PLEASE NOTE: Becoming mindful of what one feels within their body can sometimes feel intolerable if one has experienced trauma. Please read this chapter responsibly, if you feel you need support, please don’t attempt the exercises without a trained trauma therapist guiding you.
These exercises are simple enough to tell over, however for them to become consistently effective regulators and to change the wiring of the nervous system and brain, one needs to experiment and find a few that work for them, and practice daily, even up to 5 times a day.
The process of learning any discipline may feel constricting initially but its true intent is to free, expand and grow a person to their fullest potential. Think for example of learning to master an instrument. Thousands of hours are invested in the process of practicing. Those hours of practice may be annoying sometimes, and one may need to prioritise it, make time for it. However, when a musician starts to feel like they have mastered their instrument and they can express themselves fluently through it, it is the most freeing and beautiful gift.
I cannot accurately describe the life-changing effects of learning how to regulate one’s nervous system. One can only truly appreciate the value of this work when they experience it for themselves and see the results. It is truly a gift. Though learning how to regulate one’s nervous system does not mean a person will never become deregulated again. Not at all. Only that when they do, they are empowered to find their way back. They are no longer groping around in the dark.
There are many regulation techniques and new ones are being discovered all the time. Though they mainly fall under these categories:
Breath work
Presence and body awareness
Thought process shift
physical exercise or body movements
Why the breath?
The breath is the bridge between conscious and automatic functions in the body because it’s one of the only functions that can be both. Most things are governed by one or the other—they are either conscious or automatic. If one chooses to stand up and walk across a room, this is due to a conscious choice; One’s body doesn’t just do it on its own accord. Whereas one’s digestion happens without one consciously having any input. If one was not comfortable about the way their body was digesting their food, simply thinking, ‘hey stomach, please work more efficiently, would do nothing to change the situation. The autonomic nervous system does not operate from conscious choice. People don’t consciously choose what they are afraid of. Often a person will spend a lot of time and money trying to figure out how to stop their bodies from reacting in panic to things that are not dangerous. Many people would consciously say, ‘I wish I wasn’t afraid of xyz’. So how does one overcome fear and influence the nervous system when it has been hijacked? The breath is a bridge. It can be consciously stopped, slowed down, sped up and yet if one doesn’t think about the breath at all, the body will breathe automatically on its own.
Furthermore, the breath gives information to the body about safety. When one feels fear, breaths become shorter and shallower, stimulating the sympathetic nervous system (stress mode). When a person feels comfortable and safe breathing deepens and slows. When one exhales the Parasympathetic nervous system (peace mode) is stimulated. Communicating with the autonomic nervous system happens through breathing differently, not through a conscious request of the logical thinking brain. Focusing on exhaling slower and longer sends the body a clear signal that it’s safe to move into Peace mode.
There are many forms of breathing I have found to be helpful at different stages of my own life. Hypnobirthing breathing techniques, quantum touch breathing techniques and Wim Hof breathing techniques are all very different, yet I found them all to be my favourite and incredibly helpful.
Here are a few breathing techniques to begin experiment with
- Try breathing through a straw, whistling, or humming. These are all ways of drawing out the exhale as long as possible. Try to exhale for 20 seconds at a time for 3-5 minutes and see what happens.
If 20 seconds is not possible yet, keep practicing, with time you will be able to do it.
- Wim Hof – look online for his guided breathing session for beginners – or read a book on his method. It is a very powerful regulation tool.
- The breathing technique in Quantum touch – the power to heal by Richard Gordon.
- Focus on inhaling whilst your belly rises slowly and gently. With every exhale watch it fall, like a baby sleeping.
Resistance
When one is stressed, sometimes, the last thing, they will find they want to do is to breathe slower. Truly the body believes it is in danger and this is not the time to relax (if it didn’t believe this it would be relaxed). Think of a time when you felt very angry and someone came along and said in a calm voice, ‘don’t be so angry, take a deep breath, life is good,’ you probably felt like slapping them. When the biology truly believes it is in danger, it wants to stay on high alert because that’s how it believes it will keep itself safe. Slow exhaling can be as irritating to the body as someone telling it not to be angry. When one knows this, and just acknowledges how stressed the body is currently feeling, watching the stress, without judgment, whilst choosing to breathe anyway, allows the resistance to melt away.
Constricted diaphragms
There are 3 diaphragms within the body, when a person is stressed (fearful) they all contract. There is one at the base of the skull which, when contracted, can result in headaches, back pain, and compromised brain function. There is one just below the lungs which, when contracted, restricts breathing. And there is one just behind the eyes, which create pupil dilation and tunnel vision, physically and also metaphorically, when one is stressed, they can’t see the bigger picture or other perspectives.
In parshas va’eira (Exodus) 6:9 the word used for stress is ‘kotze ruach – shortness of breath’.
Moshe came to tell the Jewish people they would be freed from Egypt
“But they could not hear Moshe due to their kotzer ruach (stress, shortness of breath), and their seemingly endless hard work and labour. (Exodus 6:9)
When in Stress mode, constricted vision, and limited brain function, will stop a person seeing, that the answer to one’s pain may be just standing in front of them and all one needs to do is look up and see it.
Why body awareness and mindful presence?
Bessel van der Kolkwrites in the body keeps the score:
‘The neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux and his colleagues have shown that the only way we can consciously access the emotional brain is through self-awareness, i.e., by activating the prefrontal cortex , the part of the brain that notices what is going on inside us and thus allows us to feel what we are feeling. Most of our conscious brain is dedicated to focusing on the outside world: getting along with others and making plans for the future. However, that does not help us manage ourselves. Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going on inside ourselves.’
In the language of Chassidus, Daas is the part of the soul that gives a person self-awareness. Daas is a lot of what biology calls “prefrontal cortex functions”. The self-awareness parts of the brain, the parts responsible for giving one a sense of self and seeing a bigger picture. Daas is the source of one’s ability to have compassion (maamar – Ani Nosati), free choice and to see other perspectives.
Daas not being expanded enough to hold the pain
In the book of Bamidbar (Numbers) 21:4 it describes the Jews as being stressed whilst traveling in the desert
Rashi:
“Vatiktzar nefesh ha’am ba’derech”: The soul of the people became katzar (constricted, pained) because of the torach ha’derech (duress, hardship, challenges of the journey). They said, “We were so close to entering the Land, and now we are traveling in the opposite direction. This is exactly what happened to our parents– as a result of which they ended up wandering in the desert these thirty-eight years!” Their souls, therefore, felt constricted due to the duress/affliction of this journey. In Old French, ankro-delor, this is yiush-– despair. The expression kitzur nefesh (restriction of soul, energy) is used whenever a person experiences a difficulty—when they feel overburdened. The reason for this is that their daas is not “large and expanded” enough to accept and handle it. There isn’t enough space and place in their heart for this pain to dwell. In sum, every instance of kitzur nefesh indicates that a person cannot endure the pain, for his daas is not up to the task to help him endure, handle and contain it.
(Rashi, Numbers 21:4)
These verses describe stress as shortness of breath and one’s daas not being large and expanded, the part of the brain that is able to hold the experience is shut down, i.e. the prefrontal cortex which is what gives the capacity for a person to contain and hold pain.
Bessel van der Kolk writes in the body keeps the score:
Simply noticing what you feel fosters emotional regulation, and it helps you to stop trying to ignore what is going on inside you. As I often tell my students, the two most important phrases in therapy, as in yoga, are “notice that” and “what happens next?” once you start approaching your body with curiosity rather than with fear, everything shifts.
Becoming self-aware, noticing, ‘what actually are you feeling right now? And where?’ is key. Start by noticing where in the body the feeling is felt? What does this stress feel like? What relationship do you have to this feeling? What relationship does this feeling have with you? Does it feel hot or cold? Is it moving? Fast or slow? What texture does this feeling have? Where does it begin and where does it end? Does it have a colour? A shape? What happens when it is watched? What is behind it? Under it? On top of it? If it had a voice, what sound would it make?
One may or may not get answers to all these questions. It doesn’t really matter, what matters is;
- To sense and feel if there are answers in the body, not to analyse logically.
- The attention and care you are expressing by just asking the questions and getting curious
“Notice that” – “what happens next?”
If the feeling moves, follow it to the place it moves to (this is called tracking). If the feeling becomes more intense, keep watching, and focus on exhaling deeply and slowly – keep watching, keep breathing. If the feeling falls away, notice what comes in its place.
Creating a felt sense of safe connection within the body
Before processing pain within the body, one must first identify a comfortable place. A part that feels safe and soothed.
Experiencing a felt sense of safe connection within the body is often a starting point. It’s always about sensing, not thinking. The logical thought process is called Bina in kabbalistic terminology but the part of the brain that senses information in the body is the Daas and this is what one needs to regulate the nervous system. A felt sense of safety in the body, not a logical thought about safety.
Here is an example technique
Imagine being held in gentle, supportive, and loving arms. Being in a beautiful peaceful place, or anything that one associates with safety, connection and soothing. Focus attention on this for a while using imagination or spatial awareness until it is felt as a sense in the body.
The nervous system doesn’t know the difference between real and imagined experience. i.e. if a person thinks of the sun shining on their face in a focused way for long enough, there face will begin to feel warm. Or if one thinks of something they are afraid of, their heart rate my become elevated and they may begin to sweat.
Once a felt sense is established focus on where it is felt most in the body, breath into it to deepen and expand the feeling. Do this as often as possible.
Other techniques include becoming aware of one’s body’s experience of pleasure/ comfort in the moment. i.e. notice what ones back feels like against a chair they are sitting in, notice how supported one’s head feels against that pillow, notice what it feels like when smelling that smell, seeing that beauty, hearing that sound, or tasting that taste. Mindful awareness of pleasure in the present moment, on a sensory level is regulating.
Pendulation
Once comfortable places have been established and developed as internal body resources, the next stage is to move one’s attention in very small increments to the part of the body that feels the anxiety/ stress/ pain for a short while and then to move ones attention back to the comfortable place, focusing on exhaling slowly as one does this, repeat as many times as needed to feel a sense of relief, this process is called pendulation.
Window of tolerance
Finding one’s window of tolerance is another starting point. If one doesn’t feel comfortable feeling, one’s feelings. Ask, ‘what can I tolerate, what if I was standing on one side of a park and my feelings were on the other, would I feel comfortable to look over towards them from this distance? Find the spot that feels comfortable and then take half a step closer. This is the stretch, stay in that position, notice what it feels like and breath slowly and deeply, whilst mindfully watching and relaxing into the stretch, when one begins to feel regulated again, take another half a step and so on, until there is a possibility of looking at the feeling with compassion, and communicating with it.
Trauma recovery programs will include bodywork practices such as Feldenkrais, Yoga, Chi gong, martial arts, which teach a person how to become mindfully present of their body whilst they breath and move.
The most important thing to bear in mind is that pain does not need to be fixed, it needs to be found. Relating to oneself with the intention of fixing parts that are broken only triggers the stress response more. A need to fix ones pain is also a pain, that needs to be found, not fixed.
Thought process
One way of measuring stress is the distance between where one is and where one thinks they should be.
The Baal Shem Tov teaches that a person is always exactly where they should be at any given moment, and yet that doesn’t mean they must stay there once they become aware of where they are. In fact, awareness automatically shifts a person into a different state of being. Knowing that wherever one is, one is already connected; is deeply healing. One doesn’t need to try hard to come out of stress, trying hard creates more stress. know that in the stress they are connected.
Baal Shem Tov al HaTorah, Amud HaTefillah p.6
Even while one is in katnus (constricted consciousness – stress), be in deveikus (feelings of bonding/ attachment) with the Shechinah.
Any experience of safe (predictable, available, present, loving, soothing) attachment is regulating.
Baal Shem Tov al HaTorah, Parshas Eikev p.31
In the name of the Baal Shem Tov of blessed memory: One does not need to always resettle their mind to connect with G-d. Rather, just think and imagine that everything is completely hidden and immersed within the light of Divinity.
Again – wherever I am, I am safely attached and one with the All.
Divine providence
The Baal Shem Tov repeats this idea many times in many ways one of the most revolutionary ideas that he taught was that of Hashgacha protis – Divine providence. Here is his definition as told over by Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok schneersohn in Likkutei Diburim volume 1, chapter 4a section 3
The concept of hasgacha protis, Divine providence, as it is explained by the Baal Shem Tov, is well known: even a wisp of straw or a leaf are governed by Divine ruling that determines how many times they are to be turned about and where they will come to.
The Baal Shem Tov teaches that the Holy One, blessed be He, arranges sets of circumstances of various kinds in order to implement the Divine providence that governs a minute creation This goes even as far as a fallen leaf that has been rolling about since last year in some back yard or other, or a bit of straw from a stalk which someone used when thatching a cottage roof a few years ago, and now travels from one place to another. To accomplish this, a storm windbreaks out shaking heaven and earth in the middle of a warm and sunny day etc.
The Baal Shem Tov explains that every single created thing has its own worth Above, each according to its essence. That which is domem (still life) is different to that which is tzome’ach (plant life), and this, in turn, is different to that which is chai (animal kingdom) which is further different than medaber (speakers- human). And within the realm of medaber, the people of Israel are ‘the people close to Him’.
The Baal Shem Tov concludes by saying that the degree to which Divine providence applies to ‘the people close to Him’ cannot even be imagined. For if a question as petty as whether the straw or the leaf will remain in their present place or be moved elsewhere is determined by Divine providence, then how much more so with regard to that which affects any one of His people. The Divine providence that determines movement in a Jew’s life transcends our understanding.
Several times in Keser Shem Tov it mentions that hashgacha protis extends even to thoughts that arise into one’s conscious mind. Each thought is an opportunity for growth.
Truly knowing (sensing within the body) that there is no true mistake. And every place that one is, mentally, emotionally, or physically is a place they were sent to, to grow and learn from there. That one is never alone, and always loved. That one is part of a cosmic oneness, something so much greater than oneself, is transformative.
Daas Hashem – a felt sense of G-d in the body
The mitzva of knowing G-d – Daas Hashem, is to have a felt sense of G-d within one’s body, to sense the life force within and know that this is G-d, the breath, the heartbeat, the warmth, movement and all the senses are truly an expression of divine energy in a physical container.
In the Chassidc discourse (maamar – Veyadata Hayom) the Alter Rebbe writes:
This is why the verse states, From my flesh I envision G-dliness (Job 19:26), as this ‘vision’ is caused by meditation on one’s flesh: by observing that the body is alive and vibrant, one becomes aware of the soul within him, which is the life force of the body. Although one cannot see this physically, it is as real as sight.
To truly know something and sense it in the body one must spend time focusing one’s attention on it, chewing it over in one’s thoughts, until one feels it as an emotion.
Identifying limiting beliefs and becoming curious
When one’s inner thought process is one of, guilt, fear, self-doubt, shame, or confusion.
Identifying limiting beliefs by becoming curious and recognising the way one currently interprets the world is so important, that awareness is half the healing. Creating new beliefs and views comes with asking questions, clarifying ideas, learning new insights, shifting the paradigm.
Physical exercise or body movements
- Physical exercise that raises the heart rate, regulates the nervous system by burning off cortisol and adrenaline. These are stress hormones that cause a feeling of jitteriness and anxiety within a person.
- Physical exercises that cross over the bodies energy (look up Donna Eden – energy psychology) or a align breath with movement (Tai chi, yoga, or Feldenkrais) all help to regulate the nervous system by moving stuck energy.
- Standing on one’s head
- Eye movements: looking at something close by for 4 seconds, then looking at something far away for 4 seconds, repeating this pattern for about 3 minutes or until the heart rate goes down and the body begins to feel regulated. Another eye movement that helps is looking from side to side, until one feels more relaxed. Eye contact with others.
- Cold water: Putting ones whole body, are just part in cold water, (for more info on this look up Wim Hof)
- Physical touch that is siithing, a hug, a massage etc
Becoming aware of ones biorhythm and supporting it
Sometimes a person’s nervous system is dysregulated, simply because they are tired, hungry, in need of exercise, fresh air, nutrition, etc.
They may or may not be aware that this is the cause of dysregulation. They may override it, i.e. by staying up very late and then eating chocolate and drinking loads of coffee to compensate. Either way the more one overrides the biorhythm of the body, the less one hears it and the less capacity for choice one has over instinctive responses. Living in disconnection from the body and biorhythm is also known as living at a little distance from one’s body.
That gap (between self and body) is easily filled with distraction and absent-minded acts.
Bring self-awareness and curiosity into the picture and focusing on, ‘what does my body want right now?’
Go with the first response and then go deeper.
What do I want?
I want chocolate
What is it about the chocolate I want?
Energy, and to feel pleasure
Why do I want more energy and pleasure right now?
Because I am tired and feeling stressed
If your tired what is stopping you from going to sleep?
I have to do this job
How do you want to be doing this job?
In a peaceful and present way
What do I need in order to do this job in the most peaceful and present way?
To eat the chocolate whilst being totally present and enjoying every bite, sinking into my body. Or to take a 10-minute power nap, or to do it tomorrow, or to play music whilst I work, or to ask for help and do it with others etc
Regardless of where the inner questioning takes someone, the process of asking, ‘what do I want?’ is regulating and gives a person access to the gift of choice. (Rather than hurriedly and distracted eating a whole bar of chocolate, and then looking for more.)
Every craving the body has is truly giving information about what the body needs. However, each person, depending on their level of self-awareness, and education will understand the urges of the body to mean different things.
For example:
All food cravings are the body communicating deficiencies, these cravings are often miss interpreted because of lack of information.
If someone is craving crisps or salted peanuts it is due to a mineral deficiency, a good quality fat deficiency or a need for grounding and order.
Eating foods that have good quality minerals and fat content, as well as grounding through more effective means will eliminate the craving.
However, if one chooses to eat the crisps, and not connect deeper to the biorhythm, the cravings will come back repeatedly. This is due to the crisps having no mineral content, the salt flavour however temporarily tricks the body into thinking it has what it needs, when the body realises it has been tricked, the cravings return.
Using sensory pleasure to bring one into a present expanded state of consciousness
Keser Shem Tov #77
Before beginning to study, the sages would make light conversation in order to open their minds from a constricted state–katnus, and bring themselves to an expanded state–gadlus.
Tanya, chapter 7- ‘Rava ate fat meat and drank spiced wine so he would be able to open his mind in order to learn better.’
Anything sensory, and neutral (not forbidden according to halacha) done with mindfulness and presence to support the biorhythm, regulates the nervous system and brings a person into a more embodied state.
Beautiful smells, being in nature, a beautiful and clean house, buying new clothes, breathing out with a smile on ones face, drinking enough water, eating good food, painting, gardening, physical exercise, changing your posture, talking to a good friend, laughing, singing, dancing, gratitude, cold water swimming, doing an act of kindness, creating, learning something inspiring, listening to music, a hug—all of these things and anything else one may enjoy, if done with presence and mindfulness bring one from a state of katnus (constriction) to gadlus (expansion).
My experience with this
When I was a child, I was told the story of Reb Moshe Meisels who was a Chassid of the Alter Rebbe.
The Alter Rebbe didn’t want Napoleon to conquer Russia. He sent Reb Moshe Meisels to spy on Napoleon so he could help the Russians defeat him. Moshe was inside a meeting where they were looking at maps and discussing the best way to attack when Napoleon looked at Reb Moshe and said, “You are a spy!” And he immediately pressed his hand on Moshe’s heart to see if he was afraid. His heart was calm. Napoleon stopped suspecting him because he thought that if he truly was a spy, he would have been very afraid at being accused of being one, and his heart would be beating very fast in his chest. When he was asked how he managed to stay so calm he said, the Alter Rebbe had taught him the concept of moach shalat halev – the mind rules over the heart.
When I heard this story as a child, I thought it was totally irrelevant to my life. I knew the saying moach shalat halev and yet I didn’t have any control over my heart. I just spent time feeling guilty because apparently, we are supposed to be able to do this, but how??? No one ever taught or explained to me how this was possible.
When I was expecting my third child, I had a friend who told me there was a way to give birth without experiencing pain and without taking any drugs. I was intrigued. I had found my first two births to be the most physically painful experiences of my life and I wanted to experience a pain-free labour without taking any drugs. She told me she had done a hypnobirthing course and gave me a book to read about it. I started to read, Hypnobirthing by Marie Mongan.
The theory behind it is like this:
The autonomic nervous system is the communication network within the body. Its main function is to interpret messages it receives through the senses and determine which actions should be taken based on this information. It then immediately communicates this to the other systems in the body.
If the person giving birth feels fear or a lack of safety on any level, the autonomic nervous system triggers the sympathetic nervous system (stress mode). This spells pain. More specifically:
‘When it (stress mode) is in motion, it causes the pupils in the eyes to dilate, increases the speed and the force of the heart rate and causes the body to startle and move defensively. It suspends activities such as digestion. Most important it closes arteries going to organs that are not especially for defense, including the uterus’ – (Hypnobirthing by Marie Mongan)
And during labour, what one needs most to stop lactic acid build-up in the uterus (huge factor in the amount of pain felt), is blood and oxygen. With fear, arteries going to the uterus tense and constrict, instead of relaxing and opening as they should. And then one ends up with a set of muscles trying to open and another set trying to close and tighten – this causes a lot of pain.
Additionally, when a woman is in labour, her body naturally produces endorphins, (feel-good hormones), in abundance. They are more powerful than morphine as far as painkillers go. The number one blocker to these endorphins is when adrenalin and stress hormones are in the blood. They take up all the receptors and do not allow one to experience the euphoria of the endorphins the body naturally makes in such a situation. Fear, then, tremendously amplifies the pain in labour.
Mongan describes in her book how a person can learn to remove all fear from the system before and during labour. The tools? Breathing, presence, body mindfulness and visualisation techniques.
Having learned this, I started practicing her techniques. The first one was to teach myself to breathe in deeply, steadily, and slowly for 20 seconds. The breathing needed to be continual with no holding of the breath at all. The exhale was to be for the same length of time or more. The second technique was to breathe into the belly. When one breathes in this way, the stomach rises when inhaling and falls when exhaling, like a sleeping baby. Next, I learned to move my attention through my body and notice any muscles that were tight, choosing then to relax them.
At the time, my second child was one years old, and he had reflux. He would wake up in the middle of the night screaming. It wasn’t the usual baby crying that starts off softly and gradually grows; it was silent–and then a scream of intense pain. At night when I heard him scream, I would wake up with my heart pounding–my sympathetic nervous system in full swing. For the next few weeks, I practiced this technique, the moment I heard his cry, I began to breathe slowly, deeply, and choose to relax my muscles. In the beginning, it took me a while to calm my heart down, but with time it got quicker and easier. Until my heart rate no longer went up when he screamed. Like a muscle, the more I practiced, the more choice I had. My subsequent birth experiences were not pain-free, but the pain was tolerable. Overall the births were enjoyable, quicker, and deeply profound intense spiritual experiences.
Several years later when I began to learn about neuroplasticity – the capacity for the brain to change in response to experience – I realised that the breathwork I was doing to prepare me for labour was, in fact, changing the wiring in my brain and making me less ‘triggerable’ if that’s a word.
When one consistently practices regulation techniques even when they are not stressed it rewires the brain so that one actually becomes more flexible and resilient in a time of stress.
Moving through pain
Birth is a great metaphor for how painful emotions travel through the body, they are like contractions. If a person is able to feel and observe an emotion as it is, with curiosity and kindness. It moves through like a wave, becoming more intense, peaking, and then releasing. If, however, one doesn’t know that this is how emotion processes, through the body, when they feel emotional pain, and it begins to intensify, the stress response becomes overwhelming. In an attempt at self-preservation, the body will do everything it can to shut down the pain, stopping it mid-cycle, keeping it stuck. Some of the ways emotions are shut down mid-cycle are through judgment or anger towards oneself or others. Sometimes it’s through apathy and numbness, or depression. Sometimes though avoidance. The secondary response to this is fear of feeling pain and fear of feeling fear. This is one of the consequences of not knowing that moving through emotional pain is not dangerous (it is painful, but not dangerous) and can be an adventure if one stays curious. It can be a process of stretching and growing and an opportunity to connect with parts of oneself that may have been disconnected and are looking to find their way back home. It’s the weights that one lifts in the gym of life.
Chassidus - through the eyes of a psychotherapist 