The altercation is over, but your heart is still pounding. The calmness of your contained panic grips you. You try to force your movements and your breathing into slow and deliberate decorum - adrenaline still prickles through your system. You control the tremor in your voice, you sound calm even though your rib cage is vibrating and your mind is spinning, untied. With practised nonchalance, you watch your fingers for tell-tale shaking that would betray your inner rage - but you're holding it together. Meanwhile, deep in your subconscious mind, your state of calm is slowly returning like the exhausted walk back from a battle field.
Why do we fight like animals, triggered by a threat to our territory, personal space, or the right to be heard? Are'nt we supposed to be civilised? Have'nt we matured and evolved?
We may be doing an excellent job pretending to be refined. We have spectacular table etiquette, classical music, laws, constitutions, libraries, and record keeping. We hunt in Woolworths, eat with skill and elegance, fill our homes with sophistication, fashion and style, involve our emotions and happiness in the act of procreation, and we do all this with well trained practice in our specific culture.
But we can not escape the need to eat, establish a home, procreate, and defend these things and ourselves when we feel threatened. And when it comes to defending what we value, the refined mask of civilisation dissolves into thin air, and what is revealed is basically animal.
Think of your favourite animal. Do you notice how your animal never second guesses, never doubts, never wraps a banana leaf around it's waist and asks you: "Does this make me look fat?"
Your inner animal always knows what is best for you, and how to make you more comfortable and safe, because that's how life is nurtured. All animals instinctively remember this because they don't have a constant stream of distracting chatter going through their thoughts. We can not tell what animals are thinking, but we can see what they are doing, and by observing their behaviour, it is clear that animals always seem to know what they want.
When it comes to protecting their home, their personal space, or their young, animals don't hesitate. Attack is the best form of defence, and its all teeth and claws, scratching and biting, until success, surrender or death, and then...
... everything goes back to normal!!!
How do they do it?! How can animals be so calm after a fight?
Again, the behaviour tells us everything we need to know, and there can be only one explanation for calm behaviour in an animal: The event is no longer a concern. The threat is gone, the moment has passed. The animal has let go and moved on.
Since part of us is animal, we also know how to do this, and this ability to let go can be the deciding factor between those who deal with stress effectively, and those who become consumed by it. In the obsession for success, we forget why we started chasing it in the first place. This is especially evident in highly competitive careers such as law or business.
Job stress changes everything in your life because it changes you. If you are always one strand away from snapping, no-one can feel safe around you, not your spouse or your kids or your friends. Your inner animal may be fighting for you in business and making you lots of money or resolving your financial problems, but can you find your Attack Mode off switch? How much fun is it for a raging elephant's family?
Anger, anxiety, and asthma share a lot of common ground in the field of behavioural psychology:
- They are all developments of present or passed stress
- Progression causes an increasing difficulty in reversing the physical symptoms
- Physical symptoms are described as "a tight feeling in the chest"
- Physical symptoms are psychosomatic, and are therefore best addressed psychologically
Anger and anxiety management belong with wide acceptance to the field of psychology. Either a traumatic event from the past, or a present threat, activates the subconscious defence mechanisms (the inner animal) and the symptoms are anger, anxiety or both. But comparatively little is known about the psychosomatic nature of asthma.
A google search: "asthma psychosomatic" produces many pages of research, which along with my 15 years as a Yoga teacher, leave no doubt in my mind as to the best and most efficient long term treatment of asthma.
Asthma can be triggered by environmental causes such as dust, or altitude (air pressure). A psychosomatic asthma attack is triggered by an emotional stress or fear, or a sudden shock, the reaction of which is the narrowing of the bronchioles, which limits air flow into the lungs. Certain Yoga breathing techniques (Pranayama) can be practised for calming the mind and strengthening the lungs. The effect of practising these techniques during an asthma attack are immediate and cumulative, i.e. the more you practice the breathing techniques, the greater the benefits.
Pranayama:
- Calms your mind and gives you the mental tools to remain calm emotionally through any stressful situation
- When your mind is calm, the parasympathetic nervous system recovers the symptoms of your subconscious defence mechanisms (anxiety, anger) and returns your system to a state of balanced equilibrium, or homoeostasis
- With homoeostasis returning, the bronchial muscles (lungs) relax and return to their normal function: plenty air to the lungs!
If stress is the common cause, then stress therapy is the most efficient treatment. NBSR Hypnotherapy has been providing solutions for job and life stress since 2005, and runs regular workshops to address a variety of problem areas and personal development. If you suffer from asthma, or if you know someone who can't find their "Off" switch, click this link now to find out more about the NBSR Workshop series. The next workshop "NBSR Anger & Anxiety Management Method" provides you with an easy to learn 3 step process for overcoming anger anxiety, and asthma, and switching on your inner peace.
