Coping Techniques with Brendon Burchard and Dr Nicole Cain ND MA

So first of all is that applying cold to the face can be incredibly effective. And I teach people about creating a panic pack. And a panic pack would be a little bag or a fanny pack or a purse. And this will contain things that you can use in the moment that a crisis strikes. Like, obviously, we want to be doing the work ahead of time, but we can't always predict it. So cold is a very good stimulator for vagus nerve. And so there's. They used to teach about sticking your face in a bucket of ice water, but let's face it, we don't all carry around buckets of ice water. And so a better option is you can pop online and they have chemical freeze packs and you can break that and it gets really cold. And then you can apply it to your face, around your eyes, and that will stimulate the vagus nerve. Another hack for the vagus nerve is to extend the exhale. And extending the exhale may be that you breathe in for four counts, you hold your breath for four counts, but then you extend as hard and as long as you can. So it might look something like hold at the top. And then. And the vagus nerve goes through the diaphragm. And when you extend that exhale, it activates the vagus nerve and it calms the body. And I'm the kind of person that wants to see it, to believe it. I'm like, oh, don't tell me to just extend the exhale. I want the real stuff. But we've seen in the clinical literature, the research in trauma, informed science, that this actually does go straight to the speed of the heart, calms the heart rate, slows it down. And so I have an exercise that I call the three Minute hack. And I would love to share it with you because it's something that you can do if you're about to go on stage or if you're about to have a meeting or you're freaking out. May I? Yes, please do. Okay, so you're sitting there, and as you're listening to this, wherever you are, you can, if you're driving, pull over. But if you're just somewhere where you can go to the bathroom or just go somewhere private for just a minute, what I want you to do is to sit down and you're going to butterfly hug. And then you're going to just slowly tap back and forth. And this slow tapping back and forth has a couple of reasons, so we do it. One is that when you tap yourself, you're telling the brain, I'm here. Right now. And then we are crossing the midline and making the butterfly. And so that starts to activate the different areas of the brain. Sometimes our brain gets stuck. We get in a loop and our nervous system is stuck. It's like a car engine trying to start, right? So we're crossing the midline and we see this in emdr, right, we know that there's that bilateral stimulation, but you can do this on your own. So you go into the bathroom or wherever you have privacy, you sit down and you start tapping and you close your eyes and you're going to do that vagus breath. Because we got to get into the body. Because when we get aroused, our logical brain gets less activity. And so our logical brain isn't really online, it's our emotional brain. Our emotional brain's like tigers are coming, we're freaking out, just run away. So we got to get back in the body, we got to get back in that logical brain. So you're going to start hacking your vagus nerve. You're going to just take some breaths, you're going to tap, right? And then you're going to ask yourself, when was the earliest time? I remember feeling this way. And you're going to allow your mind, allow your body to take you back to that earliest time. And I guarantee you that almost every time that it's not you that's getting activated, it's a past part. Because stress, trauma, adversity gets stored in non logical parts of the brain, the body and the nervous system. And so when we get activated, it may not have anything to do with what's going on right now. Maybe it's something. Someone walked by and they were wearing a cologne or a perfume or the way that the lighting came in the window could be anything, right? So you're tapping, you're breathing, and you're asking yourself, when was the very first time that I noticed feeling this way? And then you'll notice an image or a memory or a thought. And then what you're going to do is you're going to timestamp that you're going to say, I hear you, I honor you. And I want you to know that I'm an adult now and it's whatever year it is, we're recording this in 2024. You say, I hear you, I honor you, but I want you to know it's 2024 and now I have resources that you didn't have. And I want you to know that I've got your back and that you don't have to be stressed or angry or scared. And I want you to trust me that I've got this.