Hacking Your Body's Fight/Flight Response - by Jennifer Skyler - With Love From Portland

When Life throws us a stressful curve ball or two... or 47... it eventually becomes apparent that we're just not equipped as a species to handle chronic stress. Anyone who experiences high amounts of stress daily, for a long period of time, runs the risk of adrenal burnout, increased auto-immune activity, higher levels of inflammation, and susceptibility to disease - especially heart disease. 

                   

                                                                                                                                 (Image from Bodybuilding.com)

See, our bodies are designed to produce outbursts of cortisol, adrenaline, and epinephrine and shut down digestion for a short amount of time until we've either fought off the wild animal attacking us, or can run away from the wild animal attacking us. 

Our bodies are NOT designed to manage rush hour twice a day, angry bosses, debt, rising housing costs, or 24 hour news cycles, etc. 

So what do we do? How do we update our ancient (and brilliant) design to function optimally in a modern day world? 

Of course, meditation, yoga, and eliminating as many stressful situations/people as possible from our lives supports a calmer life, but what do we do when nearly been in an accident on the way to meditation class, can't find parking for yoga, and have toddlers potty-training at home? 

We hack our own bodies' Fight/Flight Response, that's what we do. 

Let's take the wild animal attacking us example again. Your primitive response is either to FIGHT the animal or RUN. 

Now, here's the big secret. The action of FIGHTING or RUNNING actually signals your body to DROP THE HIGH LEVELS OF STRESS RESPONSE HORMONES BACK DOWN TO A NORMAL LEVEL. 

What happens if you almost get into an accident in rush hour, get yelled at by your boss for being late, are notified of an overdraft, find out your rent is going up, have political arguments on Facebook, sit in rush hour again, and arrive home to a mess? 

Well, each stressful event of your day has been compounded by another, and your body has not ONCE received the signal that it's time to drop the high levels of stress response hormones to a normal level. 

The best way to signal to your body that the a stressful situation is over, is to either  FIGHT or RUN.

Don't worry - I know you can't go to Krav Maga four times a day or even go for a five-mile run every lunch hour. That's OK, because...

HERE'S THE HACK:

A SPRINT up a flight of stairs, or a few minutes of SHADOW BOXING in the stall of a bathroom at work (or your office, or bedroom at home) will actually do the trick. 

Sprinting or shadow boxing can be done multiple times a day, every day, after any stressful event, to signal to your body to drop the production of (helpful in the short term, harmful in the long term) cortisol. Your body doesn't need an hour long boxing class or run to get the signal that the "attack" is over - just a few minutes of an intense burst of energy will do. 

If you can't quit your job, your city, your family, your debts, or any other stressful situations in order to preserve your long-term health, try hacking your body's Fight/Flight response instead. 

With Love From Portland,

Jennifer Skyler