CALM THE NERVOUS SYSTEM: How to do so in 15 minutes or less

Most advice about calming down sounds familiar by now: breathe slowly, notice your body, think positive thoughts, take a walk. None of that is bad advice. But when people try to calm down, they often make one of three mistakes:

• They try to reason with the mind while the body is still activated.
• They try to relax the body while leaving the mind’s story untouched.
• They neglect to intentionally notice the after-effect, which is how the nervous system learns that a shift has actually occurred.

Emotions are body-and-mind events, so calming down works best when we address both. That’s the approach we’ll take here, which protects us from mistakes one and two.

Calming the body and mind aren’t enough. You must also notice the after-effect, which is how the nervous system learns, “I’m not as trapped as I thought.” Even a small shift teaches the mind something important: experience is more workable than it first appears. This will prevent us from making the third mistake.

To start, try to go somewhere you can be alone for a few minutes. An empty conference room or even a bathroom stall will fit the bill. Being outside is even better, especially for the mind relaxation technique.

Calming the body

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Sequence One: Tense and wiggle

As Dr. Peter A. Levine has noted, prey animals may tremble or shake after escaping a predator, as if the body is completing its adaptive survival response. Now, you’re going to look silly doing this, which is why I hope you’ve found somewhere to be alone!

• Stand up and notice how your body feels. Mentally scan through each part of the body and notice any tension or discomfort that may be present, while making no attempt to address anything you find. You’re simply noting your starting point—your body’s stress signature.
• Tense up all your muscles at once and hold the tension there for at least a few seconds. Keep this gentle, and skip anything that causes pain, dizziness or excessive strain.
• Let your arms hang at your sides and wiggle everything. The more ridiculous you look, the better. Wiggle your hips, arms, shoulders and head. It’s perfectly OK to sequence them if it’s challenging to wiggle everything all at once. Be sure to roll your shoulders forward and back, and even wiggle the muscles in your face, since we carry a lot of tension those areas.
• Very important! Relax and take at least 15 seconds to note any changes you feel in the body. Also, be sure to crack a smile at how silly you just looked.

Sequence Two: The 4-7-8 breath

This technique comes to us from Dr. Andrew Weil, M.D., who derived this technique from ancient Pranayama yogic breathwork. And, just as I asked you to be careful with the tense and wiggle sequence, I’ll ask you to be careful with this breath sequence by respecting your body and its capabilities.

• Sit down and relax for a few seconds, noting how you feel.
• After exhaling the stale breath, inhale slowly through your nose for about four seconds.
• Hold your breath for seven seconds. A little longer or shorter is just fine.
• Exhale slowly through pursed lips (like you’re blowing out a candle) for about eight seconds. As you work with this technique over time, you’ll notice that the speed of your exhale directly affects how you experience the calming effects of the technique.
• Again, take 15 seconds to note any after-effects in the body and mind.
• If it feels right and you have the time, complete another 4-7-8 sequence.

What’s most important is that you don’t judge your performance. If the techniques worked for you and your body feels a little calmer, great. If not, don’t worry about it—you may just need some practice attending to your body. Spend a little longer in the noticing steps, which will help you build brain-body connections. As with all new techniques, practice makes perfect. Keep trying!

At this point, we’re about five to seven minutes into the work. Next, we’ll help the mind relax.

Calming the mind

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To understand this technique, it helps to differentiate between what’s happening and your relationship to what’s happening. The mind suffers when it fights against its own experience, so that’s the internal war we’re going to try and end, for at least a few moments.

That being said, I’d never suggest that relaxation requires accepting what’s happening to you, becoming passive and making no effort to improve your circumstances, or pretending that pain and stress are good. But your reality in this moment is what it is, and you can learn to work with it more skillfully and thereby reduce the amount you suffer over it. That’s the goal of this practice.

Sequence One: Expand the mind

We suffer because we allow our minds to collapse and focus too much on the uncomfortable aspects of an experience. This sequence is meant to get you out of your head and into the bigger space of your mind.

• Settle into awareness by focusing your attention on the field of sound. Notice everything you can hear, right now.
• Become interested in the space within which the sounds are coming and going.
• Now, switch to the visual field. Bring your attention to everything you can see in front of you.
• Again, become interested in the space within which all visual objects reside.
• Take 15 seconds to notice that the mind may feel a little “bigger” than it did at the start of this practice.

Sequence Two: Snap into radical acceptance

While the immediate experience is real, the story your mind has woven around it is optional. In the following sequence, I’m going to ask you to drop the entire story in your mind, just for a few seconds.

Now, it’s important to note that you can’t try to drop the story—that would be like trying not to think about a pink elephant or forcing your mind to sleep at 2 a.m. You know what that leads to: the harder you try, the further you get from your goal. So, as paradoxical as it may sound, you don’t try to drop everything in your head, you just do it. Many people experience it as if they’ve finally set down two heavy suitcases after hours of carrying them.

• Keep your mind open and interested in the space you’re in (from the sequence above). If your mind collapsed into itself again, just come right back by becoming interested in the space all around you using either the auditory or visual field (you’ll quickly learn which one works better for you).
• Exhale quickly, and at the bottom of the exhale, snap your fingers and drop all the contents of your mind. Drop the story, release your resistance to the immediate moment, and arrive here—fully, simply, now.
• Again, take those 15 seconds to notice how your mind feels right at the snap of your fingers—right before the mind has a chance to spin up its story again.

You might only get a second or two of relief, and that’s perfectly OK! You’ll be surprised by the amount of stress relief you can experience just by breaking up the mind’s self-concerned rumination. One of my teachers describes practices like these as “punching holes in the mind of suffering.” And, as you practice, the depth of relaxation and the amount of time your mind experiences relief will both increase.

This is where happiness begins

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The point of these exercises is to realize that you have the power to alter your experience for the better. Over time, they’ll get easier as you naturally memorize the steps. You may even find yourself reflexively taking a 4-7-8 breath from time to time, which indicates that the skills are being internalized.

The most important approach is to view these exercises as a practice. As the name implies, you’ll need to practice them! The mind gets better at whatever it practices, so please be patient with yourself and allow your mind to learn how to relax itself and the body.

This is where happiness begins—not as forced positivity, and not as pretending life is easier than it is. Happiness begins as a more workable relationship to the moment. When the body settles, the story drops and the mind notices even a small pocket of relief, it begins to trust something deeper: I do not have to be ruled by every wave of stress that moves through me.

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