Altruism Posted January 30, 2013 Report Share Posted January 30, 2013 While looking for ways to calm down my SNS and avoid having another horrible panic attack/adrenaline surge, I found this article. It might be old news for most of you, but it did help me start yawning and I felt a little more relaxed after doing it for 5 minutes. Worth trying! http://barefootfts.com/blog/a-sleep-trick Your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are at work all day, effectively battling each other. If you're a stressed, caffeinated kind of person, your sympathetic system is likely dominant throughout much of the day. Sleep, however, is not going to happen until your sympathetic system can shut down and allow the parasympathetic to take over, slowing your heart and respiratory rate and in general putting you into recovery mode. Often, this process takes much longer than we'd like, and we end up staring at the ceiling in the dark doing math to figure out how much sleep we'd get before morning if we just fell asleep right now. Here's the thing though, the fluctuating predominance between the two nervous systems is tied into your breathing and you have control over that. On inhalation, the sympathetic system runs the show. On exhalation, the parasympathetic takes over. If you're rooting for the parasympathetic, all you've got to do is give it more time on the field. Do this by controlling the duration of your inhalations and exhalations. To minimize sympathetic input, make your inhalations quick and deep. Then, take a very slow, drawn-out exhalation. I've been using an exhalation of around eight seconds, with an inhalation of maybe two. As I get more relaxed I draw out the exhalations to ten to fifteen seconds. It generally won't take long before you're yawning between breaths, noticeably more relaxed and trying to decide if you can stop putting so much thought into breathing because you've almost got to struggle to stay awake enough to do so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k&ajsmom Posted January 30, 2013 Report Share Posted January 30, 2013 There is a thread on here somewhere about excessive yawning, I wonder if when we yawn excessively its our pns trying to calm us down. Ive been up since 2 am so Im yawning just thinking about it lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badhbt Posted January 30, 2013 Report Share Posted January 30, 2013 Thanks for the sleep trick. I am going to try it tonight. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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