Vagus Nerve Reset

Posted on March 2, 2022 Written by Liz Williams Leave a Comment

The Vagus Nerve Reset

I gave a quick run-down of the Vagus Nerve Reset from Stanley Rosenberg’s book Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve in a post about staying out of emergency mode. I’ve gotten questions about how to get the most out of it, so I thought I’d give the vagus nerve reset its own post.

This simple exercise activates the branch of your vagus nerve that activates the relaxation response. With each activation of this branch of the vagus nerve, the body wraps it in more myelin, a substance that acts as insulation around the nerve. As a nerve is wrapped in myelin, it fires more reliably. Fire it enough and it becomes your go-to response, the thing you do first.

But how do you activate a nerve responsible for relaxation?

It really does seem like a contradiction in terms, doesn’t it? That’s why Rosenberg’s method is so genius: It’s simple, subtle and indirect.

You aren’t trying to relax. You are not performing relaxation. You’re simply moving your eyes to one side without moving your head, a simple concrete task. Doing this causes the branch of the vagus nerve that produces relaxation to fire and that causes myelination. It’s automatic.

Bypassing those thoughts in your head is easy too: Just count. If your thoughts are racing quickly, count fast enough so there isn’t space enough for the thoughts to get a toehold in your mind. Your mind can only do one thing at a time. Don’t worry or obsess. Count.

Vagus Nerve Reset Instructions

You can do this seated or lying down. I recommend lying down in a comfortable position, head level and interlaced fingers behind your head. Your legs can be straight or bent at the knees, whichever is most comfortable.

Look to one side with only your eyes, that is without moving your head, and count. You can stop after a minute or after you sigh* or yawn, whichever comes first.

Then look to the other side with only your eyes, that is without moving your head, and count for up to a minute or until you sigh* or yawn.

(*By sigh, I mean naturally and effortlessly inhale a little deeper and exhale a little more fully.)

Do this at least once a day. I do it first thing in the morning and again if I wake up at 3:00am; my partner does it at night, just before going to sleep.

The effects are cumulative. After two weeks, I realized that I hadn’t been relaxed in years. It was a delicious feeling. After three months, I’m calmer. I wonder what will happen for you?

You can let me know by writing a comment or dropping me a line.

Filed Under: Beyond Resilience, mental hygiene, mindfulness, Open Focus

Open Focus Results #1: High Shoulders with Pain

Posted on January 15, 2022 Written by Liz Williams Leave a Comment

As a certified Open Focus coach (COFC), I’m prevented from making claims for open focus sessions. I’m not licensed to treat anything, and can’t claim to have done so. Which is fine with me. Instead, I will share what I see and hear from the people I work with. Like today’s session.

An orchestral musician presented with tension and pain in the right upper arm, neck and shoulder. As we were on Zoom, I could see the shoulder elevation, and infer the tension. I could also see pinched features and lines around their eyes and mouth.

I aimed the session at maintaining a narrow focus while simultaneously connecting to space in a diffuse, broad way, which is what musician’s must do: You can’t stop being narrowly focused on the instrument you’re playing, and at the same time you must also take in other musicians, the conductor, and the balance of sound in the room. If you are using narrow, objective focus to switch between these views, you will tense up and that will affect the sound you are producing. What’s needed is a simultaneous attention that shifts effortlessly as the need arises, but never loses touch with all these elements.

The only way to do this while staying relaxed is to open your focus. It’s the easy and effortless way to pay attention to several things without being too narrowly focused on any one thing. We went back and forth from the space in the body to the space in the room (narrow, diffuse, narrow, diffuse), and when we both opened our eyes 30 minutes later, the hunched shoulders were now sloping away from the neck and the eyes were sparkling in a relaxed face. As we processed the session, their shoulders fell even more. It was wild to see.

I love this work! I love seeing the results and hearing “Wow,” after a session, which is the response I hear most often. It’s feels like a miracle. It isn’t, of course – it’s just me helping someone use their brain and nervous system the way it was designed: Changing how you pay attention changes your brainwave pattern which changes your physiology. That’s how we are designed.

Filed Under: Beyond Resilience, mindfulness, Open Focus

Beyond Resilience – Staying Out of Emergency Mode

Posted on December 11, 2021 Written by Liz Williams Leave a Comment

Possibly you’re one of the people who are happily sailing through the toxic sludge of Covid pandemic and ill political winds that continue to blow. If so, I commend you. I am not one of those people. The last several years took me down to my studs. Not that all that time I spent stretched out on the couch was wasted though: Oh no! I was diligently looking for a way to come at the challenges of life differently. I was tired of picking myself up and getting back in a race I no longer believed in, tired of all the ways I knew to recover. I didn’t want to be more resilient, or to bounce back more quickly. I wanted to stop bouncing. And I really, really wanted to end the chronic pain I’ve been in for decades.

So when my physical therapist suggested I read a textbook for PT’s on pain, I thought, why not? “Of the six causes of pain, only one is the original injury,” she said in a quiet voice. “The others are…well, you’ll see.”

Put simply, my sensitive nervous system hadn’t gotten out of emergency mode in decades. I’d been so tense for so long, I’d forgotten what relaxed felt like. So I started digging and experimenting with ways to calm an overly-sensitized nervous system and found two: a vagus nerve exercise (keep reading) and a way of paying attention called Open Focus**. I want to share them both with you.

Open Focus is a simple technique that immediately shifts and your body from emergency mode to relaxed alertness.

When you change HOW you pay attention from a narrow focus to one that is broad and immersed, your brainwaves shift into a lower frequency called alpha. Alpha brainwaves unwind the effects of emergency mode, relaxing your muscles and letting stress hormones drain away. It really is this simple:

How we pay attention matters more than what we pay attention to

And it’s easy to learn and to do at any point in your day. These are the kind of comments I’ve been hearing from my clients: “Oh, that IS better! I can feel myself relaxing.” “I feel like I just got a massage, inside.” “I feel completely stoned.” “This makes such a difference.” My own pain level went from a constant drone to a rare event that fades quickly.

Click here for a 25-minute Open Focus session you can try.

And, here’s the three no-cost sessions I’m doing this month. Bring a friend, family member, or co-worker.

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==> Please join me for three no-cost Open Focus sessions:

December 3, 10 and 17, 2021. Fridays at noon Pacific Time for 50 minutes

==> Contact me to sign up and I’ll send you the Zoom link, and the audio recording afterwards.

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The Vagus Nerve Exercise

This is from bodyworker Stanley Rosenberg’s book, Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve. I do this, first thing every morning. I do it again if I’m having trouble going to sleep: Lie flat on your back with a straight spine, head level. You can bend your legs or not, whichever feels better on your back. Without moving your head, look to one side for up to a minute (I count to 60 as slowly as I can) Then look to the opposite side for up to a minute. That’s it! After two weeks of doing this, I started to feel relaxed. That made recognizing what it felt like to be in an alpha brainwave pattern much easier. More to the point, I could recognize when I was in Beta so I could do something about it.

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**More detail on Open Focus: The late Les Fehmi, Ph.D., was a pioneer in neurofeedback. He discovered this simple formula in the late 1960s: Shift from narrow, objective focus to broad, immersed attention and your brainwaves shift from Beta, associated with tense alertness to Alpha and it’s relaxed attention. The alpha frequency is the one we are built to live from, but we are taught to focus narrowly until it becomes a habit we don’t know how to break. The more we do it, the more our brains think there is an emergency and the physical stress response kicks in – shallow breathing, stress hormones, muscle tension, tunnel vision, black and white thinking. As we shift our narrow focus away from what is stressing us, we inadvertently add to our stress. For me, this had become my unconscious response.

Filed Under: mindfulness, Open Focus

Hold on tight! Transition Curve Ahead

Posted on April 6, 2020 Written by Liz Williams Leave a Comment

Every change sets off a transition process. This is why you’re having all these feelings during this unprecedented time in history. Although our understanding about this new corona virus is changing daily, the way we respond to change – the transition process – is well-understood, predictable, and you’ve been through it before. You know how. You’ve got this. And you will not always feel this nutso.

Reading Time: 4.5 minutes

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Change or Transition?

In his book Transitions, psychologist William Bridges separates change – an event in time – from transition, which is the psycho-emotional process of adjusting to a change. Every change triggers the transition process with its predictable and sometimes tempestuous trajectory.

Take getting married, for example. You look forward to your life as a spouse, a part of a unit, and that distracts from the fact that things you loved about your single life are coming to an end. You no longer make decisions alone. You are not as free to do what you want when you want to do it. There are conversations, negotiations, creative solutions.

==> Every change initiates a trip through the Transition Curve

If changes we look forward to trigger the transition process, what about those we don’t choose? Like not being able to shake hands, or showing your love by staying six feet away? Even small changes like these can put as into transition: I think of myself as warm, friendly person and I’m acting like a hermit. It’s confusing and awkward. Understanding what to expect is a big help in navigating your way through the transition curve.

The Transition Curve

ENDING or, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

The transition process starts the moment you realize something has ended. Denial is our instant response to this realization. “Sure, we’re not in Kansas, but everything else is the same, right? I mean, people still look like me and speak my language and….who are all those tiny people and why are they singing and…there’s a wizard? Oh, c’mon.” Like Dorothy on the yellow brick road, your denial is peeled away, step-by-step, encounter by encounter.

As your denial ebbs, you become aware that you don’t know how to be anymore – you don’t know how to feel like yourself. You don’t feel competent in the new reality, because you aren’t – it’s too new. Although we don’t realize it, we get much of our sense of self from the way others respond to us. When that response changes, it’s confusing and disorienting. What used to work doesn’t anymore. We can become confused about how we fit in to the new picture. We can question our value. Denial protects us from this questioning until we are ready to take it on.

“Just the facts, ma’am”

Facts, information and clear boundaries are what you need to get past your denial and through the Ending phase of transition. If you are going to go through the discomfort of shifting the way you are in the world, there better be a good reason.

Letting go of denial can be as simple as accepting you’re going to be late to work because you keep getting off at the wrong exit so you’d better set your alarm earlier. It can be as complicated as the identity reset you’ll need to become a husband, wife, or parent. It can be the moment you realize that your clients or employees will need something different from you, something you might not know how to provide.

When you’re ready to accept that your sense of certainty has come to an end, and your former way of being in the world may not be a fit, you’ve entered the next phase of this normal, predictable process of transition.

THE NEUTRAL ZONE

The neutral zone is like putting the transmission of your car in neutral – no matter how much hard you pump that gas pedal, you’re going nowhere. The neutral zone is all about not knowing, which is unpleasant for most of us. Being confronted with what we don’t know can be nerve-wracking. We’ll do anything to get back in gear, to feel like ourselves again. We’ll jump back into denial, deciding to simply do what we’ve always done, consequences be damned. Or we’ll will ourselves into the future, deciding that we know exactly what to do. No matter which of these you try, you will end up back in the rich soup of the neutral zone, unable to mover forward and not yet ready to. But you are very busy adjusting to a new reality. It takes the time it takes.

Your job is to simply to stay here in the zone of the unknown, getting all the support you need. Maybe there is a routine or practice you find nurturing and maybe you want the support of others. It’s OK to slow down, to feel a little lost and to reach out. It’s OK to get cranky. It’s OK to enjoy the downtime too. It’s normal to swing between these two. Eventually, you may start to feel anxious about not knowing when the neutral zone ends. You may start wondering why other people are not reacting like you are. You may think, “what is wrong with me?”

Absolutely nothing.

Do what you can. Swing over to denial. Try something new. Take risks. Fail. Try again. It’s OK.

You are OK. This won’t last forever. How can I help?

These are the kinds of things you need to hear in the neutral zone – kind, supportive murmurings, a warm smile, a friendly gesture, all taking the pressure off. The neutral zone is like someone dumping a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle on the floor, then hiding the picture of what it should look like after kicking a few of the pieces under the couch. The time for facts is over – you need support.

BEGINNING

One day you’ll wake up and that nagging pain in your back will be gone. Your optimism and focus are back, and you have more energy. You may feel calmer, more grounded, accepting. You’ll find yourself humming as you get ready for the day, thinking how you’re looking forward to familiar routines or the adventure of trying something brand new. You will once again feel like yourself. And you’ll think, “This is great! Can I keep it?” Yes, you can. It’s yours, or more accurately, it’s you.

Inspire me!

You are ready for inspiring talks fresh starts. You’ve figured it out and gotten your mojo back. Will you revisit the neutral zone? Maybe. While models like this one are linear, life isn’t. It turns and swoops and curves back on itself before jumping ahead or pausing. But you’ll be visiting those other phases, not living there.

What about my clients, employees, friends, family?

Everybody moves through a transition at their own pace. Understanding where someone is helps you offer them what they need rather than offering them what you need. For example, if you are struggling with the ending, you may share your denial or hammer others with facts. If you are in the neutral zone needing support, you may offer support to others who are still in denial. If you are all the way through the curve and offer inspiration when others need facts or support, you may sound like you’ve lost your mind. This tendency, though natural, is not helpful.

Listen, then meet others where they are

Just knowing about this transition curve will improve your communication and effectiveness 100-fold. Listen to your clients, colleagues and employees. Where might they be in the transition process? Offer facts, support or inspiration, depending where they are, not where you need them to be. It’s OK to be where you are too, and not heroically trying to inspire others when you are freaking out. Consider telling your story, admitting what you don’t know and sharing your humanity with people. Pause. Wait for ideas about what to say or do to come. They’ve never failed you before and they won’t now. It just may take a minute longer.

Filed Under: Leadership, mental hygiene, mindfulness, power

So Many Ways to Say Shut Up, So Little Time.

Posted on September 27, 2018 Written by Liz Williams 4 Comments

Reading Time: 1.5 minutes

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“I understand.”

“I’ve got it.”

“I think what John is trying to say…”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.’ (impatiently nodding head and waiting to speak)

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I’ve been noticing this in myself lately, the way I’ve adopted a conversational rhythm meant to hurry people along. In my role as facilitator, I sometimes have a legitimate need to interrupt people, and I do, most often to ask them what the gist is. “I’m having a hard time knowing what to pay attention to in all you’ve said. Could you summarize it in a sentence?”

I find it hard to listen to an endless barrage of words and know what the speaker wants me to glean from it. In the US, we give preference to people who talk a lot and often, believing it’s a sign of confidence and leadership. It’s not, of course – it’s just extroversion. Some leaders seem to have been taught that speaking is the same as leadership, so they start talking at the beginning of the meeting and don’t stop until it’s over. These meetings rarely end on time.

Sometimes when everyone’s eyes are on me, I just start babbling, and I wish someone would interrupt me and ask that magic question: What is it you are trying to say? In those moments I need to be asked, because I’m running scared, talking because people are listening.

I want to interrupt these kinds of speech as an act of kindness and deeper listening. I want to not say or be heard as saying “shut up,” but to be seen as asking to hear what the speaker really wants to say, even if they think it’s unacceptable. Especially then.

In my quest I’ve noticed that “shut up” comes in so many forms, some of which are listed above. I bet there are hundreds of them. Do you struggle with this too? Do you have strategies that work? Have you heard other ways we say “shut up” without appearing to? Your comments are welcome.

Filed Under: better meetings, collaboration, mindfulness

One Situation, Three Kinds of Business

Posted on September 25, 2018 Written by Liz Williams Leave a Comment

3 kinds of business: Mine, Yours and God’s

Filed Under: collaboration, mental hygiene, mindfulness

Mindset Mapping: Growth, Fixed or Mixed?

Posted on September 23, 2018 Written by Liz Williams Leave a Comment

Filed Under: mental hygiene, mindfulness

Icebreaker: What’s Your Rhythm?

Posted on September 16, 2018 Written by Liz Williams Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 1 minute

Icebreaker Time: 10-15 minutes
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Here’s a drum circle technique you can use anywhere, even when you have to be really, really quiet.

1. Have a participant say their name, then tap our the rhythm of their name with their hands, either on the table or on their thighs as they say their name.

2. Have the rest of the group join in, tapping the rhythm and saying the name.

3. Ask the participant how it was to have everybody playing the rhythm of their name.

4. Ask others how it was to join in.

5. Do it again with someone else in the group until you run out of time.

6. (Optional): Debrief with the entire group

Tips

Use first and last name (sometimes the first name is too short)
Use a word or phrase instead of a name. For example, a team could drum it’s values, one at a time, reflecting on what each felt like when played.
Vary the speed, volume or style, either by demonstrating or by asking questions “What would it sound like louder, quieter, slower, rock and roll style?” etc.

This simple exercise is a mindfulness meditation. It gives participants a different way to simply accept and be touched by another’s offering. In addition, having your name drummed by others can be a powerful experience. Drumming a word or phrase that has meaning for the team can be similarly powerful – it’s a way to sit with a word or phrase before deciding whether you agree or disagree with it. Slowing our rush to judgement helps us become present with one another.

Filed Under: icebreakers, mindfulness