Take control of your life. One breath at a time.

Do you feel like your life is out of control? And if you're at the— you feel like you're at the mercy of everyone and everything outside of yourself, it is time to step into your power. Life in addiction recovery and feel like you are drowning in the ocean, incredibly overwhelming. Hard to breathe, and you're at the mercy of the undercurrent. If this resonates with you, stick around, and I'm going to talk about how to bring your heart and brain in coherence in order to remain sober. Hey, hey, Dr. Dallas Bragg here, and I help people heal from addictive patterns by merging spirituality, science, and coaching. If that resonates with you, check out my page, subscribe, like, comment, all the good things to help the algorithm bring this video and more to other people who might find it useful. Uh, when I quit using the substance decades of habitual momentum did not just magically stop. I attempted to find stability by looking for lifelines outside of myself. I fell victim to the volatility of doing that, of placing my stability on people and things external to me. I found empowerment through heart coherence. You might have heard of this from all kinds of different people out there, Dr. Joe Dispenza and those kinds of experts. I am not an expert, but I am going to share with you what's worked for me. Once I took control of my emotions, though, I became my own lifeline. I didn't need anybody else. I've been able to change the direction of my journey one breath at a time. Here is how I did it. Step 1. Reframe your expectations. Successful sobriety begins by accepting that it is a long game. You cannot change the direction of decades of going in one way, doing one thing, thinking the same way with the same trauma. All that momentum is not going to change overnight. Don't set huge goals or make grand resolutions when you first begin the sobriety journey. Or when you begin, even with this smaller journey of using breathwork. I, you know, I coach people and, and they kind of scoff at first at the tiny goals that we see, that we set. But even if it's okay, you know, sometimes we're at a place where we can only think 1 hour at a time in our life. So I will say set a goal of in the next hour, I'm not going to use drugs. I'm not going to drink. Or whatever it is, it seems insignificant, but it really isn't. Because you have to start where you are, and you have to begin with these small, tiny goals to instill in yourself the self-trust again. You have to establish and reestablish that your word means something, because you are basically— when you set these huge goals and you keep breaking them, you are telling your body, your nervous system, that it is okay to break the rules and that no matter what you say, you're not going to do it. So number 2 is become the observer. Empowerment is difficult, um, while you're drowning, right? Imagine stepping out of the water just for a minute and observe yourself drowning. Detach from the overwhelm and simply witness your thoughts, emotions, And behaviors. This is the first step in my coaching program, not to keep plugging it, but is awareness and observation. So really, for a while, you don't change much. You just observe. You see yourself in a relapse situation, or you see yourself triggered. You don't try to change it, and you don't look for an answer right away. You just observe, and you're aware. Again, stepping out of the water and watching your thought processes, the emotions that come up. You just kind of— you take notes as if you're studying yourself, because you really are. Number 3 is create gratitude anchors. So anchors afford you the stillness against the undercurrent, right? They give you stability. Find a person or a memory that fills you with the most powerful feeling of gratitude. Now bring that up into your mind's eye repeatedly and feel that emotion, that gratitude overtake your body. My gratitude anchor when I was in early recovery was bringing up the day that my kids picked me up from jail that last time, and we went to the park, and I pledged to them standing there that I would choose them over drugs moving on, moving forward. That group hug anchored me through so many nights of temptation, me holding the phone ready to text my dealer, cravings, using dreams, anything you can think of. It got me through the first few years, really. It's just taking myself back and anchoring into that feeling of gratitude, that reframing, that perspective shift of Being in that moment, it takes you back to having that kind of resolve again. So number four is change the course. This is where heart math comes into play. Heart math exercises will allow you to take control of your emotions. You self-regulate, which brings the body in alignment. It starts to function normally. This is called coherence. There's you know if you want more information, I'll put the link in the. In the comment— in the description. But HeartMath, the HeartMath Institute has all the details on this. But for this video, we're just talking about the basics of it, which is coherence, bringing your heart and brain in coherence. So coherence, this is called coherence, and daily practice will begin to change really the course of your life. You've taken control from the inside by being in coherence. So A real quick exercise is the HeartMath breathing coherent exercise, is that you breathe in for 5 and out for 5. You're going to breathe in longer and slower, deeper and slower than you normally would. Do that a few times and then bring up that emotional anchor, that gratitude anchor. Bring it up into your mind's eye. Fill yourself with that emotion. Let it be all over you. And then your heart Thinks you're safe. The heart knows you're in gratitude. It tells your brain you're safe. Then the brain tells your body function normally. We're not in flight or fight. We're not in danger. We're moving forward. We're safe. And so the universe then can now use you and direct your life because you are in alignment. That's how we're supposed to be, or we could be more often. And that's kind kind of in that what's called the state of allowing, right? Number 5 is monitor through journaling. So daily journaling is vital for charting this progress. Over time, your stress threshold will lower and you will think clearer. You will make more intuitive decisions and you will feel like the author of your own story. That's the point, really. We're taking control of our sobriety We're putting addiction in the passenger seat, sometimes even the trunk once we get to that place. But we, we're in control. And when your heart tells your brain you're safe, you're in control. At that point, you're not having knee-jerk reactions. You're not catastrophizing. You're not living in anxiety and those kinds of states of mind. Of course, aren't going to help your sobriety journey. So, so many people are searching for solutions for being stuck, for finding their purpose, or feeling incomplete. The answers all lie deep within the heart where the entire body is controlled. If you look on heartmathinstitute.org, you'll see the heart is actually in charge, right? The heart has its own brain and it is actually running the show. So once you control your emotions, All of life's answers actually really come to you by divine grace. You don't even really have to try, because once your body is safe and in alignment, in coherence, you begin walking in alignment and everything starts to fall into place because you're not blocking it by having emotions that are depleting in your field. That being said, thank you for this quick video. If you'd like to schedule a free session with me, we can discuss HeartMath for your sobriety, you can email me at dallas@drdallasbragg.com. And don't forget to visit HeartMath, uh, the HeartMath Institute. It's at