Relief in Less than 5 Minutes

Summary

In this episode of the Catapult Effect Podcast, host Katie Wrigley discusses the importance of acknowledging stress and anxiety sensations in the body. She emphasizes the rising mental health crisis and offers practical body hacks to help listeners manage their anxiety. 

The episode guides listeners through a body awareness exercise, encouraging them to connect with their physical sensations and understand the messages their bodies are sending. Katie Wrigley also highlights the role of anxiety in keeping us safe and the importance of addressing inherited behaviors that contribute to stress. The episode concludes with a recap of the discussed techniques and an invitation to explore proactive methods for maintaining a calm nervous system.

Takeaways

• Stress and anxiety are increasingly prevalent in today's society.
• Acknowledging physical sensations can help reduce anxiety.
• Breathing techniques can aid in calming the nervous system.
• Understanding the root causes of anxiety is essential for management.
• Inherited behaviors can contribute to anxiety and stress patterns.

Resources:

Website
Book a call with Katie

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 (00:00.888)
Welcome back to the Catapult Effect Podcast. I am your host, Katie Wigley. Last week we dove into three quick body hacks you can utilize when you're noticing that stress or anxiety goes up pretty high. Today we're going to talk about the importance of acknowledging those sensations and the really quick gift you get by doing so. Stay tuned. That's coming right up.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I know you have a lot of choices of what you're listening to and tuning into on the internet. And I love that you are doing something that's gonna help not only you, but others in your life. So this month, we are focusing on different hacks that you can do to help lower anxiety and stress and get that nervous system into a more calm, resourceful, flexible state. If you look around globally,

and we've talked about this before, stress and anxiety and depression are at an all-time high, which is interesting because that is inversely correlated with all of the conveniences we have created for ourselves. that correlation, that inverse correlation has a lot of science behind it, explaining why a lot of our conveniences, such as the screens we watch, actually load, are tying into this stress and anxiety and depression and mental health crisis that we have globally.

Everybody talked about the COVID pandemic. Not enough people are talking about the mental health pandemic, which has been going on and is continuing to go on. And we need to start to help one another find a way to be at ease. It's one of the most powerful things that we can do. So last week we went over three body hacks that you can do very quickly on the fly, nice and discreet to help get that nervous system into a more calm, resourceful state. And now

The next thing that I want you to do and you can combine these and stack them and by all means, please do. Now the other thing I wanna talk about is what we talked about last week with the body hacks, the breathing, places you can access in your ears, different eye positions that are gonna help get your body to calm down. That last week as well as this week, this is what we wanna do when we're feeling more acute sensations or if we notice that this sensation

Katie Wrigley (02:19.342)
this anxiety, this stress is pulling focus from what we really want to be looking at in any given day, whatever we're focused on that day. So we want to really utilize these and habitualize these so that when we notice stress is coming up, anxiety is coming up, we can immediately respond and get those levels back down so your body isn't getting those same stress peaks that it used to get.

Next week's episode we're actually going to talk about some different things that you can do as a proactive practice to keep yourself from even getting into those states. So we have two different ways that we're going to be approaching this. The body hacks of last week that's going to help get your body into a more resourceful state and knock off the worst of it, the most highest levels of intensity. Now we're going to shift focus to actually

feeling it in the body. And now if you are just listening to this, this is one of the best episodes to actually come back to and watch on YouTube as well. And I will make sure the YouTube link is in the audio link today so that you guys can more easily watch it. It'll be around three and a half minutes when you're gonna wanna move forward and see what we're doing here to watch this technique. So.

What you wanna do is just make yourself comfortable. If you've already done a couple of your hacks, maybe you're rubbing your ears or letting your eyes roll up, or potentially you were just doing some breath work, we're gonna take a couple of breaths together here. And as we're doing so, I want you to start to look down at your body and notice any physical sensation. If you're feeling stressed or anxious, I want you to specifically go looking for those feelings in the body.

So what you're gonna do is you're gonna look down with your eyes open, totally keeping your eyes open. You're looking down at your body and you're allowing yourself to connect with the body. Traditionally, we tend to feel things along the midline of the torso, but you can feel it anywhere in the body. So scan your body from head to toe and notice where you are feeling this anxiety or this stress. Breathing into it, nice deep breath, letting the exhale be just a smidge longer than the inhale.

Katie Wrigley (04:38.562)
Checking in with your body with curiosity. We aren't judging. We aren't looking at it with fear. Just let yourself be curious about this physical sensation. Maybe it's the first time you've noticed that there's a physical sensation that goes along with this emotion. And congratulations if so. If it's not the first time, great. Keep dialing in that attention into that feeling. Notice where it is. And I've had people feel things in their feet, their shoulders, their arms. It's moved around to multiple locations.

Look at where it is in your body. Don't judge yourself and just notice where it is. Now, now that you know where it is and pause if you haven't found it yet, keep scanning and then come back when you found it. The next thing you want to do is get really descriptive with it. What does this feel like? As you're continuing to look down at your body, when our eyes are looking at our body, we are really connecting to the physical body and notice what are you feeling? Is this sensation heavy or light?

Is it or sharp? Is there maybe a color or a shape to it? Those may be really weird questions, but just see if there's answers. And if there's not, it doesn't mean anything. It's just data. We wanna be as descriptive with this feeling so that you could hold it in your body and keep your full focus on it as we go through this exercise. This is only gonna take a couple minutes. I'm drawing it out a little bit more than we normally would. So looking down at your body.

describing how it feels, heavier, light, or sharp. And now I want you to just keep feeling it and breathing into it. Notice how uncomfortable it is. Notice how intense it is on the scale of one to 10. Rate it now before we start to move forward. Nice deep breaths, noting the sensation. You aren't pushing it away. You're acknowledging it. Even if it's really uncomfortable, just stay with me. I promise the discomfort's gonna ease in a couple of minutes.

And now as you're really connected to that feeling, really dialed into it, you're going to very, very, very slowly let your eyes walk across your lap and then across the floor. And then you're going to start letting them go up the wall in front of you, trying to keep the eyes at neutral level, letting the head come up with it very, very slowly, still focusing on that sensation, just letting the eyes walk up the wall in front of you.

Katie Wrigley (07:01.806)
Holding that sensation in the body. Holding, holding, holding. And let your eyes go all the way up to where the ceiling meets the wall. Deep breath. Put your head back down again. Reconnect to that feeling in the body. Notice what's same, what's changed. Feel into that sensation. Notice it. Get curious about it. Breathing into it. Feeling it.

Notice if it got bigger or smaller, more or less intense. All of this is data, just letting yourself feel it. And then when you're ready, you're gonna let your eyes slowly walk across your lap and across the floor and starting to go up the ceiling in front of you.

Katie Wrigley (07:50.978)
Nice deep breaths. Letting your eyes slowly walk up the wall in front of you till you get to the point where the ceiling meets the wall. Another deep breath again and then check in with your body this time. What have you noticed? I actually wasn't feeling very stressed. I didn't think I was but even just doing that, walking you guys with it, I feel actually more relaxed in my body now. So notice what you're feeling in here.

And now this is another hack. So this is not something that is going to keep the anxiety from coming back. It's not something that's going to keep the stress from coming back. It is a way to acknowledge it in the moment. One of the reasons that your body is giving you these physical sensations that are uncomfortable is it wants your attention. It is trying to tell you something. It has a message for you.

And whenever you acknowledge that wish from your body to communicate with you by really honing in on the feelings and really allowing yourself to focus and feel them, the body is going to release and lower that signal. It knows that you're listening. So now it says, OK, I can ease up. That person has been listening to me and now I can let go of the sensation in order to really.

conquer your anxiety or your stress. You're going to want to work with a coach, a therapist, a cognitive movement practitioner, a mix of the above, whatever feels best for you to help you really get to the roots of it, take it apart and make it something that only comes up as you actually really need it in life. So you aren't as stressed.

when your boss is yelling at you, you can breathe into it and your nervous system is not reading everything as a saber-toothed that's about to come hurt you. You can get those signals under control and by really focusing on the root, a lot of times we can eliminate a lot of that pattern and we can always lessen it. Now when it comes to anxiety, I have so many people, myself included, that thought I don't ever want to feel anxiety anymore.

Katie Wrigley (10:01.41)
I get it. And that's also an unrealistic goal because the anxiety is there to help keep you safe. The problem is that the anxiety and the fear are triggering when your life is not on the line. We want to be able to have those fear triggers when our life is on the line so that we get into that fight or flight mode and we get out of the way.

When we are in perpetual fight or flight, this is no longer resourceful. It's draining your batteries. Everything is looking like a threat and your life is not gonna be nearly as enjoyable as it can be when you can get those heavier emotions, that stress, that anxiety, that fear out of your body. And we can do that by doing a deeper dive and finding where these came from.

A lot of times, especially lately, I've been hearing people say, I inherited this. I inherited this. A lot of what we inherit is the behavior. It's not actually the genes.

we learn from the people that we're around the most and we tend to be around our family the most when we're little. And before the age of seven, we're little walking tape recorders, just grabbing in everything that's happening to us and not really having any method to sort through and analyze it yet. Cause that part of our brain hasn't started to grow yet. And what this means is that we will subconsciously unconsciously pick up

these anxiety and stress patterns that we're seeing in our parents and we'll make them our own and we will have no awareness whatsoever that we've done that. And that's just one of the examples. Sometimes life has taught you that it's easier to be scared, that it's easier to be anxious. And that may feel true to a degree, but that's not being held up against the amount it is taking from you and draining you.

Katie Wrigley (11:55.81)
to hold that fearful energy in your body 24-7. It is not actually easier to hold that energy even if your nervous system thinks it's safer. We can actually show it that you are safer by being able to drop that signal because you're going to have a more accurate interpretation of the stimulus around you to decide whether something is a threat or not.

Okay, to recap, the importance of really feeling these sensations in your body. Your body is giving you a message through the discomfort of anxiety, of stress, of whatever it may be. We're focused on stress and anxiety for this episode. So by acknowledging it.

and focusing on it, the body is going to let go and it's going to drop the intensity of that signal. This is something that you can do when you are feeling acute levels of stress or anxiety, feeling like you're stuck or you are unable to focus on what you're trying to do in your day.

Last week we had gone over some various body hacks that you can utilize. I really encourage you to use the tips from the last two episodes together and use them whatever way feels the most resourceful to you. Maybe you want to do some breath work like we said and then tap into the body. Maybe you want to let the emotions go away by letting the eyes roll up or giving yourself a little ear massage before you're checking in with your body and really noticing the sensations. I encourage you to play with them.

and find what combination feels the most resourceful and the most effective for you. And I hope you're going to join me again next week. We are going to go into some of the things that you can start to do more proactively to help your nervous system stay in a more resourceful and flexible state versus the more reactive methods of the body hacks and tapping into your body that I've just explained to you. Thank you again.

Katie Wrigley (13:52.572)
so much for joining me today and I will see you again next week. And until then, please be well.