Fight, flight or rest and digest?

We are all athletes, even if we don’t know it. We are faced with competition, training and recovery needs for our body daily. Our body seeks to live in a state of equilibrium that allows us to work at an optimal level. We must be able to adapt to the physiological, psychological and environmental stressors that we are presented with in order to be healthy athletes.

What state do you live in everyday? Do you have peaceful thoughts or anxiety or a depressed mood? Do you ever wonder why some day’s are just better than others? Do you ever wake up and you are agitated and don’t know why? Do you ever feel like some day’s you just can’t get going no matter what you do and other day’s you zip around like there’s no tomorrow?

I think it’s important to remember that our bodies have built in regulatory systems to help us function and it is in these systems that we often find our response patterns to life. Sometimes we live in the wrong systems and then we wonder why we can’t sleep, digest our food or enjoy our life. Somehow and in some way, our Autonomic Nervous System has gone awry. It either got turned off or turned up and forgot it’s normal work pattern. It is our job to reconnect with this system to keep it healthy. It’s not about always moving and doing, there also needs to be a resting and rejuvenation time as these things together keep the system healthy.

In my world of physical therapy, we work with athletes everyday and we realize the muscle contraction is just as important as the muscle relaxation. There must be both to have a healthy musculoskeletal system in good working order. When we have too much muscle excitability we will have muscle tightness, restriction and pain and then when we have muscles hardly working, we will have pain and a loss of the ability to lift, carry or load the system. We need both flexibility and strength to be balanced.

The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) is responsible for unconsciously regulating bodily functions such as your heart rate, respiratory rate, digestion, pupillary response, urination and sexual arousal. It can regulate certain reflex actions like swallowing, coughing, sneezing and vomiting. This ANS has two distinct branches to it: the Sympathetic And Parasympathetic Nervous System. The Sympathetic system is responsible for our “Fight and Flight” response pattern to lives activities and our Parasympathetic system is our “Rest and Digest” system.

These systems are opposite in nature. One is excitatory and the other is inhibitory. One is the accelerator, the other is the brake. We need both to be working well to have the quality of life we need. Often one is activated at the expense of the other. Post traumatic Stress Disorder or high anxiety often has one living with the Sympathetic Fight and Flight turned on way too high. Then we may have other health issues where the system has its foot on the brake with no ability to generate activity at a level we need.

So is it possible to learn to help these systems stay in harmony? According to Mark Levine, U.S. Navy Seal and Founder of the SealFit program, something as simple as “Box Breathing,” “can make you feel less stressed in a matter of minutes.” When he uses this breathing technique he says “he is left with a deeply calm body and an alert, focused state of mind”. That sounds like something each of us can learn to do, and in our physical therapy office we call this mindful breathing and we use it with our athletes during training.

Mindful breathing or box breathing is simple and allows us to assist the ANS. The idea is that there are four steps, like the four corners of a box. You breath in to the count of 4, you hold the breath for the count of 4, you breath out to the count of 4 and you pause for the count of 4. You do this sequence for 5 minutes. The idea is that with practice, you can begin to have the ANS work more rhythmically without getting caught in one system or another. We don’t want to live in fight or flight or in rest and digest, we want a balance between the systems for optimal health. Try some box breathing or mindful breathing today to decrease stress and tension and relax the body and strengthen the mind. You can help train this delicate system.

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Sheree DiBiase, PT, is the owner of Lake City Physical Therapy. She and her amazing staff would love for you to learn to balance your system by practicing mindful breathing techniques. Come see us in our Coeur d’Alene office (208) 667-1988, Hayden office (208) 762-2100 or in our Spokane Valley office at (509) 891-2623.