← Buddha’s Brain The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom
Buddha’s Brain The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom Chapter 5. Cooling the Fires
Author: Rick Hanson Publisher: Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications. Publish Date: 2009 Review Date: Status:📚
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Activating the Parasympathetic Nervous System
Your body has numerous major systems, including the endocrine (hormone), cardiovascular, immune, gastrointestinal, and nervous systems. If you want to use the mind-body connection to lower your stress, cool the fires, and improve your long-term health, what’s the optimal point of entry into all of these systems? It’s the autonomic nervous system (ANS). This is because the ANS—which is part of the larger nervous system—is intertwined with and helps regulate every other system. And mental activity has greater direct influence over the ANS than any other bodily system. When you stimulate the parasympathetic wing of the ANS, calming, soothing, healing ripples spread through your body, brain, and mind.
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Relaxing engages the circuitry of the PNS and thus strengthens it. Relaxing also quiets the fight-or-flight sympathetic nervous system, since relaxed muscles send feedback to the alarm centers in the brain that all is well. When you’re very relaxed, it’s hard to feel stressed or upset (Benson 2000). In fact, the relaxation response may actually alter how your genes are expressed, and thus reduce the cellular damage of chronic stress (Dusek et al. 2008). You can reap the benefits of relaxation not only by initiating it in specific, stressful situations, but also by training your body “offline” to relax automatically; the methods that follow can be used in either way. First, here are four quick ones:
Relax your tongue, eyes, and jaw muscles.
Feel tension draining out of your body and sinking down into the earth.
Run warm water over your hands.
Scan your body for areas that are tense, and relax them.
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DIAPHRAGM BREATHING
The next method—diaphragm breathing—takes a minute or two. The diaphragm is the muscle beneath your lungs that helps you breathe; actively working it is particularly effective for reducing anxiety. Place your hand on your stomach a couple of inches beneath the upside-down V at the center of your rib cage. Look down, breathe normally, and watch your hand. You’ll probably see it move only a little bit, and sort of up and down. Leaving your hand in place, now breathe in such a way that your hand moves out and back, perpendicular to your chest. Try to breathe into your hand with real oomph, so that it travels back and forth half an inch or more with each breath. This can take some practice, but keep at it and you’ll get it. Next, try diaphragm breathing without your hand so you can use this method, if you like, in public settings.
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Big Exhalation
Inhale as much as you can, hold that inhalation for a few seconds, and then exhale slowly while relaxing. A big inhalation really expands your lungs, requiring a big exhalation to bring the lungs back to their resting size. This stimulates the PNS, which is in charge of exhaling.
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Physical Consequences
In our evolutionary past, when most people died by forty or so, the short-term benefits of SNS/HPAA activation outweighed its long-term costs. But for people today who are interested in living well during their forties and beyond, the accumulating damage of an overheated life is a real concern. For example, chronic SNS/HPAA stimulation disturbs these systems and increases risks for the health problems listed (Licinio, Gold, and Wong 1995; Sapolsky 1998; Wolf 1995):
Gastrointestinal—ulcers, colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, diarrhea, and constipation
Immune—more frequent colds and flus, slower wound healing, greater vulnerability to serious infections
Cardiovascular—hardening of the arteries, heart attacks
Endocrine—type II diabetes, premenstrual syndrome, erectile dysfunction, lowered libido
Mental Consequences
For all their effects on the body, second darts usually have their greatest impact on psychological well-being. Let’s see how they work in your brain to raise anxiety and lower mood.