that it underpins all of the work we do as human beings in terms of: 

How do we grow? 

How do we move forward in life?  

Who are we being in our life? 

Who are we? 

And who are we when we're with other people? Who are we in our relationships at work, at home, and play? 

Further research papers and references 

I just want to end with one tiny bit of information, which kind of racks the whole thing together; Listed below are a list of my favourite academic papers: 

Two minutes of deep breathing is sufficient to lower blood pressure 

-Von Scheele er al., 2005 

Improvs mood and reduces stress levels 

-Perciavalle et al., 2017 

Modulates the autonomic nervous system, shifting sympathetic stress and anxiety states to homeostatic parasympathetic dominance 

-Jerath et al., 2015 

Significant effects found on the respiratory, cardiovascular, cardio-respiratory systems. 

-Russo, Santarelli & O’Rouke, 2017 

 So, this switch of breathing, when we plug it in, we take the breath and we plug it in, literally has the effect of switching states. So, I hope that's been interesting, useful and practical. 

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