I'm Ann Corbyn, your crossover coach here with this week's episode of The mind body spirit connection. You are a complex being composed of 3 parts. Just get those 3 parts, mind and spirit, working together in harmony, and upscale your life. I'm here to show you how.
I was on a webinar recently, and I was, one of many attendees, and another one commented during discussion, that when she got nervous, her voice would rise and go squeaky, and she wanted advice or an explanation from the presenter, and he fluffed it completely. He, honestly, he He had nothing to suggest. I couldn't believe it. Anyway, I reached out to her, gave her my contact details, and I got myself a new client. Because I knew immediately what the issue was. It was down to her breathing.
Now you may have heard the advice. In fact, you've almost certainly heard the advice that when you're stressed or nervous or, angry even. The best thing you can do is take 3 or 4 long, slow breaths, or maybe 3 or 4 deep breaths. But there's always a critical piece of advice missing. I'll explain what it is in the in a minute. But The deep breaths will certainly calm you down because you're changing your focus.
And if you've ever looked into meditation or yoga, They usually start with advice about concentrating on your breathing, and it's all well and good, but there's a critical ingredient left out of the instructions the way I see it. And it's this. Hang on. Before I spill the beans. Just, consider your own breathing. Obviously, you're breathing right at the minute, but just notice how you're doing it. Are you breathing through your mouth? Are you breathing through your nose?
Are you breathing quickly in short shallow breaths, or are your breaths Long and slow and deep. What parts of your body are moving? I mean, if you put your hand on your chest, do you feel it going in and out, or if you put your hand lower down on your belly, Is that what's moving? The thing is if you breathe through your nose, you'll notice that the breath goes right down to the lower reaches of your lungs, and that will cause your belly to move out. And this is good.
This is known as diaphragmatic breathing or belly breathing if you don't like using long words. Do you know when I was young? We were told that belly was a bit rude, and it still makes me do a quick double take when I use the word, but it's just so much quicker than saying, abdomen or diaphragm and words like that. So we'll just stick with belly breathing. So give it a try right now. Put your hand on your belly.
That's around about where your belly button is Anne take a long breath through your nose. Automatically, When you breathe through your nose, the breath goes right down, but why should that be important? Well, Let's just explain for a sec what the diaphragm is just in case you forgotten. It's a kind of a dome shaped muscle at the base of your lungs. And when the diaphragm tightens, it flattens thereby increasing the amount of space in your thoracic or chest cavity.
So if the diaphragm is contracted, there is more space in your lungs. And if the breath is dragged drawn right down to the bottom of your lungs. There are 2 benefits. First of all, the Blood supply down there is a lot better. So the oxygen connects with the blood More rapidly, you get more bang for your buck sort of thing. Anne the blood then collects the oxygen and carries it off to the rest of the body, which is good. It's gonna happen quicker.
Oxygenated blood equals more energy, more, concentration. In other words, everything that's good. And the other thing that's great about the lower loves of the lungs is this is where your parasympathetic nervous system receptors are placed in really great numbers. And therefore, those receptors are stimulated, which calms you down. So there are 2 really good reasons for breathing long and slow through your nose. In other words, belly breathing.
Now why should this kind of breathing be recommended? Anne apart from what I've just described, how does it affect the voice? Well, another good thing about it is because the diaphragm has gone down, the chest cavity is expanded. Therefore, more air is allowed in. Anne you have control over your voice.
Not only can you take a deep breath and let it out slowly, you've got the force of extra breath behind what you're saying, so your words will have more power And you can also make the breath last a bit longer, so you aren't gasping for breath literally in between what you're saying. Furthermore, because of those parasympathetic nerve endings, You are more relaxed. So therefore, the muscles in your throat are more relaxed.
Anne when the muscles in your throat are more relaxed, you can speak more deeply. So the clients, who had a high squeaky voice when she was nervous, now knows the reason behind it. And already after just one session with me, she was able to drop her voice right down. Now this kind of training is given to people who go on stage. And, people who sing inquires. Anne, of course, obviously, professional opera singers Anne so on and so forth, They know about it.
They know it automatically, but it's I guess it's yet another of those things that isn't taught to us in school. So try it for yourself. See the difference between breathing, slow Anne deep through your nose, Anne then just breathe through your mouth. And you might actually have noticed that the way you breathe normally when you're not thinking about it is in and out through your mouth.
So the problem with that is that you Corbin a circumstance all the time, a state if you like, that we refer to as fight or flight, which is the state that you're in when you're adrenals. Those are the glands just on top of the kidneys. Everyone's heard of adrenaline, right, Anne cortisol.
Those are the hormones which are released when you are stressed when you're frightened, when you quickly, automatically, have to make the decision to run for your life or to stay, hold ground, and fight or simply to freeze. And you'll know the feeling. I'm sure I know it well. You're asked a question you can't answer, or there's a circumstance that you can't deal with, and you are like a rabbit in the headlights. Poor rabbits, they're famous for it, but you don't know what to do.
You don't know what to say. That's fight or flight. And The quickest way around it is to take a deep breath. I think in the next podcast, I will explain how this breathing interacts scientifically. With the fight or flight reflex.
But for now, I really want to talk about stress because so so many of us are in fight or flight every day of our lives, and we're so accustomed to this feeling that we don't even notice it It's a kind of a low level stress, which is a symptom of the 21st century and the last one as well, because we're all doing too much. We are spinning too many plates. And stress is the body's way of responding to any kind of extra demand or threat. It's automatic.
It's part of the way that our reptile brain, that's the oldest part of the brain, keeps us safe. And this fight or flight mechanism releases adrenaline and cortisol into our systems so that the heart will be faster. We can use those muscles to run away, but the trouble with ordinary life, everyday life in The current century is that we don't use the muscles. We don't actually burn up The hormones, and therefore, they stick around in our system.
And the result is that we suffer from things like depression, autoimmune diseases, skin conditions, unexplained rashes, even weight gain and lack of sleep, of course. What many people just don't realize is that stress depresses the body's immune system. And especially at the moment, The immune system is really critical. Almost all of us are affected by stress to an extent. It's an essential life skill.
And if you think about it, despite all the mechanical help that's around at the moment and Yep. I do speak of computers and so forth. And also all the so called labor saving devices. Yes. Many of them are labor saving, but a lot of them still take up a lot of our time.
What about managing your inbox and your your Telegram account and your WhatsApp account Anne Oh, those of us who have to put out content on social media, not because we want to do it, but because it's recommended for business reasons, it's all very time consuming. And it's stressful. What's more? We complain about being short of time. Many of us are suffering from overwhelm, We're balancing scarce finances. We're dealing with exhaustion. Many are dealing with loneliness.
We're worried about the future. We're probably having insufficient or low quality nutrient deficient food. I know a lot of people who suffer from a kind of generalized anxiety for which they can't identify a reason, but they've just find that they can't relax, and they can't sleep, and they can't concentrate. So we need to recognize all these various different ways that stress can manifest and learn to seek out. And as far as we can, deal with the causes.
And I say again, breath is one of the best ways to manage the stress, but how about trying to stop it happen before it gets a hold. Our stress isn't always a bad thing. Because in short bursts, it can actually help with concentration and performance. Back in the day when I was at college and so forth, taking exams, a lot of my friends Anne I would say, yeah, well, I work better under pressure. Many people do.
I found it was quite conducive to studying when you knew that you had a target Anne you had to get a certain amount learned by a certain date Anne certainly in terms of producing assignments and whatnot, I generally really get going right at the end, and I would be able to produce a lot more.
But in terms of the exams, I found that I could concentrate better if I studied over a long period of time, so that the information just kind of sunk in, and I remembered it better without doing the cram and forget procedure. I haven't said that. I've still forgotten a very great deal that I crammed in just before exams. Because that's the nature of the beast.
Anyway, back to the, the stress reflex, other things that set off the, the sort of the long term low level stress would be major life changes, like divorce separation. A lot of people got separated. During the, the outbreak of the pandemic. And if overseas travel was involved, many of them still haven't been reunited It could be ongoing issues at school or work.
Think of the situation that people are dealing with families are dealing with, with schools being shut or children being excluded because of positive tests and so on and so forth. Relationship difficulties, family, child related challenges. And then with lockdown, There were additional stresses, lack of freedom, lack of structure when suddenly everybody was locked up at home, insufficient space may be difficulty with getting fresh air. It those of us who live in the country were lucky.
It was not a big deal, but I always felt very sorry for young families, stuck in high rise apartments, and so on. There are internal stresses involved with worries about paying bills, what the work situation we'll develop into. Some people were fortunate enough to have furlough, but there must have been an underlying worry about would there be a job for them at the end? And even with furlough, it meant, 20% sacrifice of salary.
And if you are already fully fully utilizing the salary that you've got, and suddenly it's reduced by 20%. It's obviously not good news.
Something else to be aware of just before I finish talking about stress is the pressure that we put upon ourselves, not only are we having to accept uncertainty and coping with change or having to deal with new circumstances, there are those of us who are perfectionists Anne we make or we have unrealistic expectations of what we can produce Anne I'm sure you'll know what I mean when you hear me say negative self talk Do you insult yourself all the time?
Do you call yourself a stupid prat or, maybe you use much worse language than Anne. We're our own worst critics. And we need to address this. Do you congratulate yourself when you get something right? Do you congratulate yourself when you find something that you lost? It's good to be mindful all the time that There's an instruction in the Bible, which is love thy neighbors thyself. And if you look at that statement, You are also being instructed to love yourself. So work on it.
Be kind to yourself. Don't make Unrealistic demands. Anne just changing your breathing will not only address the stress problem but it will help you calm down whenever you need it when you've got a good upset going. Some long deep breaths. Don't forget about breathing through your nose. We'll become a habit. And You know what habits are like? You have to spend a bit of time, in repetitive action where you think about it, Anne eventually, it will become a habit. Oh, habits.
That's a subject for another podcast. So, just reminds me, I would love to cover subjects that interest you. So please let me know through social media. Anne I'm writing podcasts all the time, thinking about doing interviews, and I would love to hear from you. So fresh, that wraps up the mind body spirit connection for this week. Let me know, please, if there are any specific subjects that you would like me to include in a future podcast, join me, same time next week, or connect with me anytime.
Also, social media.