The rains are here. Downpours and swells have met me at an appropriate time. For as this Tuscan city is washed and cleansed so too am I. The litter and baggage of youth is being swept above by the fresh showers of an enlightened mind. New ways of imagining myself have solidified as I’ve gained techniques to process thought.
With an internal monologue that speaks at the rhythm that mine does it’s easy to get lost in cycles of thoughts. I find these currents of ideas and emotions build up and up inside of me till there's no-where to go. Of course I’ve utilized these updraughts of mental stimulation for productive purposes. Every semester each one of my Uni subjects I always left my studio subjects to the last minute. Forced by over-aspinational plans for work and driven by an artistic sense of pride I would work feverishly into the final deadlined night. Dosed up on dare iced coffees and 6 Inch Subways subs I tinkered on till I was the last person working in the studio. I always remember a certain point I would become flushed with heat, it could be mid-winter in those Mebounre studios but i would be none the wiser, singlet clad I would run back and forth between multiple spots in the studio, yes I was spinning multiple plates to get the assignment done but baby that's how I did it, and fail me not once every time I got it done.
It was only till years later I found out why the room had felt so hot, I had always thought it was my flexing muscles and active cardio that was pushing my body to further temperatures while what it actually was my body being in a mode of absolute panic.
Our bodies have developed systems long ago to adapt to their surroundings, our flight and fight mode is such one of them. What I was feeling in these moments of heat was the hot-shot of Adrenaline that was being delivered straight into my bloodstream. They call it
Vasodilation, the widening of blood vessels. If we understand that it is the constriction of blood vessels that lead your un-gloved fingers to feel cold, then we can easily understand how dilation could lead to that feeling of heat. It's a feeling that arrives first in the front of your face and washes through till it arrives at your toes. Menopausal women know exactly what I'm talking about, it’s the same dilation of blood vessel’s walls that causes the infamous “hot flush”. Yes anxiety has served me well, I think this is largely why I can think so well under pressure, because I’ve done so darn much of it. I’ve gotten a lot out of anxiety, probably more than most who suffer at the hands of a quick clicking mind.
But of course to every Ying there must be Yang and for every flight and flight there were also overanalysis and spirals. It’s a cycle that once it gets started comes with a momentum of its own. The heart pounds the, the cortisol spikes, the mind goes and chews through thoughts and inferred meanings. Each of the steps can loop back into the process creating a feedback effect of where your thoughts can feel so strong because they are being backed up with the most powerful chemicals known to the human body.
For the first time today I did something I've never done before, I stopped the cycle. Yes I have previously clawed my way back from near panic attacks ,but today was different, today was the first time I stopped it in its own tracks before it had even begun. The thoughts started, the cortisol flowed into my bloodstream and yet I paused not to continue the cycle I’ve done thousands of times, I paused to breathe in and exhale. Three short deep breaths pulled through the diaphragm and boom, back and level-headed. It felt as if I’d almost flicked this buzzing fly away with one finger, poof and gone.
I’ve known and done breath work for a long time, but it's only recently I’ve been able to manifest its positive qualities so successfully. I both know a lot more about my body as I do my own mind, both from internal and external perspectives. I’ve isolated my egos within my own mind over this trip. I can now see where the dispersions of mind stem from, what my motivations are, what is my conditioning, what makes me, me.
I’ve also invested a lot of time into the external view, the studies, the chemicals, the analytics behind us all. Cortisol, often called the stress chemical, is primed and readied by systems within our autonomic nervous systems. Fight and flight responses that are holdouts from when we needed to get the heart pumping and blood sugared up in case a lion gave chase.
It’s quick breaths that symbolise the moment of panic while it’s slow deep breaths that symbolises calmness. There's no mistake there for the parasympathetic nervous system is shown to become active through slow, deep breath work. Your parasympathetic nervous system or PNS (yes, get the giggles out kids) is what your body uses to regulate your energy so that when you rest you can metabolise and process foods and liquids. By breathing in slowly and deeply you are actively triggering this rest inducing system, we can see this by the measurable drop in cortisol levels that occurs from breathwork. This is something we can see in the laboratory but it's also something I felt today. When my mind’s chemical structures intermeshed with my own mindful practices I found quietness; A quietness that can only be felt after a heavy rain.
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