Episode #90- The Rest and Repair State

Today I talk about the Parasympathetic/calm state- the nervous system state where our body can rest and repair.

 

When we are in survival states (Fight/Flight, Freeze/Fawn), we use more energy and compromise the organ systems of the body.  

 

But in the calm/ rest and repair state, we have increased circulation, digestion, and immunity. 

 

We have more activation of the prefrontal cortex- so we are more collected, present and creative.

 

It is a learning state, and we are more receptive AND intuitive.

 

This parasympathetic/calm state takes less energy for the body.  It is a place of more ease and flow.

 

Your cells are either in defense mode or  repair mode, they can't be both. 

 

So by giving yourself a chance to rest or play, you are "Doing something" very important!  You are letting your body heal!

 

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Transcript- Automatically generated:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, episode 90, The Rest and Repair State. In this podcast, we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.
Become Unstoppable Body and Mind. Hello, my loves. I want to talk to you today about the parasympathetic calm state.
You might hear it called rest and repair, rest and digest, rest and reproduce. It's the calm state, the ventral state. Could also call it the window of tolerance or as I've been calling it, alignment.
If you think of a zebra that's out in the wild, when the zebra is being chased, they'll go into a fight or flight, run away. But then when they're not being chased, the zebra will go to a state of relaxation, where it's eating, it's digesting its food, reproducing, playing, resting, and that is the parasympathetic calm state. Now, the problem, the double-edged sword that we have as humans is that we have these powerful brains, these prefrontal cortexes that can think of abstract things and we can think of the future and the past, and that means we can worry constantly.
We can think of the past and regret it. We can think of the future and have concerns about it. And so we can actually keep ourselves constantly in a survival state.
And that's how most of us are living. That's definitely how I was living. As I look back five years ago, and I was either in fight or flight, or freeze or fawn, which are all survival states that I talk about on the Nervous System Basics episode.
And I will continue to talk about a lot because these survival states will actually transform the way your body functions. Using more energy, imagine if you were sprinting versus a slow jog or a walk, your body is functioning differently when you're in survival mode. So the relaxed state is the parasympathetic calm state, and what happens to your body physiologically when you're there.
So in this state, there's increased digestion, increased circulation, increased immunity, increased functioning of the prefrontal cortex, increased oxytocin, the hormone for relation and connections, and increased recovery of the body. So this is the state where your cells are regenerating, that natural part of your body that knows how to heal, like when you get a cut, when you're in the parasympathetic calm state, this is where your body does rest and repair. There's decreased defensiveness.
So when you're not in the survival states, you'll have less defensive posturing, emotions, and that tension in your body that can come when you're going through the world thinking that everything is dangerous. In this state, your nervous system feels relaxed, regulated, and safe. You may feel more connected with others, more creative, playful, present, and curious.
This is where you would think thoughts like, I'm safe, I'm enough, I'm worthy, I deserve this. When you're in this state, you do have an increased capacity to self-regulate. So less of the things around you will bother you when you're in this calm, relaxed state.
You might even think of sometimes in your life that you have felt very excited by life, maybe you're newly in love, and if something happens, like someone cuts you off, you feel more able to deal with it. You are not as upset. And in this state, you'll feel more openhearted and generous and giving.
This is the state where you can come up with ideas. So what I'll often see with my clients is that when they start to regulate more and more, if they have issues around money or around time or around relationships, the more they get regulated and get into this calm state, they start to come up with their own ideas. They start to see things a little differently.
And this is really where the magic happens. I've had so many clients of mine who have time scarcity issues start to think of some clever ways to hire out something or to have something delivered or to just drop altogether the pressure they're putting on themselves about something. This is like the state where when you're in the shower and you have your best ideas, this is the kind of creativity and inspiration you can expect to have more and more of in the parasympathetic calm state.
It's also where you access your intuition. This process that I teach of tuning into yourself, starting to learn these cues from your body and what they mean in different contexts, by doing that, you actually do get into this parasympathetic calm state more and have access to your higher self, to your intuition, to that inner voice that you have. And the more you access that, the stronger it gets.
This calm state actually takes less energy. If you think of the survival states, they're all putting our body into a compromised function of either hyper arousal or shutdown. So getting into this parasympathetic calm state actually benefits your body and mind in so many ways.
Now, for a lot of us, we have ideas about how we should always be doing things. We maybe feel unworthy or that we should be giving more. So if you notice that it's hard for you to calm down and to regulate and to get to a very calm place, that is normal in our society, but maybe you can think of some times in your life where you have felt this peace, where you've shown up with this calm.
And really what's going on for you in those times? What kind of thoughts do you have? And how can you spread this into more and more areas of your life?
When you're not needing to use as much energy to be in those survival states of fear, you open yourself up for more ease and flow in your life. But I will warn you, trying to let yourself relax a lot more may feel uncomfortable at first. I definitely have had a hard time, sometimes in my life, even taking off days of work.
And you would think since I own my own business now and I do my own coaching, I could just take days off whenever I want, but that's even been worse for me at first until I learned about regulating my nervous system more. So I just used to work and work, and the quality of work was not as good. And I was getting burnt out, I was getting exhausted.
So this way of living takes less energy. Your work will be more inspired, more creative, more intuitive, more in tune, and you're giving your body that chance to really rest and repair that it needs. One way that helped me to think of it initially was to think that although I felt like I was doing nothing when I would just take a nap or lay around or just stare out the window, I'm actually doing something.
I'm giving my body that chance to work. Your cells could either be in defense mode or repair mode. They can't be in both.
And so when you're in survival states, you're in defense mode. And when you're regulated, you're in repair mode. So it might seem like you're not doing anything, but below the surface at the cellular level, you really are.
Another quote is that if you don't choose time to rest, then your body will choose it for you. So if you can find these little ways to calm yourself more and more throughout the day, regulate your nervous system, there will be many great results for you. I promise that.
Have a good one, guys. Bye. Now, if you want to learn more about how to regulate your nervous system, how to process emotions, how to process pain, how to rewire your brain, how to make decisions, have boundaries, and have more fun in your life, then I'm happy to announce that I have just the program for you.
Starting February 22nd to 22-22, this is a program all about alignment. And I'm not talking about the alignment that I talked about as a physical therapist for over 20 years. I'm not talking about the physical alignment of your spine and your body, but the alignment of yourself with your body, with your inner self, with the knowledge and power that you have within you that is responsible for healing, that will help you with making decisions and being true to yourself.
Alignment is just getting to that parasympathetic calm state, the ventral state where you are connected, where you are collected, where you are creative, where you are playful. And getting to that state more and more often in your life will result in better healing, increased immunity, decrease of current pain, and more fun in your life, more flow and ease and serendipities. If you have chronic pain or disease, your body has brought you to this point where you probably notice the more you focus on it and try to fix it, the worse things are becoming, the more it's spreading.
The answer is tuning into your body, learning about yourself, learning not only what the real root causes of your pain, but more importantly, what to do now. If you think that possibly life could be easier, that you don't need to work hard all of the time and try to give from an empty cup, please click the link in the show notes and get on my email interest list for six months, working with me in a small group on your personal alignment. Thank you so much for listening.
I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review. And of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know that wants an unstoppable body and mind.