Resting to Repair
The most powerful body system that drives your amount of calm is the nervous system.
Your central nervous system is governed by all your conscious thoughts, for example, I want to walk the dog, and you walk the dog. You choose the places you walk and the pace through this nervous system.
The central nervous system has several branches. The parasympathetic nervous system branch is the one that promotes “rest and digest” or “rest and repair”.
Your autonomic nervous system (ANS) however controls more bodily functions like digestion, heart rate and saliva production. When public speaking, it’s difficult to just stop having a dry mouth, just as it’s difficult to make ourselves have thicker hair.
The autonomic nervous system is really affected by a lifestyle fuelled by “too much to do in too short amount of time”. Some symptoms may include :
- feeling background stress most of the time or being on red alert.
- Craving sugary foods and drinks
- Not waking up restored
- Trouble falling asleep or waking regularly throughout the night.
- Going to sleep feeling “still so much to do”.
Being in constant fight or flight is one of the big challenges of these times for our health and well-being. Fight and flight is the branch of the nervous system called the sympathetic nervous system (SNS).
How Hypnotherapy Helps Dramatically with Fight and Flight or Constant Stress
During a hypnotherapy session, the conscious mind is quietened so that the subconscious mind is spoken to in a very direct way. In the highly focused and very calming state of hypnosis, we shift from the fight or flight state (the sympathetic nervous system) to the resting or safe state in a long-term rather than temporary way, and it is here that the PNS, the parasympathetic nervous system is activated.
During this nervous system activation, the perception that we are under threat decreases. That is why many people come to Shine Therapies hypnotherapy approach for reduction of pain. During this state where the SNS nervous system goes more dormant, the immune and digestive systems get a boost, and higher mind problem-solving functions are supported.
As part of the hypnotherapy sessions I conduct, there is a component of strategic psychotherapy where we work out together which untruths are making us feel unnecessarily “under threat”. Once the threat is dealt with the good nervous system, the PNS, moves in to slow our heart rate and respiration, move blood back to the digestive tract so we can digest properly, and possibly even repair some inflammation that is triggered by always being under stress.