Jun 20 2020 25 mins 11
Human beings are genetically programmed from 2 billion years of evolution. Physiological and psychological responses are fine-tuned for the threats that have been predominant throughout this 2 billion years. Often these threats are existential. They are threats to our life such as predators, venomous insects and snakes, precipices, hazards and hostile competitors. The system that has evolved to negotiate this landscape of threat is unconscious and uncompromising in its response to a potential threat. When your mind or your physiology perceives a threat, it switches on a system known as the sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system elevates your heart rate and blood pressure and pumps stress chemicals into your body to keep you alert and awake and prepared to fight or run. This is also what happens when you notice an unexpected sum of money missing from your bank account. Your body is kicking in to protect you from a physical threat when to resolve the issue all you normally need to do is make a phone call. When we multiply that unconscious physiological response by the multitude of potential threats to our financial security, our personal integrity, our personal security, our relationships, and threats to whichever groups we identify with, what can result is a thing called chronic stress. Chronic stress consists of a negative feedback loop of stress, anxiety and often worry. These three elements feed into each other maintaining the levels of stress chemicals in our body and keeping us alert so that we can deal with the threat that our physiology is designed to respond to. I teach many ways of intervening with this system and one of the most useful is to re-learn relaxation. I say re-learn, because we literally unlearn it as we grow up. In the modern world, relaxation is having a glass of wine and watching the TV. Relaxation is actually a process of releasing the musculoskeletal tension from our bodies. One of the many things that we lose due to her modern lives, is a connection to our physiology. By connection, I mean the capacity to be aware of things like tension. Re-learning relaxation is a slow process of reconnecting with our bodies and gently, patiently, and over time, training ourselves to be able to relax. I teach a number of practices that assist in relaxation. In this class, the meditation combines two of the other meditations into a relaxing 35 minutes which will assist you with calmness, relaxation, and sleep. This class is extracted from the 2020 meditation online course which you can learn more about or subscribe to here: https://2020meditation.com/online-meditation-course If the course isn't for you, but you would like to enable me to continue to provide this content on a weekly basis, then you can make a donation of any amount here: https://2020meditation.com/payments Support the show (https://2020meditation.com/coffee)
