3 Body Hacks for Fast Stress Relief

Summary

In this episode of the Catapult Effect podcast, host Katie Wrigley discusses various body hacks to help manage stress and anxiety. She emphasizes the importance of understanding the body's response to stress and introduces several breathing techniques and body movements that can aid in calming the nervous system. 

Takeaways

• Resistance to stress relief techniques can indicate a long-term stress pattern.
• Breathing techniques are essential for managing anxiety.
• The exhale activates the rest & digest nervous system.
• The 15-second breath technique is effective for calming the body.
• Eye position can influence emotional responses.

Credit: Tom Giovingo, Intro & Outro, Random Voice Guy, Professional ‘Cat‘ Herder

Mixed & Managed: JohnRavenscraft.com

Disclaimer: Katie is not a medical professional and she is not qualified to diagnose any conditions. The advice and information she gives is based on her own experience and research. It does not take the place of medical advice. Always consult a medical professional first before you try anything new.

Transcript

Katie Wrigley (00:00.526)
Welcome back to another version of the Catapult Effect podcast. I am your host, Katie Rigley. I wanted to change things up a little bit in 2025 and get super consistent with different content and topics I'm talking about. As I was looking at the expansiveness of the work that I do, I realized that there's so much to it and I haven't done the best job of giving it to you in the most cohesive format. So that is what I'm working on this year. So every month,

We're gonna have one guest episode and then the other episodes are gonna be solo and it's gonna be around one topic. Michelle Molitor joined me last week and she kicked off the year with an amazing episode around the fight or flight response in the nervous system and this incredible program she has. I think today is the last day you can sign up. So if you hear this episode, go check out Michelle's site in the last episode and go sign up for her program to rapidly rewire your nervous system.

This month we're going to be continuing along that line of learning how to de-stress and or what we call incognito movement down regulating the nervous system. And today we're going to be focused on different body hacks that are available to you to help get your system into a more resourceful state when you're feeling those stress levels rise. So stay tuned that is coming right up.

Thank you again for joining me today. I know you have your choice of a lot of different things you can listen to out there on the internet. And I truly appreciate you stopping in and checking out my show, especially because I create it so that you have actionable items you can take into your life to improve not only your quality of life, but when you share it with your friends and family, you're going to help raise their quality of life too. So I wanted to talk to you about different body hacks. And there's one piece in here that's really important.

If you notice that you're having resistance to the idea that there's various things that you can do that are going to help knock down your anxiety level, or it is actually going to help get your body into a less stressed, more resourceful state, really pay attention to that resistance. When you have had a long-term stress pattern, it can actually feel unsafe to the nervous system to let it go. This is something that I have...

Katie Wrigley (02:17.078)
witnessed directly both in people I've worked with and with myself. So you really want to watch and see do I have resistance to this? Do I just want to be in a place where I'm aware there's things that I can do for my anxiety but I'm not actually doing them? I want to actually reframe that and say the anxiety not mine. The anxiety is not yours, it is something happening in your body. So the first body hack I want to go into is the breath.

There are multiple different ways we can do this and we'll play with a couple. I'm going to give you three different methods and we're going to actually just walk through one of those methods together. There's way more than three methods out there just to be clear, but I don't want to overload you. So, all right, the first method, which tends to be the one that we hear the most is the box breathing. So that's inhaling for four, holding for four, exhaling for four, holding for four.

This is something that a lot of Navy SEALs do to help themselves get centered. That's actually the first place I'd ever heard about box breathing was, I don't remember if was David Goggins, I think it was someone else that I was reading their book and the box breathing came up in there and it is very resourceful. Another one that I've heard and this one is very much recommended for those who have a high level of anxiety. And one of the things that I want to pause and explain about the breath.

So when we inhale, we're actually activating our sympathetic nervous system, which is our fight or flight. When we exhale, we are activating our parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest and digest. This is why when you get startled, you do a, and you take in a quick breath, you're activating your fight or flight because you're startled. Your body wants to go into action. When we do this, when we want to be in a more relaxed state, that's not going to be the most resourceful breath.

your breathing goes shallow when you are in a life or death situation. The exhale clues the brain and clues the body that you are not in a life or death situation.

Katie Wrigley (04:26.168)
having the exhale be just a little bit longer than the inhale can really help. And so this first method I'm gonna share, the exhale is actually twice as long as the inhale. So this is four, seven, eight breathing. So first we have box breathing, four, four, four, four, inhale four, hold four, exhale four, hold four. Four, seven, eight is inhale four, hold for seven, exhale for eight.

By the time you get to that end of the exhale the first time, you're really going to be ready for an inhale again. After the first couple of breaths, that'll actually get a lot easier. And you'll notice it's about a 15, four, seven, eight, nope, that's about a 19 second breath. So you're taking about three of those in a minute. The slower you breathe, the more you're cluing into your body that you are okay.

The breath that I wanna do with you, and this one is my favorite, is I call it the 15 second breath, and this is something I learned from the Heroic app. So we inhale for six, we hold for two, and then we exhale for seven. And we're gonna do this four times together. I'm gonna count, and I want you to do this with me and really notice and observe in your body what changes just in this one minute.

So every time I've done this, I feel a little bit calmer and more centered and you may be able to actually hear it in my voice. So, all right, we're gonna just go ahead and take just a couple of breaths together just to all get in the same cycle. Just take an inhale in through the nose, exhale through the nose. You wanna breathe in and out through the nose as much as possible. I know this is flu and cold season that may be more difficult.

But if you can breathe in and out of your nose, please do so. It's gonna be a much more effective breath and it's gonna distribute more oxygen to your cells this way. All right, so let's do this together. Inhale for six and let's go. And inhale, two, three, four, five, six. Hold, one, two. Exhale, one, two, three, four, five, six.

Katie Wrigley (06:35.778)
seven. Inhale two, three, four, five, six. Hold two. Exhale two, three, four, five, six, seven. Inhale two, three, four, five, six. Hold two. Exhale two, three, four, five, six, seven.

Last one, inhale, two, three, four, five, six, hold, two, exhale, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Return to normal breathing. Notice what's changed in the body. Do you feel more centered or grounded or relaxed? What is happening now versus a couple minutes ago? So the breath is the first tool that you have access to.

The other one that you can utilize, and I'm going to give you three overall, three body parts. So the first is the breath using your lungs in and out through the nose. The second one is just by allowing your eyes to go in the upward position, you're actually going to break apart a lot of the power of that connection.

This is not gonna get rid of it completely, but it should lighten it. So just allowing your head, your eyes to go up, like you're looking at the ceiling, keeping your head neutral, and just breathe into it again. We're gonna utilize the breath. I always utilize a breath anytime we're trying to de-stress. Having the eyes in the up position.

Whenever our eyes are up, we start to detach from the physical sensation in the body, including any emotions that we're feeling. Those of you who wear mascara out there, you may notice that your eyes wanna go up when you're trying not to cry and make your mascara run. Your eyes are gonna go up when you do that. And just notice how that feels. And then the third hack that I wanna give you today involves the ears. So there's a few different ways we can do this.

Katie Wrigley (08:42.282)
And for those of you who are listening, I'm going to do my best to explain this to you. And honestly, I forget what the actual parts of the ear are called, but we've got this lovely ear lobe. We have this outer edge of the ear. This is something that we can play with. And then we also have this little piece that goes over where the actual ear canal is. So those are the two pieces of the ear that we're going to be working with the most. So one of the things that you can do if you start to realize that you're really getting wound up

upset is you can just take your your thumb and your forefinger and that little piece that covers the ear canal just gently give it a little bit of a massage just nice and gentle you can even do this while you're driving as long as you're still watching the road and you got a hand on the wheel you can just give yourself a little bit of gentle pressure in that ear take a nice deep breath again going back to the breath again

And feeling that, and if you aren't driving, you can actually combine. can take deep breaths, massage that little part of the ear and let your eyes go up and notice what you're feeling then. The other thing that you can do is you can actually massage around the outer earlobe. So this is gonna help really relax the body. A lot of times in acupuncture, they're putting different needles in the ears. They correspond with different parts in the physical body. Can you work your way down around the outside of the ear?

If you give the ear lobe a little gentle massage and pull down gently on it Then you can actually start to calm down the body a little bit again as well and you'll notice sometimes we actually see some kids who have autism they will actually go to their ears and start pulling on them when they're feeling agitated this is a an Instinctive reaction from them that they are realizing that if they do that, they're actually going to calm down a little bit

and just giving yourself a nice little ear massage there. All right, so to recap, we went over three different body hacks that we can start to do and we're gonna be building on this. It's really hard for me to leave so much of this on the table in an episode, but I did commit to having shorter episodes for you guys. Hadn't done the best job of that yet, so I'm really stepping into that this year. All right, so we've got the breath.

Katie Wrigley (11:04.846)
That is the first thing and you're always going to go to the breath first because the breath is telling the brain and the body you are okay. When you are literally in a fight or flight situation where your life is on the line, you are not going to be able to take a deep breath. The breathing goes super shallow for a reason when we are legitimately needing a fight or flight, get out of dodge situation. Our nervous system oftentimes thinks that we are in an emergency when we're not.

This can happen when our boss is yelling at us or when we're getting on stage or when we have to have an uncomfortable conversation with someone. That adrenaline response, that stress response kicks up the same way. But in those situations, your life is not actually at risk. And this is where you have the opportunity to pull in some of these techniques. So the three breaths we went over, the box breathing, inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four.

When you're trying to calm the body, having the exhale, which activates the rest or digest nervous system, when the exhale is a little bit longer than the inhale, you're going to have a more calming effect in the body. One of the best breathing techniques to lower anxiety, the four, seven, eight breathing. Inhale for four, hold for seven, exhale for eight. And then my favorite that also has a very calming effect is the 15 second breath.

You are inhaling for six, holding for two, and exhaling for seven. The next technique that you have, you can let your eyes go into the upward position. You can do this while taking breaths. You can even put your hand on your body where you're feeling that anxiety, acknowledging that anxiety. You can do a little acknowledgement. It's gonna help a lot to just cut it down a little bit more. But let the eyes be in the up position. Choose your favorite breath.

and allow yourself to be there and notice what happens to the body. And then the third is utilizing the ears. So you can give the outer ear a little bit of massage. You can also give a massage to the little piece that covers the ear canal, just working it between your thumb and forefinger. And then also pulling down on the ear lobes is gonna help get the body into a more relaxed, more resourceful state.

Katie Wrigley (13:29.122)
Thank you so much for joining me today. I trust this is helpful and I encourage you to utilize one of these techniques immediately. Start bringing it into your life today. I will be back again with another episode next week. We're going to talk about the importance of actually feeling the sensation in the physical body. I know I'm feeling resistance even mentioning that to you guys. I still feel that resistance, but it is really important. So we're going to have a conversation about the importance of acknowledging.

the feelings in the body and what surprising thing actually happens when we can allow ourselves to do that. It's coming up next week and until then, please be well and thank you again so much for joining me today.