4 Ways to Proactively Lower Stress

In this episode of the Catapult Effect podcast, Katie Wrigley discusses the importance of calming the nervous system and offers proactive strategies to lower anxiety levels. 

She emphasizes the significance of meditation, exercise, natural supplements, and Cognomovement in managing stress and improving mental health. The episode also highlights the role of the amygdala in anxiety and the need for consistent practices to foster a more resourceful state of being.

Takeaways

• 70% of people in the US are in a state of perpetual fight or flight.
• Exercise provides both cognitive and mood benefits.
• Natural supplements like Ashwagandha can help lower stress.
• Cognomovement techniques can down regulate the nervous system.
• Starting small with meditation can lead to significant benefits.
• Consistency in practice is key to managing anxiety.
• Building habits for mental health is easier than it seems.

Resources

Cognomovement Essentials
YouTube - Mini Cognomovement Sessions
Peaceful Warrior CBD
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

Welcome back to another episode of the Catapult Effect podcast. I am your host, Katie Wrigley. Over the last few weeks, we've been talking about the importance of calming your nervous system and some of the signs that your nervous system may be hot or overactive. Today, we're gonna talk about some things that you can do to proactively help lower those levels of anxiety before they hit, before they spike. Stay tuned, that is coming right up.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I know you have your choice of a lot of different things to listen to on the internet, and I truly appreciate and am honored by the fact that you're choosing to spend your time with me. Thank you so much. So as we discussed over the last few weeks, we kicked off the year with Michelle Molitor talking about Amy the amygdala, which is part of your brain that's hiding behind the prefrontal cortex. If you're seeing this in video and not just listening to it, you'll notice I have my fist held up.

Amy the amygdala, when you blow your top, hit a stressful situation, your prefrontal cortex goes offline. Only the amygdala is looking around without any executive functioning to help get that system into a more resourceful state. When Amy is allowed to run the show all the time, we call that perpetual fight or flight. Listening to Mel Robbins podcast this week, it really blew my mind that 70 % of people right now

are in a state of perpetual fight or flight. Let me repeat that. 70 % of people leasing the United States, 70 % are in a state of perpetual fight or flight. It is actually 90 % in the UK. That is absolutely crazy to me, but it really speaks to how important this podcast episode is and the previous ones. So if you hadn't seen those, if you go back to the episode a couple of weeks ago,

We go into quick little body hacks that are accessible to you that you can do on the fly that are pretty discreet. And then last week we talked about the importance of tuning in to those sensations when you feel them. Even though they suck, it's really important to acknowledge them and the amazing gift you get when you allow yourself to acknowledge those emotions. So this week we want to focus more on things that you can do to put your body into a more resourceful state.

Katie Wrigley (02:25.408)
Now next week we're going to talk a little bit about habits and how you can start to build them to support this. But I want to talk to you today about things you could do more proactively on a daily basis that on a daily basis you may have mixed results whether you feel it's really worth your time or not. But these are the things that when you do them over time consistently they have a major positive impact on your life. And that's what I want you to focus on is the consistency in the habit.

That's why next week we're going to talk a little bit about how to make some of these a habit for you. So the first thing is meditation and we did talk about this a little bit with breath work as well, but having a regular meditation practice is going to give you a lot of different benefits. One of the biggest benefits is that you are strengthening your prefrontal cortex. This is your executive center. This is the frontal part of your brain.

That's sitting over Amy the amygdala and using rational thought, reasonable trains and lines of thinking to assess what you're seeing out there in the world. It is really important that we strengthen this part of the brain. This is also what is going to allow you to respond when your emotions are high rather than react. What do I mean by that? So again, if you're watching, you can see my beautiful dog, Tangy, back there.

Sometimes she will start barking or she'll bark and lunge at one of my cats. What I'm working on right now is shifting from reaction to response. My reaction is to jump forward, say N-O really loudly, which then makes everybody else jump. That's a reaction. By continuing to focus on this idea and utilizing tools such as my daily meditation practice to help me get there, well as my cognitive movement.

I can now see when she's starting to do it. I can stay more calm and I can help her navigate that energy instead of going after one of the cats. That's the difference between reacting and responding.

Katie Wrigley (04:35.606)
Responding takes a little bit of practice to be able to do. There's a lot of science around this. I'm not going to go into all that with how long you want to sit there and breathe into the emotion. I just want to focus on the meditation part and by having a regular meditation practice and strengthening that practice, you're going to be doing your body a lot of good and your brain a lot of good. Now, one of the other things that I've noticed still comes up and I've talked about this before that

I do still have a little bit of a hot nervous system. Way, way, way, way more functional and productive and flexible than it used to be, but it's still lowering in some heat. I carried a trauma for 40 some odd years. I'm not going to completely get rid of that overnight, but it's oh gosh, it's so much better. But one of the things that I have noticed is I move around a lot. As I watch my recordings, I'm like, wow, I really don't sit still.

This is something else that I'm working on a meditation practice. Now, if you're sitting down to meditate, you may notice when you sit down that suddenly there's all these little things starting to speak up in your body. You may have an itch. You may suddenly get a cramp. Do your best to try to ignore those and stay in a state of stillness. You can teach your brain in this more relaxed state that you don't have to be moving all the time and you can start to sit still and be still.

and be in stillness and still be okay. So meditation is one of the best things that you can do on a daily basis to help you be able to keep anxiety levels low. The second thing I'm going to talk about is the importance of exercising. And then we're going to go into how long to do all this as we wrap things up. And I'm just going to give you three things today that you can consider that are going to be proactive to help you lower your stress and your anxiety levels.

Exercise is one of the best things you can do. If you are currently in a state where you are disabled, I want to challenge you that there is still something you can do. Reach out to a physical therapist, whoever you're working with right now, and ask them what is within the range of possibility for you to do to move your body right now. It is so important for your mental health that you are moving your body in whatever ways your body is going to allow you to move around whatever conditions you are navigating.

Katie Wrigley (07:02.348)
not expecting you to go out and run a mile or marathon or anything like that. I want you to challenge your body from the current state that you're in now. That's gonna look different for everyone. Why do I want you to do this? The best quote that I heard is from Brian Johnson in Heroic and I think he actually takes it from someone else. But the quote is basically the exercise is like taking Ritalin and Prozac at the same time. Meaning it is great to boost your cognition.

and it is also going to really give you a mood boost for 12 hours. So it's great if you do it in the morning because then you get to sail in that mood boost all night all day versus exercising at night and then you're sleeping through the mood boost. But you're to get a 12-hour mood boost especially if you do more rigorous exercise and you're going to feel a lot more calm especially if the exercise is outside. Then you're also benefiting from the natural serotonin that you're getting out of the sun.

You're benefiting from the fresh air. You're getting to be able to calm your body down, being out in nature, so healthy for you in so many ways. So there's ways that you can add to this and can just really have it stack or stack various different wellness components on top of it. I told you there's gonna be three things. I lied. There's actually four. So.

The third thing that you can consider and I absolutely want to encourage you to do this on top of anything else that you're choosing to do out of this episode. The third thing that you can do is take supplements that are good at helping to lower stress in the body, lower cortisol levels. So one of my favorites is Ashwagandha. This is actually an adaptogen. So that means it's not going to wipe you out if you don't need that much one day, but it's going to adapt to your body.

and the really surprising thing. So I bought some at Costco last year and I really wasn't sure how great the supplement was going to be. I know that there's a lot that really aren't at the full strength that they say and so it's always kind of a gamble if I'm going with a name that hasn't been vetted out by a professional. But I decided to give this one a shot and I could actually tell a difference. And then after I'd taken it for a little while, I couldn't really tell a difference anymore. But what was really surprising to me

Katie Wrigley (09:25.474)
was my biometrics on my aura ring, those showed a difference. So when I would notice the time of day that I was taking the ashwagandha, and then I would look at the stress metrics that the aura ring gives you, it would drop down. Whether I was in stress, it would drop to engaged, or if I was engaged, it would drop into more relaxed or neutral, whatever the next one down is. But I could actually see the impact of taking this supplement, which was really cool.

Another really good supplement that I love and as with anything I suggest, please check with your health care provider before you try anything. Another great supplement that really helps calm the nervous system is kava kava root. So one of my mentees within the Cognitive Movement Program introduced me to this at Cognoconscious and she's someone who's also decided not to drink and she's like I really love this supplement because it calms my body.

the same way that having a glass of wine used to calm my body. And so I tried it one day and I noticed like I really had an easier time transitioning into a calm space in the evenings when I took this. There are a lot of different supplements out there that are around stress, that are around lowering anxiety.

I want to caution you around pharmaceuticals. Those are going to be covering up the symptoms. They aren't actually going to be working with your body in a natural way to help lower those levels and keep them lower. Another really good supplement to help the nervous system and calm anxiety is CBD. This is the non-psychoactive derivative of the cannabis plant. It is federally legal in any state.

And I'm actually going to link it to my friend Ace Henderson. He has an amazing CBD company called Peaceful Warrior CBD. That is where I get all of my CBD. Despite the fact that I am living in states with legal cannabis for the last eight years, I still use his CBD for two reasons. One, he actually puts in what he says he's putting in. And so I know that I'm getting that full dose. Two,

Katie Wrigley (11:34.1)
His product is a higher quality and he actually publishes his lab postings so you know exactly what is in there and other cannabinoids that you're getting. And he's just a wonderful human being and I want to support his company. So I will link to that in here if you want to try CBD for yourself. I still take it every day myself as part of my wind down routine. The body definitely benefits from this. The last thing I'm going to recommend is Cognomovement.

Of course, this is still the most powerful tool that I am aware of at this point in time. The things that we have been able to do within the Cognitive Movement community to help raise people's quality of life is just, it's amazing. We had World Cognitive Movement Day last Saturday and hearing all these powerful stories of all the ways that people have changed, being able to connect with children with special needs, being able to help.

children with special needs to learn how to communicate with their loved ones when they haven't been able to before. We've been able to help see people turn on their eyes, so to speak, when they have been declared legally blind. And when I say turn on their eyes, meaning they're actually able to determine and see colors again, which is pretty awesome.

So there's incredible things that we've been able to do. And one of the big things that cognitive movement can do for you is help down regulate the nervous system. What does that mean? It help means that it's knocking off the edge of stress and it's helping the body get into a more resourceful, flexible state. The nature of the exercise themselves are gonna do that automatically. We utilize bilateral eye movements, which not alone can help have a calming and soothing effect on the body.

And then we're also with some of the stretching that we're doing in the eye movements, we're actually signaling to the body messages of safety, and then the whole body and the whole nervous system stands down. What I recommend for people is to start to do mini sessions three to five minutes a day. That's it. You do not have to have a ball. I'm gonna link to my YouTube channel in the notes, which you may or may not already have the link to.

Katie Wrigley (13:50.114)
But I'm going to link directly to all of the mini Cognitive Movement sessions that I've created, including a short one showing you how to do a session. Now, I want to encourage you, if you're curious, to get Cognitive Movement Essentials. And this is going to also be a link in the show notes. Cognitive Movement Essentials is a video module set that is going to teach you everything you need to know to be able to do a Cognitive Movement session on your own, including how to troubleshoot if you run into an issue or feel like you can't clear it.

It is a really comprehensive set. It's actually priced at an incredibly low price, and you get a lot of benefits with it as well. They're going to teach you in those modules how to do a mini session on your own. So I really encourage you, if you feel like this is something that you want to start doing on a regular basis, make that small investment into Cognitive Movement Essentials. Don't just use any object and follow along on my YouTube channel, although you absolutely can if money is tight.

I encourage you to do it in any way that you can, but if you can also get to the Cognitive Movement Essentials, I really want to encourage you to do that because it's going to give you more. The ball itself, which you can see behind me, it serves not just as a focal point, but it's also going to give you extra brain activation that you don't get with another object. By doing these daily sessions, you are showing the nervous system day after day that it can actually stand down.

and be in a more resourceful state that doesn't have to have those danger signals going all the time, those ones that are wearing you out, that tell you that every single input that's going on in the world is going to be a threat to you.

So just to recap where we are so far. So four different ways that you can help start to get your body more proactively into a less stressed state. Meditation, exercise, natural supplements, and cognitive movement. There's a lot more, but I'm keeping it simple for you guys. All right, so how much do you wanna start doing on this? And now we're gonna go much more into habit forming next week, but just start with the minimum.

Katie Wrigley (15:59.338)
If you haven't been meditating at all, meditate for one minute. If you're like, have no idea what to do for a minute, I want you to do four 15 second breaths. We walked through those a couple episodes ago. You're inhaling for six, holding for two, exhaling for seven. Do that four times, call it a meditation. Pat yourself in the back. There's your win.

For supplements, that's going to vary how much you're taking. Follow the bottle, listen to your health care provider, and even seek out a professional who has a lot more knowledge about what your body needs for those supplements as well to lower those stress. With exercise, if you are completely sedentary right now, start small. Again, we're going to go more deeply into the benefits of habit building and how to build these habits next week.

But for now, just start slow. I want you to try just three times a week or even if you're at nothing, one time a week for five minutes. Just start to get the body moving. Just start somewhere and start to help yourself move forward. With the Cognitive Movement Sessions, you only need about three to five minutes a day. If even that, sometimes I will blow through and just do a super quick session just to help harmonize my brain.

help balance it out from the night before and whatever happened during a night's sleep. Sometimes I got some pretty wild nights of sleep, I'm sure you do too. Harmonizing the brain is gonna help and it's also gonna help pass information. So you're gonna be unclogging those circuits that may have gotten clogged overnight and helping set yourself up for more clear thinking for the rest of the day. By doing this repeatedly and I hear over and over and over again all of the positive effects that people have. So when your stress is lower suddenly,

all these other things are available. Having wonderful days and being able to see your life change in wonderful ways, that becomes possible and visible to you again. It may have been happening already, but you may not have noticed. This is going to start to open up a lot more possibility for you than you realized. All right, I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. Thank you so much for joining me again today and come back again next week when we talk about habit building. I'm going to give you a hint. It is a heck of a lot easier.

Katie Wrigley (18:17.036)
to build the habit than you think it is. And I've got some tricks that you probably haven't heard before. So join me again next week. We're gonna get to talk about those. And until then, please be well.