6. Mastery of the Body Is Mastery Over the Mind

Welcome back to top mental health tools.Part six mastery of the body is mastery over the mind. This part is about theconnection between the body and the mind, including a useful breathing exercisethat anyone can do at any time.

[00:00:28] What effect does physicalexercise have on mental health and why? Yeah. Physical health is very importantas it relates to mental health. You know, physical exercise has a big impact onyour mood. You probably already know this. I think that is one of the stupidthings that people always suggest to you.

[00:00:46] You know, you're like, Oh, Ihave crippling depression and they go, well, maybe you should go for walkstwice a day as if that's going to solve everything. You know, it's not going tosolve everything, but. The research also doesn't lie. You know, having aconsistent exercise regimen has a similar effect on your mood.

[00:01:01] As an editor, I depressant a lotof times, even an anti-depressant medication. Isn't going to be, do the wholetrick. You're going to need to pair that with lifestyle changes, maybe therapy,things like that, but it's one piece of the puzzle, right? So if you're able tofind a way within your own personal life limitations, you might have et ceterato get some physical exercise, especially cardiovascular exercise.

[00:01:23] You're going to see an increasein your mood. Is it going to solve everything? Probably not, but it's free andyou don't necessarily need any equipment to do it. So I do understand that it'snot as easy as that at times, especially, let's say that you're in thedepression camp. And last thing you have is motivation to go out there and likestart running or something like that.

[00:01:42] That's real. And part of having depressionis trying to find the motivation to do the things, you know, would be helpful.So I suggest starting small, there's a little trick that you can use for, formotivation called the five minute rule, essentially. It's what it sounds like.You can endure basically anything for five minutes.

[00:01:57] You know, you could probablywalk on shards of glass for five minutes if you really want it to don't dothat. But you can endure basically anything for five minutes. So you start withthat, you say, okay, I'm going to go do this thing for five minutes. And thedeal you make with yourself is that. If it's unbearable after five minutes,then you're allowed to quit and try it again.

[00:02:14] Another time in one of my books,I wrote it from, I went on a hike up to the top of this mountain, not a hugeone to Kilimanjaro or anything, but just a nice sizeable hour, long hike. AndI, that's where I wrote the chapter on motivation. I was like, I am notmotivated to write this chapter right now, but I'm going to start.

[00:02:31] I'm going to get five minutes oftrying and we'll see where that gets me. And when I found is that after fiveminutes of trying to write that chapter, I was like, Oh, I totally know how tofinish this chapter. You know, so a lot of times what it is, is getting overthat hump, getting that ball rolling. And once that ball is rolling, it's alittle bit easier to keep it going and keep that momentum going.

[00:02:47] But it's so hard to just getthat first shove, you know, to get that ball rolling. And that's where thatfive minute rule comes in. It's like, okay, I'm going to leave my house. I'mgoing to put my shoes on. I'm going to leave my house and I'm going to go. I'mgoing to take five minutes of a walk. If I hate it, I'll turn back.

[00:03:01] But what you'll find is thatafter five minutes, you start to enjoy the benefit of that walk. And then I'llgo another five minutes. I'll go down to five minutes and then you spend halfan hour walking in. Do you feel very proud of yourself for doing that? That'sone way to help, you know, sort of counteract that, that all or nothingthinking is, you know, either I'm going to do 10 hours of this thing and I'mgoing to rock it or I'm not going to do any no.

[00:03:21] Five minutes is the first step. Thenanother five minutes is the next step and see where it goes from there. Youknow, maybe you have a goal in mind, maybe not, but you need to start small andallow yourself to have those small victories and incrementally work up to thebigger ones. And so, you know, yeah, there are so many programs out there.

[00:03:37] Again, YouTube is, it's a greatresource for this. So if you're trying to, you know, get into running longdistance, then you want to start a program. That's like, okay, how do we do acouch to 5k or something like that? Talk to your doctor, you know, see whatthey think. But. Increasing physical exercise, especially if you're not doingany of it is one free and, you know, relatively easy in the grand scheme way tojust give yourself a little bit of a boost to that mood.

[00:04:02] So, yeah, I think that physicalexercise is, is really helpful.

[00:04:13] Um, there are other thingsbeyond just exercise that you can do physically to help out with your mentalhealth. Uh, deep breathing is the biggest one for me. So your body basicallyhas two halves to its nervous system. You have one side of your nervous systemthat engages when you're in danger. This is a very primitive part of yournervous system.

[00:04:32] If you were out on the Plains asa Hunter gatherer back in caveman days, and you saw a Bush start to rustle inthe distance. You would have, you're basically your, your fight or flightresponse kick in, and this is the precursor to anxiety. It would kick in andyou'd start getting hypervigilant. You would start worrying.

[00:04:48] Okay. What was that looking for?Signs of danger all around you, and it would also increase your heart rate,increase your muscle tone, your tension, all these things that get your bodyready for action. Because if a lion bursts out of that Bush, you're going tohave to run really, really fast to make it back to your little cave person,family.

[00:05:03] Right? And so your body has thisbuilt in stress reaction to help you respond to danger. That's not sustainable,though. When that happens for an extended period of time, you start to getreally worn out exhausted. There are negative consequences to that. So humanshave this nifty feature built in, which is the opposite side of that nervoussystem, rather than fight or flight.

[00:05:23] This is the rest or digestnervous system or rest and digest nervous system. And this is basically thepart that comes in and cleans up all the nests that that fight or flightresponse made. So. It helps you to relax, helps you to calm things down lower,that blood pressure, lower that heart rate, slow down your breathing.

[00:05:40] Essentially, this is what wewould call your relaxation response. So your body has a response to threats,and then it also has the relaxation response, which helps you come back downfrom that. Deep breathing is essentially the key to hacking into thatrelaxation response. So if you can train yourself to have a solid, deepbreathing exercise, you can initiate that other part of your nervous system thathelps to calm you down.

[00:06:03] This is really important becauseI'm getting a little bit into neurobiology here, but don't worry. I'm not goingto turn this into a whole neuro bio class, but there's basically a less evolvedprimitive part of your brain that responds to danger. The part of your brainthat actually thinks through a scenario, imagines the consequences and allowsyou to take action based on that.

[00:06:23] That's the frontal part of yourbrain. That's the part that makes you human. But when there's too much inputfrom that emotional part of your brain, It can overwhelm that frontal part ofyour brain. And so you start making decisions based off of that panicky feelingyou have based on that pure emotion that you have.

[00:06:38] So if there is a way to chillout that part of your brain, that's, that's so primitive and emotional to relaxthat part of your brain suddenly that big frontal part of your brain that hasall the human element can step in and say, okay, hold on. Let's look at the movingpieces here. Let's decide what to do instead of just reacting.

[00:06:57] And so that's one of the majorreasons that deep breathing is a, is a really helpful tool, is to give yourselfthe chance to engage that analytical part of your brain. And you don't need tobring things all the way down. You know, if you're, if you're feeling anxiousor worked up in you're up at like a 10 out of 10, you don't need to come allthe way down to a one coming down to a six would make a huge difference interms of your ability to focus and do what you need to do.

[00:07:19] So I think that having, youknow, just one or two back pocket strategies for debriefing can be very, veryhelpful. The thing is people often really don't understand how to use deepbreathing exercises. Um, a lot of times what happens is people will get into asituation. Find themselves very stressed and worked up and then they go, Oh,what was I supposed to do?

[00:07:40] Oh, I was supposed to do deepbreathing. Okay. They take a few deep breaths and like, Oh God, it's notworking. I'm still stressed. Oh, there must be something really wrong with me.And then they spiral from there. That's because they never actually practicedthe process of deep breathing. Cause deep breathing is a skill it's it's verymuch like if you were say a skateboarder in the X games or an Olympic gymnast,you're not going to go out onto the floor during competition and bust out a newtrick without ever having practiced it before.

[00:08:08] Right. You're going to choke.You're going to hurt yourself. You're going to freak yourself out. You're gonnaneed a bad score. No, what you would do is you would practice it undernon-threatening circumstances, you know, into the foam pit or whatever itpracticed it over and over and over until your body had the muscle memory ofwhat that.

[00:08:23] Trick was same thing here. Youneed to practice your breathing exercise so you can teach your body the processof calming itself down because a lot of us don't really know how to do that atour baseline. So you have the practice that you pick an exercise, do it overand over until you get very, very well equipped at doing that process ofcalming yourself down, engaging that relaxation response.

[00:08:45] And then the idea is that whenyou're out there, when you're about to give that talk, or someone's about tocall on you in class, or you have that first date and you find that you're sowound up. You're able to go. Okay. I know how to deal with this and bringyourself down. One, two, three, four notches, and suddenly things are just alittle bit more manageable for you.

[00:09:10] Can you recommend a goodbreathing exercise? There's a lot of different breathing exercises out there.You don't have to pick any particular one. The one that I always love is what'scalled four, seven, eight breathing. And it's very much what it sounds like. Sobasically what you do is you get into a comfortable position.

[00:09:27] You breathe in for four counts,and I say counts not seconds because sometimes seconds could be a little bittoo slow, too fast for people. It depends on your comfort. Um, sometimes youcan measure it in heartbeats, whatever, but breathe in for four. Right? So youbreathe in for four. And the idea is you're taking a deep diaphragm breath.

[00:09:43] So filling your, your wholelungs, doing a big belly breath, the same way that you would, if you were, um,like coming out of a pool and you're gasping for air that, that you have,that's a big, full diaphragm breath, right? So you're taking in a deep breathfor four seconds, filling your lungs entirely. Then you hold that breath forseven.

[00:10:01] So hold that for seven counts,then you exhale and you exhale through eight counts. Completely emptying yourlungs and that's it. Breathe in for four. Hold it for seven, breathe out foreight, breathe in for four, hold it for seven, breathe out for eight. And youdo that a few times. And what you realize is that, um, the relaxation starts tocome over.

[00:10:23] You. It feels different foreverybody, but for me, it's like, I could feel almost like a, like a warmblanket, you know, sort of just gets like pushed over me. And suddenly I'mswitching into that relaxation response. And with practice, you can get betterand better at sort of quickly diving into that relaxation response.

[00:10:37] And switching on that part ofyour nervous system that calms you down. If you find that the breathingexercises is uncomfortable for you, you can always take a break from it andthen go back into it. You can always pick a different exercise. There areinfinite amounts of them online that you could look up that breathing exerciseitself doesn't matter as much as the practice.

[00:10:55] So you do this on your own time.You know, when you're in your bedroom, before you go to sleep some place,that's not stressful for you. You're not already feeling worked up and youpractice that relaxation process. You know, do this maybe a few times a weekwhen you're first starting, you don't need to do it a few times a week for yourwhole life, but you got to teach yourself that process.

[00:11:14] And then once you have thatskill in your back pocket, that's when you can pull it out during thesituations where you do need to calm down.