Coming into Balance: How Stress and Relaxation Work Together

by Baxter and Nina

Mirror Image by Melina Meza

So, you’re lying on a beautiful beach somewhere, feeling the warmth of the sun on your skin and listening to the sound of waves lapping at the shore, and you’re feeling totally comfortable and very relaxed. So what is happening to you? Is this the relaxation response? The rest and digest state? Conscious relaxation? Or what?

Another time you’re sitting alone in your house, meditating on your breath. Your knee hurts a bit. Your thoughts seem wild, and you feel fidgety and restless. But you keep coming back to your breath, and after several minutes your mind begins to settle and quiet. What’s happening to you now? And how is this different than being on the beach?

Or, let’s say one night you’re driving your car down a dark, winding road through a forest when suddenly a deer bolts into the road. Your heart begins to pound and your breath speeds up as you quickly try to take evasive action. Is this the stress response? The Fight or Flight response? On another night, you’re meeting someone you’ve just started dating. When you spot them on the street coming toward you, your heart begins to pound and your breath speeds up. It feels kind of like stress, but in a good way—you know, exciting. What’s going on there?

As we have been delving into the topics of stress and relaxation, we’ve found there’s some confusing terminology out there in the literature and even here on our own blog! So it seems like a good idea to try and define once and for all some of terms that have been most commonly bantered about. To start, let’s take a look at the following terms to get clearer on what they mean:

1. Stress Response
2. Fight or Flight State
3. Relaxation Response
4. Rest and Digest State
5. Conscious Relaxation

Stress Response. This term describes the response of your mind and body response of your mind and body when you are faced with a challenge. Sometimes the response is to a real or perceived threat, ranging from serious life or death situations to stressful situations like doing your taxes or getting lost. Other times the response is to a positive challenge, such as running a race, falling in love, brainstorming ideas, or creating a work of art. The stress response increases the activity of your sympathetic nervous system, speeding up your heart and breath rates, and dilating your pupils to get you ready for action. When the stress response is at its extreme, you shift into the Flight or Fight State.

Fight or Flight State. This term describes the state of your nervous system when your sympathetic system is fully operational, and generally you actually are in danger, threatened, or think you are in danger. For example, if you are about to get into a car accident, your nervous system sends quick signals to your adrenal glands to release adrenalin, unleashing a rapid physical response evolved to get you to safety. (See below for details.) 

Relaxation Response. This term describes the response of your mind and body to safe circumstances or a secure environment, causing your heart and breath rate to slow, your blood pressure to drop, your energy usage to slow and your digestion and immune systems to turn on. In our above example, if you successfully avoided the car crash, once you got home and had some time to decompress, your system would slowly shift to the relaxation response. The relaxation response increases the activity of your parasympathetic nervous system, and enters you into the Rest and Digest state. 

You can trigger the relaxation response through conscious relaxation techniques or just by ordinary resting and relaxing while you are awake, such as by listening to calming music on your couch or by lying on a beach feeling the sun on your skin and listening to the waves. (This is in contrast to activities that are distracting rather than relaxing. For example, while TV distracts us from our real-life concerns, it is not actually relaxing your nervous system because the action you’re watching is typically very stimulating—as anyone who tries to go to bed after a scary movie or violent show soon realizes.)

Rest and Digest State. This term describes the state of your nervous system when your parasympathetic system is fully operational, you are mentally and physically relaxed, your body’s vital signs are in their calm state, and the immune, repair, and digestive systems are up and operating. You enter this state naturally when relaxing at home or out in nature, or when you use conscious relaxation to trigger the relaxation response.

Conscious Relaxation. This term describes any technique that triggers the relaxation response, including meditation, breath practices that are calming, guided relaxation practices, and even gentle and restorative yoga asana practiced mindfully. Keep in mind that this describes an active practice technique with a desired goal. But the awesome thing about conscious relaxation is that you can use it anytime and anywhere. You don’t need to fly to Hawaii. And although a quiet peaceful environment is helpful, you can even meditate or do breath practices in challenging environments. (See 6 Ways to Bust Stress with Yoga).

The Healthy Balance of Stress and Relaxation

So let’s say you’re sitting outside in the garden talking with a friend, and you’re feeling very comfortable and relaxed. Then your friend tells you about an interesting idea he has, and you suddenly perk up a bit. You then pitch in with an idea of your own, and that leads to very animated discussion. What’s happening here? Are you relaxed or stressed? Or, is it possible that you are both at the same?

Ding, ding, ding! Yes, it’s both at the same time. As we described in Chapter x, your autonomic nervous system, which controls background processes that keep your body alive and healthy, such breathing, maintaining normal temperature, and adjusting blood pressure to match activity, is divided into two subsystems: your sympathetic nervous system and your parasympathetic nervous system. And these two subsystems work together in tandem, providing you with a healthy balance of activity and relaxation. 

Sympathetic Nervous System. This system stimulates you when you need to be active. The activity can be as basic as getting out of bed in the morning, writing an email, or practicing gentle yoga poses, something more challenging such as running a race or giving a public talk, or something really drastic such as trying to avoid a car accident. 

Your sympathetic nervous system prepares your body and mind for action by stimulating your heart to beat faster and stronger and slightly raising your blood pressure to improve blood flow, by opening your airways so you can breathe more easily, and by stimulating your thought processes so you can assess your situation and think more quickly.

In extreme situations—where serious action on your part is needed—your sympathetic nervous system triggers the Fight or Flight response, as described above. In this state, your sympathetic nervous system actually turns off the background functions of nourishment, restoration, and healing that are provided by the parasympathetic nervous system because these functions will slow you down. Being in the Fight or Flight state is normal and healthy as long as it doesn’t happen too frequently or continue for a long period of time, when it becomes chronic stress (see see About Stress: Acute Versus Chronic).

Parasympathetic Nervous System. This system is responsible for nourishing, restoring, and healing your body and mind. As you move through your day, whether you are totally relaxed, slightly active, or even very active, your parasympathetic nervous system stimulates digestion, activates various metabolic processes, and keeps your immune system turned on. (These functions will only be turned off temporarily when you’re in a Fight or Flight state.)

When you are physically still and your mind is quiet, your parasympathetic system functions optimally, allowing you to enter the Rest and Digest state. Being in the Rest and Digest state is normal and very desirable, as it gives your body and mind time to relax completely and recover from stressful periods. There’s probably no downside to spending a lot of time in this state, except you probably wouldn’t get very much done!

On an average good day, when you’re feeling rested and cheerful, and are involved in normal work and social activities, your sympathetic and parasympathetic systems work together to keep you in balance, allowing you to be both fully functional and stay healthy. A well-balanced yoga practice, including both physical exercise and stress management practices, will help you maintain this balance when there are minor challenges in your life. It is only when you spend too much time with an overactive sympathetic nervous system due to ongoing stressful life circumstances that you can become out of balance. At this point, it’s very important to take steps to reduce your chronic stress and bring yourself back into balance again, as chronic stress is harmful to your physical, emotional, and mental health (see About Stress: Acute Versus Chronic). And conscious relaxation with yoga is the way!

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How Your Breath Affects Your Nervous System

by Baxter

When I read the posts of my fellow YFHA bloggers, I often learn new perspectives that might differ from my own as well as new information that I was previously unaware of. Reading the posts also highlights occasions where I could have been clearer or given better information on a particular topic. As an example, I have written about breath techniques and their effect on the autonomic nervous system, as did Timothy in his awesome follow-up post on the buzzing bee breath, Bhramari Pranayama with Mudras. And we often mention that extending or lengthening the exhalation triggers the parasympathetic nervous system, the Rest and Digest part of our nervous system’s balancing program. This made me realize that I could add a bit more detail to explain how that actually happens.

It turns out the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) that connects brain to body is a two-way street. If I am anxious and nervous or stressed out by events in my life or simply the thoughts about those events, my brain, via the nerves of the ANS, will likely turn on the Sympathetic part of that system (the Fight or Flight response), which could result in faster heart and breathing rates, and increases in blood pressure, to mention just two of the most obvious physiological changes.

But the cool thing is that the lungs and heart can feed back to the brain and essentially convince the brain that things are calm and peaceful, even when there are still stressful circumstances. One neat way this happens involves the relationship of the heart and lungs and the nerves between them. In each round of breath, during your inhalation, your heart gets stimulated to beat a little faster. Then during the exhalation that follows, your heart gets told to slow down a tad. The overall effect is very little change in the heart rate from minute to minute. But when you make one part of the breath cycle, either the inhale or the exhale, longer than the other, and you do this for several minutes, the accumulated effect is that you will either slow the heart rate down or speed it up from where you started. When you make the inhales longer than the exhales, for example, by using a two-second inhale and a one-second exhale, and you keep this up for several minutes, the heart rate will go a bit faster. This will send a feedback message to the brain that things need to activate more in the brain and body for whatever work there is to be done, stimulating the Sympathetic portion of the ANS.

With the very useful Bhramari breath Timothy expanded on Bhramari Breath with Mudras, we do the opposite. As we hum during the exhalation, the exhales get longer relative to the inhales, as when we do a 1:2 ratio breath practice without the humming. This new respiratory cycle begins to slow down the heart rate, sending a message to the brain that everything is more peaceful and calm than five minutes ago, allowing the brain to support this shift further by activating the Parasympathetic portion of the ANS (the Rest and Digest or Relaxation response) that goes back from brain to body.

Research has shown that the vagus nerve as well as certain chemical neurotransmitters account for these effects of breath patterns on heart rate and subsequently on shifting the balance between the Sympathetic and Parasympathetic parts of the ANS. Keep in mind that the ANS is trying to keep all background systems in balance and responding appropriately to ever-changing circumstances of our day.

I’m providing this information for those of you who want to go a bit deeper in your understanding of how breath patterns affect the nervous system balance and either excite the system or quiet it. Our conscious choice of breathing differently can shift us to a more desirable part of the ANS, either by stimulating the active Sympathetic branch or the quieting Parasympathetic branch.  Most of us need more of the latter, but not always!

For a little more background on how the Respiratory system influences the Cardiac system, which in turn influences the Autonomic Nervous System, see The human respiratory gate as well as Effects of yoga on the autonomic nervous system, gamma-aminobutyric-acid, and allostasis in epilepsy, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

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Chronic Stress: An Introduction

by Nina

Wounded Bird by Brad Gibson

An ongoing theme that we’ll be exploring in depth on this blog is the negative effects of chronic stress on long-term health and the need for stress management as an important aspect of healthy aging. So perhaps it’s a good time for me to define exactly what we mean by “chronic stress” and to let you know a little about why it is such a serious problem.

I learned about dangers of chronic stress the hard way. Back in the early nineties, I had a job as the documentation manager and lead technical writer at a software start-up company, while at the same time I was raising two children. As you might imagine, the pressure was intense as our small company struggled to meet our first deadline, the first test of the product by real customers (who needed my manuals to teach them how to use the product!). As the deadline approached and I started working overtime, I began having difficulty sleeping. I also started losing weight because the stress made me so feel nauseated that I lost my appetite. Eventually I was so anxious, exhausted and nauseated that even though I met my deadline (and the company went on to success), I couldn’t bounce back to normal health. It took a year and half of therapy, medication, and lifestyle changes to recover completely.

Feeling stressed is not always a bad thing, however. It’s your body’s normal response to perceived danger or extreme physical activity (often called the “fight or flight response”), which is vital in keeping you safe and active. When you encounter a stressful situation, whether it is a grizzly bear or a stack of tax forms, your body releases hormones (adrenaline and noradrenaline) to provide you with the energy and alertness needed to cope with the situation. And anyone who has almost been run over an SUV knows the feeling: heart racing, rapid breathing, gut clenching. This is because in stress mode, your nervous system stimulates your organs and mobilizes energy by: 

• raising your blood pressure 
• increasing your heart rate and the blood supply to your skeletal muscles (and away from your gut) 
• dilating your pupils and bronchioles, providing improved vision and oxygenation 
• generating needed energy by breaking down sugar and fat stores for immediate use 

Between stressful situations, your body needs to rest, recover, and acquire new energy, so your nervous system responds by:

• lowering your blood pressure 
• reducing your heart rate, diverting blood back to the skin and gastrointestinal tract 
• contracting your pupils and your bronchioles for reduced oxygenation 
• stimulating your salivary gland secretion, accelerating digestion, and promoting normal movement of food through the gut 

But what if the stress is long term? When you almost get hit by a car, escape from a bear or finish your taxes, the incident is over quickly and you bounce back to normal soon after. But if the stress is ongoing or “chronic,” maybe because of continuing job pressures (like mine at the software company), marriage problems, health problems, and so on, your nervous system is continuously on the alert and this can overtax your body potentially causing:

• heart disease 
• hypertension (high blood pressure) 
• insomnia and/or fatigue 
• digestive disorders 
• headaches 
• chronic anxiety or depression 
• weakened immune system 

(Hmm, I just counted, and it seems I developed almost half of those symptoms, rather impressive in a weird sort of way.)

Of course, these symptoms are not only unpleasant but will seriously compromise your long-term health if you can’t manage to bring them under control. In addition, several age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Diabetes are exacerbated by stress, and some theories of aging itself (such as the telomere theory I discussed last week) propose stress as a factor in the aging process itself.

I hope you’re not getting too stressed out by reading all of this! I credit yoga with helping me stay well since that breakdown. And in the coming weeks, we’ll be offering many different alternatives for managing your stress even as you take on the many challenges that life has to offer.

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