Meditate your way to Freedom

Looting, Fire, Relationship Issues, Work stress, financial pressure, job loss. 
At times life feels way to much. Have you ever felt that sunken feeling in your stomach when you feel you can win? Yeah, you and me both. 

Life goes on eventually but is there a better way? Is there something I can do that is a surefire way to increase my ability to handle and thrive in difficult circumstances? 

Yes there is! 

I found this solution when my anxiety was sky high. I can’t tell you the hopelessness and fear that gripped me when I had a debilitating anxiety disorder. 

I thought I was dying. No joke. I went from doctor to doctor, neurologist to neurologist trying to figure out what was wrong. The issue? 

My body was over stimulated in what is called hyperstmulation. A cycle state where the mind drives anxious thoughts, the anxious thoughts drive the brain to release cortisol, the cortisol driving more anxious thoughts, and so on. 

What resulted is my body was so hyperstmulated that it’s capabilities just shut down. I wasn’t able to do many of the simple things I could before. 
Through an anxiety program I found out about “deep relaxation” or meditation. Deep relaxation calms the body, engaging the “parasympathetic nervous system”, much deeper that sleep. This deep relaxation allows the body to rest and allows the body’s networks to begin to equilibrate down to normal levels. 

For those without (and those who do have) anxiety disorders, this deep relaxation has a profound effect on the body. 

Studies show objective prefrontal cortex density increases for those who meditate. The Stanford study showed that within 8 weeks there was an objective increase in prefrontal cortex density. 

What does that mean? Well, the prefrontal cortex is responsible for regulating the emotions. So with a prefrontal cortex that is basically swol, you have the capability to regulate your emotions and fight/flight/freeze response much better. 

From first hand experience, this has changed my life. Things that used to bother me and scare me, I am perfectly okay with now. 

For a personal story, I am an avid rock climber. I found that when I practice deep relaxation before climbing, my rock climbing is on point. When lead climbing, I’m not afraid of falling or going above my clip. Rock climbing is all about gaining power over yourself to climb. It blew me away how powerful deep relaxation is to the human brain. 

It also helps me sharp and engaged at work. Many successful CEOs do deep relaxation with the most progressive doing stimulus isolation. Deep relaxation is just the plebeian version of this but has all the same benefits for free. 

My challenge: try it for one month or even better, 8 weeks. In that amount of time you know there will be objective measurements on increased prefrontal cortex performance.
 
The key is to do 2 sessions per day for 20 mins. 20 minutes is the optimal time to get your body into deep relaxation without wasting time. 
I do a visualization technique. This constitutes visualizing the number 1 for one minute, then 2 for one minute, and so on until 10. After that I count down in the reverse sequence. 

Remember this isn’t a competition rather the intention is to calm and relax. When your mind wanders, be kind and bring your attention back to your breathing and start back where you left your numeric sequence. Like Vicki Robin’s says “No Shame, No Blame” 

I hope incorporating this into your routine will make as huge of life change as it did for me. 

To your freedom, Slama Llama