Neuroscientist: You Will NEVER Feel Stressed Again | Andrew Huberman
Summary
TLDRThe script discusses the effectiveness of mindfulness, meditation, and exercise in reducing stress but highlights the challenge of using these top-down mechanisms during high-stress periods. It introduces 'physiological sighing' as a scientifically-backed, real-time stress reduction technique. By manipulating the autonomic nervous system through breathing patternsβspecifically, making exhales longer than inhalesβthe script explains how this method can rapidly calm the body's stress response. The physiological sigh, a natural response to stress or sleep, is shown to be a powerful tool for immediate stress relief, bypassing the need for mental control.
Takeaways
- π§ Mindfulness and meditation, exercise, and adequate sleep are commonly known stress reducers, but they can be difficult to implement during stressful moments.
- πͺ Life's unpredictability often makes it challenging to use top-down mechanisms like intention and gratitude to manage stress effectively.
- π The physiological response is a fast and hard-wired way to eliminate the stress response in real time, which is often activated involuntarily but can also be engaged consciously.
- π₯ Scientific studies, including those conducted at Jack Feldman's Lab at UCLA, have shown the effectiveness of physiological techniques in reducing stress.
- π€ The autonomic nervous system, which controls general features of alertness or calmness, can be influenced by certain breathing techniques.
- π¨ Breath work is a method of deliberately breathing in a specific way to shift physiology and access certain states, but it's not the focus of the script's discussion on stress reduction.
- π« The diaphragm's movement during inhalation and exhalation directly affects heart rate through the interaction of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.
- π To slow the heart rate and reduce stress, one should exhale more than they inhale, which capitalizes on the relationship between the body, heart, and brain.
- π The physiological sigh, a technique involving a double inhale and long exhale, is a powerful tool for calming down quickly and is grounded in physiology and neuroscience.
- π€ The physiological sigh is a natural response that occurs when we are about to fall asleep, during sleep, or when trying to recover from intense emotions or environments.
- π The diaphragm is a unique internal organ that can be controlled voluntarily, allowing for the intentional manipulation of the physiological sigh to manage stress.
Q & A
What are the common methods mentioned for reducing stress?
-The script mentions mindfulness, meditation, exercise, and getting enough sleep as common methods for reducing stress.
What is the physiological response to stress as described in the script?
-The physiological response to stress includes the heart beating faster, blood being shuttled to the big muscles, and a flushed face, among other things.
How does the autonomic nervous system relate to stress?
-The autonomic nervous system is responsible for the general features of alertness or calmness in the body, and it plays a role in the stress response by controlling automatic bodily functions like heart rate.
What is the relationship between breathing and heart rate as explained in the script?
-The script explains that inhaling can speed up the heart rate by causing the heart to expand and blood to move more slowly, while exhaling can slow down the heart rate by making the heart more compact and blood to flow more quickly.
What is the physiological sigh and how is it used to reduce stress?
-The physiological sigh is a breathing technique where a double inhale is followed by a long exhale. It is used to reduce stress by re-inflating the lungs' alveoli and effectively ridding the body of carbon dioxide, which can help to calm down quickly.
How does the diaphragm play a role in controlling heart rate?
-The diaphragm, when it moves down during inhalation, causes the heart to expand, leading to slower blood flow and a subsequent signal from the sinoatrial node to speed up the heart rate. Conversely, when the diaphragm moves up during exhalation, it causes the heart to become more compact, leading to faster blood flow and a signal to slow down the heart rate.
What is the significance of the sinoatrial node in the context of the script?
-The sinoatrial node is a group of neurons in the heart that register changes in blood flow rate through the heart and send signals to the brain, which then sends signals back to adjust the heart rate accordingly.
How does the script differentiate between regular breath work and physiological sighing?
-Regular breath work involves deliberate breathing for a series of minutes to shift physiology, while physiological sighing is a more spontaneous and involuntary response that can be consciously utilized to quickly reduce stress.
What are the benefits of using physiological sighing as a stress reduction tool according to the script?
-The benefits of using physiological sighing include its ability to work in real time, requiring no separate practice or learning, and its effectiveness in modulating the stress response quickly.
How does the script suggest using the physiological sigh to manage stress in daily life?
-The script suggests using the physiological sigh by doing a double inhale followed by a long exhale one to three times when feeling stressed, which can quickly reduce the level of stress.
What ongoing research is mentioned in the script regarding the physiological sigh and stress response?
-The script mentions ongoing research in collaboration with David Spiegel's lab at Stanford, exploring how physiological sighing and other deliberate breathing patterns can modulate the stress response and emotionality.
Outlines
π§ββοΈ Harnessing Physiological Breathing for Stress Relief
This paragraph discusses the importance of mindfulness, meditation, and exercise for overall well-being and the challenges of maintaining these practices amidst life's stressors. It introduces the concept of 'physiological Psy' as a powerful, scientifically-backed technique for reducing stress in real time. The autonomic nervous system, which controls involuntary body functions like heart rate, is directly influenced by breathing patterns. The speaker explains how inhaling more than exhaling can speed up the heart rate, while the opposite can slow it down, providing a method to control the body's stress response. The paragraph emphasizes the immediacy and effectiveness of this technique, contrasting it with other stress-relief methods that require more time and practice.
π‘ Real-Time Stress Management with Physiological Breathing Techniques
Building on the previous paragraph, this section delves deeper into the physiological underpinnings of stress management through breathing. It highlights the real-time applicability of these techniques, which do not require separate practice and can be utilized immediately during moments of stress. The speaker describes the 'physiological sigh' as a natural response to stress, sleep, and emotional recovery, which can be harnessed voluntarily to calm down. The diaphragm's unique role as a controllable internal organ is emphasized, along with its connection to the brain via the phrenic nerve. The paragraph also explains how a double inhale followed by a long exhale can reinflate lung sacs and expel carbon dioxide, leading to rapid relaxation. Ongoing research is mentioned, indicating the potential of these techniques in modulating the stress response and emotional states.
π Immediate Stress Reduction with the Physiological Sigh
The final paragraph emphasizes the practicality of the physiological sigh as an immediate tool for stress reduction. It acknowledges the difficulty of using top-down mechanisms like intention and gratitude when highly stressed or tired. The physiological sigh is presented as a powerful alternative that can quickly lower autonomic activation and reduce alertness levels. The speaker suggests performing the double inhale and exhale technique one to three times to rapidly decrease stress levels. The paragraph concludes by reinforcing the effectiveness of this method as the fastest known way to alleviate stress in real-time, bypassing the challenges of controlling the mind during heightened states of activation.
Mindmap
Keywords
π‘Mindfulness
π‘Meditation
π‘Exercise
π‘Sleep
π‘Stress Response
π‘Autonomic Nervous System
π‘Diaphragm
π‘Sinoatrial Node
π‘Physiological Breathing
π‘Parasympathetic Nervous System
π‘Real-Time Tools
Highlights
Mindfulness, meditation, and exercise are beneficial for reducing stress, but they can be challenging to apply in stressful situations.
The physiological response is the fastest and most direct way to eliminate stress in real time.
Stressful situations often cause involuntary physiological reactions that can be activated voluntarily to reduce stress.
Scientific studies from labs at UCLA and Stanford support the effectiveness of physiological techniques for stress reduction.
The autonomic nervous system, which controls alertness and calmness, can be influenced by breathing techniques.
Breathing exercises, specifically controlling the duration of inhales and exhales, can directly affect heart rate and stress response.
The diaphragm's movement during breathing influences the heart's size and blood flow, which in turn affects heart rate.
Inhaling more than exhaling speeds up the heart rate, while exhaling more slows it down, providing a method to control stress.
The physiological sigh, a deep breathing pattern, is a powerful tool for stress reduction and is naturally used in sleep and recovery.
The diaphragm is a unique internal organ that can be controlled voluntarily, unlike other organs.
The physiological sigh involves a double inhale and long exhale, which is effective in reducing stress and agitation.
Breathing patterns can modulate the stress response and emotionality, as being studied in ongoing research.
The physiological sigh is a fast and effective method to reduce stress, bypassing the need for top-down mental control.
Using the physiological sigh can quickly lower the level of autonomic activation, or alertness, during stressful situations.
The physiological sigh can be performed one to three times to rapidly reduce stress in various situations.
The physiological response provides a practical tool for managing stress in real time without the need for separate practice or learning.
Transcripts
I think most people have heard that
mindfulness and meditation is good
exercise is good for us we all need to
be getting enough sleep Etc but life
happens we are very alert we're very
sleepy it is very hard to use these
so-called top-down mechanisms of
intention and gratitude but it's very
clear that the physiological Psy is the
fastest
hard-wired way for us to eliminate this
stressful response in our body quickly
in real time
it turns out you're all doing this all
the time but you are doing it
involuntarily and when you stress you
tend to forget that you can also
activate these systems voluntarily this
is an extremely powerful set of
techniques that we know from scientific
studies that are being done in my lab
Jack Feldman's Lab at UCLA and others
that are very very useful for reducing
your stress response in real time and
here's how they work as far as I am
aware of the best tools to reduce stress
quickly so-called real-time tools are
going to be tools that have a direct
line to the so-called autonomic nervous
system the autonomic nervous system is a
name given to the kind of General
features of alertness or calmness in the
body typically it means automatic
although we do have some control over it
certain what so-called levers or entry
points and the tool that at least to my
knowledge is the fastest and most
thoroughly grounded in physiology
Neuroscience for calming down in a
self-directed way is What's called the
physiological Psy these days there seems
to be a lot of interest in breath work
breath work typically is when you go and
you sit down or you lie down and you
deliberately breathe in a particular way
for a series of minutes in order to
shift your physiology access some states
and it does have some utility that we're
going to talk about that is not what I'm
talking about now
what I'm talking about when I refer to
physiological size is the very real
medical school textbook relationship
between the brain
the body and the Heart let's take the
Hallmark of the stress response the
heart starts beating faster blood is
shuttled to the big muscles of the body
to move you away from whatever it is the
stressor is or just make you feel like
you need to move or talk your face goes
flushed Etc
heart rate many of us feel is
involuntary just kind of functions
whether or not we're moving fast or
moving slow if you think about it it's
not really
purely autonomic because you can speed
up your heart rate by running or you can
slow it down by slowing down but that's
indirect control there is however a way
in which you can breathe that directly
controls your heart rate through the
interactions between the sympathetic and
the parasympathetic nervous system
here's how it works
when you inhale
so whether or not it's through the nose
or through the mouth
this skeletal muscle that's inside your
body called the diaphragm
it moves down and that's because the
lungs expand the diaphragm moves down
your heart actually gets a little bit
bigger in that expanded space there's
more space for the heart and as a
consequence whatever blood is in there
is now at a lower volume we're moving a
little bit more slowly in that larger
volume then it was a before you inhaled
okay so more space heart gets bigger
blood moves more slowly and there's a
little group of neurons called the
sinoatrial node in the heart that
registers it's believe it or not those
neurons pay attention to the rate of
blood flow through the heart and send a
signal up to the brain that blood is
moving more slowly through the heart
the brain then sends a signal back to
the heart to speed the heart up so what
this means is if you want your heart to
beat faster inhale longer
inhale more vigorously
than your exhales now there are a
variety of ways that one could do that
but it doesn't matter if it's through
the nose or through the mouth if your
inhales are longer than your exhales
you're speeding up your heart now the
opposite is also true if you want to
slow your heart rate down so stress
response hits you want to slow your
heart rate down what you want to do is
again capitalize on this relationship
between the body the meaning the
diaphragm and the heart and the Brain
here's how it works when you exhale
the diaphragm moves up which makes the
heart a little bit smaller it actually
gets a little more compact blood flows
more quickly through that compact space
sort of like just a pipe getting smaller
the sinoatrial node registers that blood
is going more quickly sends a signal up
to the brain and the parasympathetic
nervous system some neurons in your
brain stem send a signal back to the
heart to slow the heart down
so if you want to calm down quickly you
need to make your exhales longer
and or more vigorous than your inhales
now the reason this is so attractive as
a tool for controlling stress is that it
works in real time this doesn't involve
a practice that you have to go and sit
there and do anything separate from life
and we are going to get to emotion
emotions and stress happen in real time
and so while it's wonderful to have a
breath work practice or to have the
opportunity to get a massage or sit in a
sauna or do whatever it is that you do
in order to set your stress controls in
the right direction having tools that
you can reach to in real time that
require no learning I mean I had to
teach it to you you had to learn that
but it doesn't require any plasticity to
activate these Pathways so if you're
feeling stressed you still need to
inhale of course but you need to
lengthen your exhales
now there's a tool that capitalizes on
this in a kind of unique way a kind of a
Twist which is the physiological PSI the
physiological side was discovered in the
30s it's now been explored at the
neurobiological level and
mechanistically in far more detail by
Jack Feldman's Lab at UCLA also Mark
krasno's Lab at Stanford and the
physiological side is something that
humans and animals do anytime they are
about to fall asleep
you also do it throughout sleep from
time to time when carbon dioxide which
we'll talk about in a moment builds up
too much in your system and the
physiological side is something that
people naturally start doing when
they've been crying and they're trying
to recover some air or calm down when
they've been sobbing very hard or when
they are in claustrophobic environments
however
the amazing thing about this thing that
we call the diaphragm the skeletal
muscle is that it's an internal organ
that you can control voluntarily unlike
your spleen or your heart or your uh
your pancreas where you can't just say
oh I want to make my pancreas turn out a
little more insulin right now I'm just
going to do that with my mind directly
you can't do that you could do that by
smelling a really good donut or
something but you can't just do it
directly you can move your diaphragm
intentionally right you can do it
anytime you want and it'll run in the
background if you're not thinking about
it so this incredible pathway that goes
from brain to diaphragm through What's
called the phrenic nerve
p-h-r-e-n-i-c phrenic the phrenic nerve
innervates the diaphragm you control
anytime you want you can double up your
inhales or triple up your inhales you
can exhale more than your inhales
whatever you want to do
such an incredible organ and the
physiological Psy is something that we
do spontaneously but when you're feeling
stressed you can do a double inhale
long exhale now I just told you a minute
ago that if you inhale more than you
exhale you're going to speed the heart
rate up which would promote more stress
and activation now I'm telling you to do
a double inhale exhale in order to calm
down and the reason is the double inhale
exhale which is the physiological PSI
and
takes advantage of the fact that when we
do a double inhale even if the second
inhale is sneaking in just a tiny bit
more air because it's kind of hard to
get two deep inhales back to back you do
big deep inhale and then another little
one sneaking it in the little sacks in
your lungs if you only have the lungs
your lungs aren't just two big bags but
you've got millions of little sacks
throughout the lungs that actually make
the surface area of your lungs as big as
a tennis court it's amazing if we just
spread that out what those tend to
collapse as we get stressed and carbon
carbon dioxide builds up in our
bloodstream and that's one of the
reasons we feel agitated as well so and
it makes us very jittery I mean there's
some other effects of carbon dioxide I
want to get into but when you do the
double inhale exhale the double inhale
reinflates those little sacks of the
lungs and then when you do the long
exhale
that long exhale is now much more
effective at ridding your body and
bloodstream of carbon dioxide which
relaxes you very quickly my lab in
collaboration with David Spiegel's lab
David's the associate chair of
Psychiatry at Stanford are doing a study
right now exploring how physiological
size and other patterns of breathing
done deliberately can modulate the
stress response and other things related
to emotionality those work are ongoing I
want to be clear those studies aren't
done but it's very clear
from work in our Labs from working Jack
Feldman's lab and others that the
physiological Psy is the fastest
hard-wired way for us to eliminate this
stressful response in our body quickly
in real time and so I'm excited to give
you this tool because I think most
people have heard that mindfulness and
meditation is good exercise is good for
us we all need to be getting enough
sleep Etc but life happens and when you
find yourself in a position where you
are more alert and activated than you
would like to be regardless of whether
or not the stressor is relationship
based or it's Financial or it's physical
or anything like that you can look to
the physiological side because it
bypasses
a very important feature of how we
function which is that it's very hard to
control the mind with the Mind
especially when we are in heightened
states of activation we are very alert
we're very sleepy it is very hard to use
these so-called top-down mechanisms of
intention and gratitude and all these
things that are really powerful tools
when we are not super activated and
stressed or not super tired but when we
are anywhere in the range of very alert
and stress to very sleepy physiological
size are a powerful way of bringing our
level of so-called autonomic activation
which just means our level of alertness
down and so whether or not it's in line
at the bank or whether or not you're
wearing a mask nowadays or you're not
whatever you know whatever the
conditions may be where you're at and
your needs when you're feeling stressed
the physiological side done just one to
three times so it'd be double inhale
exhale double inhale exhale maybe just
two times we'll bring down your level of
stress very very fast and as far as I
know it's the fastest way to accomplish
that
[Music]
Browse More Related Video
CONTROL Your Emotions Like AYANOKOJI KIYOTAKA
Why do we sweat? - John Murnan
Stress - What is Stress - Why Is Stress Bad - What Causes Stress - How Stress Works
Minutes 4 Life Breath Work and Stress Response Part 2
Growing up Stressed or Growing up Mindful? | Christopher Willard | TEDxYouth@GDRHS
A to Z of the Fight or Flight Response
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)