I'm coming up on inspire, a discussion about the fight or flight response and how we can manage stress and anxiety while maintaining life routines.

Stay with us.

Inspire is sponsored by the Raymond C and Marguerite Gibson Foundation and by the estate of Ray and Anne Goldsmith.

Hello and welcome to inspire.

It's always wonderful being here with my lovely co-hosts Amy Kelly and Danielle Norwood.

Today we break down what stress really does to the body and sharing realistic ways we can reset without guilt.

We've all experienced that fight or flight feeling, which can appear at situations at home or at work and life.

What can we do to calm down when faced with those intense emotions?

Here to help us understand the fight or flight response and provide healthy ways to manage stress and anxiety are Laura Mead, meditation teacher and artist, and Nancy Crago, a licensed clinical social worker who is now retired after 35 years, and children's mental health services.

Thank you both for being here on Inspire.

I love how we said healthy ways to handle these emotions, because we can think of plenty unhealthy ways to deal with them.

But you know, they say that you learn something new every day.

So we're going to start out by saying that I knew about fight or flight.

Heard about freeze a couple of years ago.

But you all have a new concept that I want you to share with our viewers.

So I'm going to have you start and then add on to that, please.

Sure.

Hi, and thanks for having me.

This is really great.

And I think such an important topic, and the newer to the fight, fight, fight, flight or freeze is also fun.

And the idea of fighting is, is where we're kind of submissive and we're trying to placate someone.

And this is another response that we can have in a stressful situation, that we're just doing whatever we can to make the peace.

And that is actually can be a stress response that isn't necessarily the best adaptive in certain circumstances.

You said it was a new term to you to.

So I don't feel so bad that I didn't know about it.

Tell us about your reaction to it.

Yeah.

No, it makes sense.

You know, the, fight or flight is what we've known for a long time.

But there are other responses.

And when you hear the description, you can really relate to, you can think of examples of, times where you've seen people do that.

So it does make sense to me.

Okay.

Okay.

So it's fight flight, freeze or fun.

And we have some great materials that you provided.

So the fighters when you're like ready to go.

All right.

I, you know, ready to go flight is obviously, you know everybody out.

You know just kind of running for whatever that is.

Even if you just emotionally shut down.

Right.

That's flight you just done.

Well that's freeze right.

When you just kind of don't move at all.

And fun is I would say making peace or getting along.

But that's not the case.

Not necessarily is my understanding.

And again it's a relatively new I think in the last several years this this new form comes in.

It's the way I mean it in a circumstance where we think of it with an animal, it's an easiest way to think about it.

Is this idea that an animal sometimes like a dog, when it's really stressed, it submits to you, right?

It'll kind of crouch down and and it acts in, in very humble ways.

Isn't that learned helplessness in some instance?

I mean, it can be and it can kind of go along the trajectory of, of freezing.

I think, you know, where you start just kind of curling down into yourself a little bit.

The idea to my mind is that these are automatic responses that may be useful or not useful.

And that's the challenge with with fight or flight.

There can be times, as I understand it, with fight or flight where it's it's really useful to have that heightened activity.

You know, if you're driving on an icy road, you want to be very vigilant.

You want to have that that extra adrenaline running through your system where it's not so adaptive, is if you tend to be a person that Fons is your your boss asks you to move up your deadline and you go, oh yes, yes, yes.

Instead of being honest and saying, you know what, I can't do it before you know the original date or whatever, that kind of thing is where it can be maladaptive.

So we want to be able to know what's going on so we can make a conscious choice about how we respond.

You know, I'm glad you bring up a work situation, because I remember learning that my fight or flight was a thing going on with me.

I there we would have these meetings, once a quarter with all of these, vice presidents.

And one of them, she would ask a question in the back of my neck, would just.

And I would go right into fight.

I didn't even hear what she said.

I just ready to, you know, go right at her and, you know, someone notice that about they said, you know, Leslie, you're not really listening.

You're just going for it.

And so, you know, this, I think, is an important thing for everyone, of course, to understand.

But I think women especially because, you know, not everyone is, you know, into that idea of trying to peacefully coexist.

And so what are some tips to help folks who are, you know, wanting to get into that, you know, get out of being into the fight and flight type situation.

What, what what would you recommend, ladies?

Well, I think the point to the whole thing is what how you respond instinctually may not be the smartest way to respond to a situation.

And, we have to engage the upper level, parts of our brain that think more clearly.

We have to get hurt if we're if we're responding fight or flight, and we're operating from our very most basic brain stem, and we need to engage our whole brain so that we can think about what is the best response for this situation.

What is that?

I want to get out of this situation.

How do I get to that point?

No, I can respond to that.

Just the opposite, because I've had some type A personality biases where they came into the room and it was a brush fire, and then automatically you went into foreign mode.

So although it's a new concept, some of us have been living underneath that paradigm forever.

So how do a lot of us who tend to kowtowed to the people who are like, above us, kind of put more of an aggressive tone on it so that we can be heard or we make the right decisions in those moments to say, no, no, you're not walking over me today.

How do we change that?

What do we need to do to kind of flip the switch as it is one of the reasons that that I became a meditation teacher about 30 years ago is because I was working in populations and seeing lots of people that had stresses in one way or another.

And I noticed there was a subset population of people who did a lot better than the other people that that I was working with, and they were meditators, and it didn't matter what kind of meditation.

Meditation is a little like, you know, it's a term that means to to cultivate our thoughts and attention, where we direct ourselves.

And it doesn't necessarily do with what comes out of a lot of different backgrounds and religions.

It doesn't need to be tied to that at all.

In the same way that yoga originally came out of the Hindu tradition.

But you don't need to know anything about the Hindu tradition to practice yoga effectively.

It's the same with meditation.

There are many cultures and lineages that have it.

You don't need to know those backgrounds to utilize meditation, which is a way to cultivate how you attend, how you direct your thoughts.

The idea here is that when, as Nancy mentioned, when we get caught in fight or flight, we're caught in this responsive mode without a lot of thinking.

If we can catch ourselves before we're hooked, then we can start to have volition or choice in how we respond.

And the best way that I know to do that is learning to meditate.

Oh that's fascinating.

I've got lots of questions about that.

But I am curious, when you're when you were talking, I remember often the way I respond.

Anyway, I saw my daughters respond growing up.

When they're in a situation, they say their brain just scrambles.

It just scrambles.

I can't they they're not really listening.

They can't, they can't maintain what you're saying.

They can't get their thoughts together.

Everything just scrambles.

Of course, when they're kids.

And, Nancy, you worked with kids.

They are ones who typically meditate or can put that together.

So when you're in that situation or you're a parent dealing with your kid in that situation or their immediate steps we can take, we can get to meditation in a second, but immediate steps to take to kind of get that back down.

Yeah.

I think it might be helpful if I, demonstrate just using my hand how the brain functions.

Okay.

So if you think about the palm of your hand being the brain stem, and that's where fight or flight comes from, that's our reptilian brain goes back to caveman.

You know, that's very that's our survival brain.

If you fold in your thumb, that's your limbic system.

That's where all of your emotions come from.

And then if you pull down your fingers, that's our cortex.

That is our upper level thinking.

So problem solving, creativity, empathy for other people.

This is where we all feel best.

We want to keep our brains like this.

So if we are upset and functioning like this, or if we scared and functioning out of our brain stem, it doesn't feel good.

And so what we have to do is work to reorganize our brains and pull in all levels of our brain functioning so that we can think through what we need to do.

So what we're talking about is, how do we get back to this state?

We need to take a short break.

We're gonna we're gonna take a breath.

And coming up, we feature more tips on how to navigate through stressful situations while maintaining our busy lives.

We'll be right back.

Hello, I'm Laura Meade.

I've been a meditation teacher for about 30 years, and I'd like to offer some meditation techniques that you can do yourself at home.

There are many different types of meditation, but the one I'd like to offer today is focused meditation.

One of the things many people are dealing with today is stress, whether it's work or home or politics.

Most of us have some kind of stress in our lives, and meditation can be a very helpful tool to help us gather our attention, relax and refocus ourselves.

And we find that when we have the ability to relax and stabilize our attention in the present moment, that there's a sense of well-being that naturally arises from that.

So I'd like to teach you today a brief meditation that just introduces you to that idea of focus meditation.

So we'll do the meditation and then we'll talk about it a little bit afterward.

So if you're ready, get relaxed.

Find a place to sit or lay down.

Your eyes can be opened or closed.

Either way is fine and will begin.

So we begin our practice with three centering breaths, bringing us into the here and now.

These are intentional breaths to cleanse the palate.

To reboot our attention to the present moment.

And then begin by relaxing the body.

Letting the shoulders drop.

Letting the forehead be spacious and loose.

Inviting the body to be at ease.

And once you feel the body relaxed, we next begin to focus on the breath.

And we're stabilizing our attention on the breath.

Entering and leaving the body.

Just the sensations of the breath.

There's no need to control the breath or regulate the breath.

We're simply witnessing the breath entering and leaving the body.

And if you feel yourself carried away by a thought, no problem.

That's a long held habit bound to happen.

The minute you notice yourself carried away by a thought.

Relax, release the thought and return to witnessing the breath entering and leaving the body.

Release.

Relax.

Return over and over again to witnessing the breath.

Noticing the sensations of the breath.

Moving in and out of the body.

And the natural peace and ease that comes with this.

And we can bring our practice to a close.

So take a moment now, after our two minute meditation and see.

Do you notice any difference after the meditation?

And if yes, what?

What do you notice?

If this was your first time meditating, it may have been very difficult for you.

That's okay.

Like with anything else, training will help you get better.

Just like any other skill.

The other thing that I hear very often from people is, oh, I can't stop my thinking, so I can't meditate.

Well, that's just not true.

What I found and what all the teachers I've studied with have told us, is we can simply learn to direct our awareness away from our thoughts, whether or not they continue to arise, just as we did in the meditation.

You may have been carried away by a thought that's very common, but each time if you simply relax, release that thought and come right back, your training, your attention to go where you choose it to go rather than where it wants to go, which is often just randomly roving around.

So the invitation here is to allow that meditation to really help you focus, relax, and find that well-being that's waiting in you all the time, just waiting for you to discover it.

We'll offer more of these different kinds of meditations in future videos, and I hope you'll join us.

And I hope this is useful.

Thanks so much.

And we are back to continue our discussion with our guests.

Laura mead, meditation teacher and artist, and Nancy Craig, a licensed clinical social worker and now retired after 35 years with Children's Mental Health.

Okay, so we were talking a bit before about how to calm down and breathing and all this.

And Laura, you are a meditation teacher.

How does one teach meditation?

I have tried and you sit there and you go, okay, be quiet.

Okay.

Focus on your breathing.

Oh, okay.

It's not all of us.

It's a little bit different than that.

It's just like, how do you.

What?

I mean, I you my.

I've got little song lyrics going through my head and stuff I need to do.

And it's like, oh, no, no, they can't just.

Yeah, I'm, I'm Type-A.

So.

Yeah.

How does one teach meditation?

Well, you're a good company because I'm a type two, which is one of the reasons that I really wanted to learn meditation all those years ago, learning that population that seemed to be better because they were meditators, they didn't have the easiest lives.

They didn't have the simplest jobs.

They weren't the healthiest people physically necessarily.

But boy, they seem to have a better quality of life is as a meditator.

So I wanted to learn about this, and I was really interested.

And I one of the graphics that I have, one of the cartoons that I have when I teach is I have a person sitting in this, you know, kind of very formal meditation posture.

You imagine.

And she says, I've been at this for five minutes and I haven't been given the benefits I was promised.

Yes.

Yeah, right.

That's it.

Exactly.

If I, I got better things to do than to do a guitar and said, okay, now go, you know, play a song.

It takes time, it takes practice.

You break it down into, you know, really approachable steps.

And it's the same way with meditation, which can sound very fancy.

It can sound very convoluted, but really what it is, is we are learning to train our attention, to stay where we place it and in our social media world and our, you know, rapid fire pace world.

It's increasingly hard to do that.

And but it is trainable.

So there are three basic steps in, in learning how to to meditate.

Which are you.

You learn to relax your body first.

This gets right back into the fight or flight.

If your system is highly agitated, it's going to be very hard to direct where you want to be.

Based on what Nancy was saying about how that brainstem, that base brainstem, doesn't really have that choice.

It's just in pure response.

So we want to relax so we can access those upper ranges of our brain.

And then we begin to cultivate stability.

And this is where most of us give up.

We think I need to stop my thoughts.

And luckily, no meditation teacher I've ever studied with said that we have to stop thinking in order to meditate correctly.

What we have to do is very similar to being in a busy restaurant, and you're talking to people at your table, and there are other people talking.

You have to tune them out to attend to the people you're talking to.

This is the same idea that we want to do with meditation.

If we're choosing the breath, if we're choosing, you know, an object to meditate on, then distractions will come.

And then to meditate correctly, we simply bring ourselves back to whatever it is we're focusing on over and over again, maybe a hundred times in a ten minute session.

That's fine.

If you're doing it and you're remembering every time you're cultivating, you're actually creating new brain pathways, new habits.

And once you do that, when you're sitting down, then maybe when a police officer comes up behind us in the fight or flight starts to kick in, we can have a moment to say, wait a minute, I can stay calm.

I'm not doing anything wrong, just driving.

We have that choice.

We have volition because we've trained our attention to sit and stay where we place it.

And it's really nothing more complicated than that.

When we have that ability, then the opportunities that we have from that are pretty boundless.

Just just focus the what's the third?

When you said the third?

Third.

Yes.

The third step, I'm these don't wait there's more.

Right.

So there is relaxation, there's stability.

And the third quality is vividness or vigilance.

The idea of meditation sometimes can stop it at relaxation, which is good.

That's a primary step.

But that's not where we want to end.

If we're all relaxed, it's very hard for us to work on a paper or do our work in a very vivid, focused manner.

So we actually want to cultivate relaxed, stable, vivid attention.

So you want to actually train yourself not to get, because very often when people start to meditate and they get relaxed, the common thing that happens in a in a class is people fall asleep.

We're we're a sleep deprived culture, done it right.

And it's really easy.

That's really common to do.

And there's nothing wrong with that because you probably need a nap.

We are a sleep deprived culture, but over time you want to train yourself.

Can I stay relaxed and awake?

Is that possible?

And once you've caught up in your sleep, it is possible.

But it does take training because very few of us cultivate that.

So that's that's the first piece.

And then that stability of how long can I attend to something?

Well, something we like.

It's usually easier than something we don't care for.

And then we want to be very alert.

While maintaining that relaxation it's like a balance beam.

You know you want to be right in the middle.

And it's possible with training just like any other skill.

Yeah.

Yeah it still sounds complicated to.

It's simple but not it's it's it's not easy.

Exactly.

Right.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So you know what little tidbits can you give us to really try and take that breath.

Right.

Because when you're in the midst of this, you know, flight, fight or flight, it's hard to remember to take a breath here.

I think, any tips or clues?

Well, just like anything else, the more you do it, the easier, easier it will be to pull it up when you need it.

So I would say just start off, evaluating a situation where you got kind of caught up in fight or flight and think, oh, I should have breathed there and I'm going to practice breathing now.

So next time it happens.

And so, the more you do that, the easier it will be to, to pull it up and is this something that you teach or that you did teach children as well?

Absolutely.

Laura and I engaged in a project a few years ago.

I was reading about how wonderful meditation was for children, so I invited her to, our clinic to train my staff to then do it with the children.

And we just it was children are always our best teachers.

Miraculous things.

You know, I'd go in and do a session with them, and then they'd catch me in the hall and they'd say, what are we going to do that breathing thing again, I think, or I remember to breathe the other day, you know, they really catch it quickly and they know how to, to apply it when they need to.

Maybe you should, I'm going to actually say that several of the elementary schools that I have served, and that is part of their morning routine for like ten minutes.

They do some yoga, they do some kind of meditation.

And I love that we're putting this into them now, because we should have had this put into us when we were long time ago.

Yeah.

So for parents and grandparents, how can we, you know, inspire our kids to like, okay, put the game down.

Let's pause, take a breath.

How can we get them into that mode?

Because they're on the phones all day.

I mean, there's so much social media.

They're all tense as it is.

And that's feeding their anxiety and their stress.

First of all, I would tell parents, be a good model yourself, you know, try meditation, try some deep breathing.

You know, there are excellent children's books and videos or even phone apps that are wonderful.

So start making that a part of the routine.

At night when you're putting your child to bed, read the book like you normally do, and then do a meditation with them, guided by a phone app or whatever you need.

And that's a great way to get it started.

And you'll be relaxing as a parent at the same time that you're teaching your child how to do that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The other thing I was going to say very quickly is the other piece, because a lot of people aren't naturally meditators.

We aren't, and we are on our phones a lot.

There is a whole new, science coming up of the benefits of beauty and music and the way that those things can attend and change our brains and our focus in the same way as meditation can.

So I would recommend to people cultivate some beauty on your devices, meaning find some artists to follow, find some music that really just brings you a sense of peace.

And there are particular kinds of music that will inspire focus and concentration.

Find those things, have them on your phone and make take breaks.

If you're going to be scrolling doomscrolling whatever, then take time to to do this beauty.

Time to thank you both for being on with us today, to give some healthy ways to manage stressful situations in our lives.

We're going to be back with the last few thoughts from the ladies in just a moment, so please stay with us.

This is and we're back here again with Laura and Nancy to continue our discussion.

I'm going to take a break.

And say, why is all of this so important for us in this day and age?

I believe that we've become a very anxious society, and there's a lot of reasons about that.

But I think that, number one, if you don't do some things to manage your stress, then you're allowing that stress to, keep you from living your best life, enjoying the things that are enjoyable for you.

And they can cause physical, ramifications.

We talked about during the break that there are ways to get at least a couple of minutes in, and I'm all for the quickies.

So tell us how we could, like, just for a moment, just get like a woo saw and how do we intentionally do that?

One of my favorite techniques for a really quick reboot is the 54321 exercise.

It was actually started by a therapist named Barbara Erickson, I believe is who came up with it.

And you basically take a moment, look around your room, see five things.

You can see four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell.

And if you don't have smells in your room, you can imagine the smells and one whatever the taste is in your mouth.

And this is a very quick way to just stop rumination, stop wandering thoughts, and just come right back to the present moment.

You're giving your mind a different task to do that you can do really easily.

It's called the 54321 exercise.

Super easy to find online can say that again.

So five is what?

Yep, five is five things you can see four.

Four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell.

And then whatever tastes might be in your mouth.

And again if there's nothing available you can imagine these things, but it's just engaging your senses in a way to quickly reboot your attention, to be where your feet are.

Yeah, to be in the present moment.

And that's really the opportunity of being in the present moment.

Sadly, that's all the time we have for today, and we hope you have been inspired by our conversations.

And I want to thank Nancy Crago and Laura Meade for joining us today on Inspire.

And as a reminder, you can watch this program again at watch.ktwu.org.

And if you are so inspired to learn more about our guests and get access to additional content, please be sure to visit our website at ktwu.org/inspire Inspiring women, inspiring and sharing that we are all human and it's okay to be stressed out and overwhelmed.

I promise you are not alone and inspiring you on KTWU.

Thank you for watching.

Inspire is sponsored by the Raymond C and Marguerite Gibson Foundation and by the estate of Ray and Anne Goldsmith.