Over the last couple of weeks we have talked about food, energy and ways at looking at your goals. We understand that this can be quite stressful in what is already a world where most people already live with quite high amounts of stress.
This high amount of stress activates an autonomic response in the body through the sympathetic nervous system otherwise known as a flight or fight response. This can lead to an elevated heart rate, vasoconstriction (narrowing) of the blood vessels and sweating. All of these are quite normal as long as we swing fluently between sympathetic and parasympathetic which is also known as rest and digest.
However due to today’s way of living where we pack more work hours in than ever, sleep less, eat food that isn’t giving us the required nutritional value we require as well as having added stress such as finances, family or trying to go to the gym every day we find ourselves in what is known as sympathetic dominance.
This is where working in can help.
Working in consists of focusing on the body’s needs such as breathing, chewing your food, correcting posture etc. This will allow the body to be put into more of a parasympathetic response and allow improvements in the body without actually stressing out the system. The exercise below is a great drill to focus on breathing as well as realigning the body out of an anterioly dominant position.