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Red monkey green gorilla6/7/2023 It may be 2 or 3 breaths or 1 or 2 minutes. Repeat until you feel yourself slowing and calming. Take a deep breath in and exhale slowly, twice as long as the in breath. What are the signs for yourself that you are heading into the red zone? When you notice them, set an intention to settle and calm yourself. Here are some approaches I’m practicing to get back to green quicker. When in the green zone we activate the parasympathetic nervous system, it’s the foot on the break to slow us down where we are more able to respond to stressors (think ‘rest and digest’ response). If you are like me you have many opportunities to leave the red zone, and go back to green during the day. When our thoughts and our lives are busy, we tend to be on guard, and we can’t fully recover from the stresses we face. However, for most of us this isn’t our reality and we react to small, everyday stressors as if it is. This response is needed when we are under threat for our life or survival. It’s where our sympathetic nervous system activates (think ‘fight or flight’ response) and stress hormones like cortisol go through our bloodstream to enable us to react to the threat, whether real or perceived. It’s the foot on the gas pedal of our autonomic nervous centre. We go into the red zone to avoid threats, pursue opportunities and deal with issues. It increases stress, taking me towards the ‘red zone’. This thinking deprives me of feeling good right now. These thoughts roam down negative, unproductive paths, worrying about things that aren’t here, or ruminating over stuff that’s happened. I’m under pressure from the ‘chatter’ of my multi-tasking thinking. It’s a busy distracted mind thinking about ‘all’ the things I ‘should’ be doing, or ‘should’ have already done.
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