Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | The Simple Habit to Manage Daily Stress and Overwhelm | Tony Riddle #449

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to

Starting point is 00:00:51 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 278 of the podcast with natural lifestyle coach and record-breaking barefoot endurance athlete, Tony Riddle. Tony believes that through connecting with nature and our natural state, we can experience greater health and happiness. In this clip, he shares a simple daily habit to help us calm the fight or flight stress response system and manage the buildup of daily stress. I think a lot of us don't realize that our daily experience of life is hugely influenced by the state of our nervous system, right? And if you are constantly upregulated, so your stress, you know, your fight or flight system

Starting point is 00:02:08 effectively is on a lot of the time, you're going to see things differently. You're going to be reactive. You know, you're going to see danger when there is actual no physical danger, but you are going to see it and perceive it. And just understanding that when you downregulate, when you do one or two minutes of a

Starting point is 00:02:25 simple breathing practice so simple right you just experience the same situation completely differently you're probably not going to get as triggered you're probably going to make better decisions all kinds of things and you've used this term down regulation up regulation what does that mean up regulation is we could call it fight flight freeze and so if the lion enters the room right now raws us we will make a decision based on that we're either i imagine we're freeze yeah and assist the lion's digestion at that point but that's that's the fight and flight response and then through that to simplify it what can happen is um the immune system there's no point in fighting off a cold right so the immune system drops off i need that energy elsewhere digestive system is a

Starting point is 00:03:16 huge cost for digestion so i'll drop that one off because i need the energy again perhaps to fight or run away um reproductive systems another one? No point in me producing another Bam Bam in the world if I'm going to be eaten by a lion, right? So those are very costly systems. So those will be dropped off to fuel my system to enable me to fight or flight, right? And then downregulation is this rest and digest. So a rested system, more associated with parasympathetic

Starting point is 00:03:49 that calm response where those systems are almost like rebooted in a way and that should if you think about it should be a normal growth state where where we are down regulated and then a cute response would be this sympathetic fight flight as the lion enters because the lion wouldn't always be in the room with us, right? Unfortunately, our lifestyles today, there's this imaginary lion in the room, right? It's there. And that, for some, is even an email or a phone call. And they're almost like bolt-ons, aren't they? It could be a late night.

Starting point is 00:04:19 It could be a late night, then a phone call. It could be, oh, I've got to go into a meeting. I'm a bit unregulated about the meeting. And then other stuff might be playing out from way back there that we haven't processed even. So the down regulation in the book, I'm bringing those practices in so we can find ways of getting perhaps that rest and digest, that crystal clear state of mind, that growth promoting mindset back. promoting mindset back. One person I worked with had a terrible relationship with her father and would have to go and see him certain times of the year, but was so stressed about it. And I said, okay, stop outside the house, work on the damn regulation breathing techniques. Let's do the long exhales. The longer the exhale, the lower the heart rate, blood pressure.

Starting point is 00:05:03 Let's try four seconds in, six seconds out. Six rounds of that, you're already at a minute. That's a minute. Just take a minute. Okay, let's do two minutes, three minutes, whatever it takes. Get to the door. As you answer the door, you breathe out. As you enter the house, you breathe out,

Starting point is 00:05:22 and you maintain that same rhythm of breath by nasal breathing no one in the room knows your nasal breathing or following a four six but you're keeping down regulated and she messaged back immediately afterwards and just oh my god i just saw the experience as something completely different because her past emotions weren't playing out in that room from being upregulated it's just like simple down regulation practice changed her experience with her father, right? Yeah, I think this is so powerful, Tony. As a doctor, I know that around 90% of what we see in any given day

Starting point is 00:05:54 is in some way related to stress. And I just don't think people really get stressed still and understand how stressed and how upregulated they are much of the time. In your experience, people who come to your retreats, people who seek you out for help, people you've coached, when they come and see you, what proportion of their daily life do you think they're spending upregulated compared to downregulated compared to, let's say, an indigenous tribe who are living in nature with nature? Can you sort of paint a picture for us of what that difference might look like? I can paint it from Bruce. So Bruce Parry has been with so many tribes now, documentary

Starting point is 00:06:37 tribes, also TY. I had a good chat with Bruce around the book as well, discussing Pennant tribe and another tribe called the Bengali tribes. They're mentioned in the book. They are. I love that bit with the Pennant tribe. I just underlined it. I thought it was wonderful. Amazing story. And he just expressed this. He just said, look, you'll get it, Tony, because of this right and left hemispheres and being down regulated and this state of meditation they're operating in like 24 7 it's like even if they're in alert states it's it's like an alert state that we would talk through the wim hof method let's say where you're you're using an up regulating breath technique but not to bring that kind of up regulation stress to become an alert state so there's a positive to that it might be you know say we're having a slump in the afternoon it's 3 30 i've got to jump on a podcast i'll use another type of breath practice to just pick

Starting point is 00:07:28 me up again it just bricks me up into an alert state doesn't mean i'm stressed out but it's an alert tuned in practice so it's like a stressed and focused yes as opposed to a stress and anxious yes it's a different mindset so that's's what Bruce was explaining that these indigenous tribes, again, they're moving for a landscape, but they're not separate to it. They're totally tuned into the frequency of it, right? And that's where they're at. It's like that's what they operate at the whole time. So it's like these indigenous communities that Bruce is talking about are normalizing downregulation, parasympathetic. And some of the attendees I see have normalized sympathetic. You can put practices within your day. You just need little reminders.

Starting point is 00:08:19 And sometimes that's all it takes. It's a reminder to breathe. You know, it's a reminder maybe on the hour to say everyone has a minute you know out of your hour take one of the minutes away and just say okay here's six cycles of breath just to reconnect to the breath again and to find myself within it so let's just talk people through that because a lot of people have heard of breath work they've heard of practices they've heard on this show before but you mentioned one the four, right? So maybe just be super practical with people. On the hour, you're recommending that they take a pause and do four six? Four six, six cycles. And sometimes, you know what? Don't even get obsessed by the counting of it. There's a breathing app I've recommended

Starting point is 00:09:00 in the past, and it has a sound that picks up for four seconds another sound that drops off for six seconds that's called breathing app it's so simple right that's one or it can just be if you put your finger on your pulse for a moment and you just inhale up through your nose you'll notice there's a slight pickup of the pulse as you exhale and you exhale for longer you'll notice there's a dropping off of the pulse so it's as long as you can inhale for and as long as you can exhale for but just try and extend the exhale a little longer and practice six cycles. You'll be at around a minute, right? Prior to that, just try this. Wherever you're sitting, it could be on the floor, office chair, wherever you are, just try and relax the pelvic basin in your lower abdomen,

Starting point is 00:09:40 because we're also very tense down there, right? So we're walking around very tense. in your lower abdomen because we're also very tense down there right so walking around very tense so try and relax that area to begin with allow your jaw to settle and your heart to settle just tune into that very simple language relax the pelvic floor the pelvic base and the lower abdomen the jaw let the shoulders go and let the heart go even that if you just even think of that you're already a step there like immediately moment i think of that, you're already a step there. Like immediately the moment I think of that, I'm like, okay, I feel calm again. You know, it just comes in, drops in. And then you breathe into that space. Breathe into the relaxed jaw, breathe into the relaxed shoulders,

Starting point is 00:10:13 breathe into the lower abdomen and the pelvic floor and just allow all that being of you just to expand on the inhale. And then don't push your exhale. So you just allow your exhale to go as if yeah so it's just allowing your whole being to be inflated with an inhale and allow the breath just to leave you and that's six cycles that's i mean it's such a simple practice it's so simple isn't it so like an alarm on the hour maybe on people's phones to remind them like even if they're stuck post it post it note boom up on your screen whatever it, just remember to breathe today. You know, it could be, it's just little reminders. And we do need the reminders

Starting point is 00:10:48 because again, once that stuff starts kicking in the next email, the next phone call, and we find ourselves upregulated, we're already operating from a different system. So sometimes we just need that little reminder, like a little tap on the shoulder from your favourite uncle or aunt saying, just remember to breathe now. Yeah. I mean, what I love about that practice is that there's literally nobody who is listening to this podcast right now who couldn't do that. It doesn't cost any money, right? They don't have to buy anything. They don't even need to get an app, really.

Starting point is 00:11:18 You don't even really need to time it, do you? It's just a rough approximation, you know, roughly in for four, out for six and just do that for a minute and what benefits is someone going to get if they do that why should they i honestly believe that just that those simple patterns like the inner work i call it but every relationship improves from you doing the inner work including the one with yourself right so that will mean every relationship within your work environment a home environment will improve via that and it could be like with the

Starting point is 00:11:51 lady i'm discussing you enters her father's home her relationship with her father improves from that right just in that moment because again she's seeing him differently she's not seeing him from the what might have been way back there in childhood even because she's not operating at that subconscious layer. It's now she's entered as a conscious adult into that experience, not operating as maybe the six-year-old or the five-year-old back there. I guess your ability to think clearly, precisely. So within a work environment, we want to be on our game, don't we? We want to be able to articulate. We want to be focused.

Starting point is 00:12:28 We want to be able to deliver on time or targets. And you can do all of that. You're going to work better. You just work more efficiently, right? That's it. That's it in its simple form. But again, I think it's really down to that. For me, it's the relationships.

Starting point is 00:12:42 Every relationship improves. With parenting, for instance, it might even be working from home. I have a studio outside the house. I have this really long commute these days across the lawn, right? But it's sometimes easy to forget that that's still a work environment. And I'd suddenly enter the home and I'm still in the email or the phone call. So what can we do? Okay, we put everything down in that moment breath work just for a moment a minute

Starting point is 00:13:05 then leave that experience and leave whatever it is in that space before entering the new space because again the kids are waiting for you they're waiting to see you and who do they want to see they want to see kind of again the upregulated papa or the downregulated papa you know who have they been waiting for and an app but even in like an hour or two hours is like a lifetime to kids if you've been in that environment. It could be, I just can do one minute of down regulation breathing where my out breath is longer than my in breath in my car. And then when you walk through the door,

Starting point is 00:13:35 your interaction with your partner, with your kids, it's going to be completely different. It can stop a lot of unnecessary disputes or arguments. I mean, the other thing for me, Tony, is I hear that. Why I think that's such a powerful practice also is because we get to work and we just start to accumulate a lot of the time stress and what I call micro stress doses.

Starting point is 00:13:57 And if you don't do anything to down regulate, you just keep going, just keep going, keep going. And then by the end of the day, when you've finished, you may not have done anything to pause, to bring everything back down again. So by the time you then rock up at home after work, whether you're working from home or from an office, your state is completely different and arguably not the best state to then interact with loved ones. I had this moment, I was staying at my friend's space in Somerset. We were there for six months, so we got to live in like a proper community experience.

Starting point is 00:14:32 And there was one morning I had a lot on. I'm just, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to go to the lake. I'm just going to sit at the lake. So I walked to the lake, did some breath. And in that moment, it was this simple language of um it's a choice right so you can choose to do the breath and appreciate the privilege or you can choose not to and feel overwhelmed and then I realized it was just a fine line between

Starting point is 00:14:58 overwhelm and privilege and what can help me navigate that path is just a simple breathing practice hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. And I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.

Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | The Simple Habit to Manage Daily Stress and Overwhelm | Tony Riddle #449

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.