Today I'm going to teach you how to breathe with your rib cage. Here's what we're going to do:

• All I want you to do is sit up nice and tall, or stand up nice and tall, if you're standing, and just take a few breaths
•  Arms are at your sides
•  Just breathe, in whatever is a normal position for you

• Now, place one of your hands on your chest, on your breastbone, and take some more breaths. Do you feel that chest rising and falling? Do you feel it, lifting up do you feel your upper back rounding, arching forward to help that chest lift?

• ​Now what I want you to do is take both hands,
  • or you can use something like a belt, a yoga strap or even an ace bandage
• Hands, or some type of strap, around your rib cage
• Now if you've got your hands around your rib cage,
  • you might have your thumbs in back,
  • or you might flip your hands around so your thumbs are in front, and your other eight fingers are around the back of your rib cage

It really doesn't matter which you use in order to feel this, but what I want you to feel is that the shoulders are not all shrugged up into your ears. Whatever position your hands are at, the shoulders are down.
 
And if they're not comfortable, if the shoulders can't be down, then grab yourself a belt, or maybe the belt off your robe, or that Ace bandage or yoga strap or something, and wrap that around your rib cage instead.
 
If you've got a strap around your ribs, I want you to hold it snug against your ribs but not overly tight, not restrictive.

• And now I want you to try to take a breath, or three or four
• And can you feel movement, with your hands or under that strap, of expansion in the ribs​

Now, the ribs go all the way around. So you might feel the V that is in front of your rib cage, where it comes to a point right up against your breastbone. You might feel that V, expanding and contracting.

• You might feel the ribs on the sides of your torso, moving
• You might or might not feel ribs at your back, engaging expanding

So this first set of breaths is all about finding out what's moving: chest, belly and ribcage. Now, if you've got a strap, put it aside for a second.

• ​And all I want you to do is stretch your arms up, way overhead, and take a nice big yawn
• Stretching arms, stretching fingers, big breath in, and just let it all out at once in a great, big Whoosh. Let all your air out.

And now, notice where your rib cage is. It's down. It's relaxed. The side effect, the after effect, of good yawn is to relax your ribs.
 
We tend to walk around with the rib cage thrust out forward, I talked about that in last week's episode about that “boobs out belly in” position.
 
A yawn is one of the simplest ways to relax your rib cage back down into alignment, so that your ears, your shoulders, your ribs, and your hips are all stacked on top of each other, instead of that rib cage being thrust forward, of that line.
 
So if you need to you on a couple of times, take a couple of big breaths and just let them out, and the ribs drop and the shoulders drop.

• ​And now, take your strap or take your hands back around your rib cage, and take that inhale/exhale again
  • And now that the ribs are not reaching forward, can you get more movement, 360 degrees all the way around your rib cage?
  • At the V of your ribs, in the sides of your ribs, sort of under your armpits and down towards the waist.
  • And also, behind you, where those ribs bones wrap around and join at the spine.

Everywhere bones come together, are joints. Not all of the joints in our bodies hinge. So the joint of your fingers move back and forth. The joints of your ribs at your spine don't, but they are still connected there with cartilage, which has some flexibility.
 
So, when those ribs come back down and stop straining forward, the rib cage gets some flexibility, right there at your spine, which can feel really yummy, but it also might feel really weird in the beginning.
 
So don't go too strong into this. We're not trying to force anything. We're just trying to take nice even breaths, feeling the rib cage, expand.
 
This is a thoracic breath.

​It's going to help take pressure out of your pelvic floor. It's going to help you take a nice deep breath, which leads into all the things you want breath work for: stress, anxiety, mindfulness, lifestyle.
 
If you speak if you play an instrument, if you sing, if you have any manual hobbies, like gardening, like even exercising, being able to take a full breath, super helpful, I promise!
 
This is going to be the breath that we are trying to create, this thoracic breathing, this movement in your rib cage, in the breathing challenge, it's going to start next week.
 
So look out for that on my website, get on my email list if you're not so that you can join the challenge.
 
It is free. It's just a five day challenge teeny tiny steps, couple of minutes every day to just watch a video and listen to me and then practice when you can.
 
It's not going to be a gigantic investment of your time, but it is going to require some concentration and little practices throughout the day, so that at the end of the week, you are breathing better.
 
All of this is going to be super helpful, super important, and it should feel really good. I hope to see you in the challenge!

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​Most shallow breaths come from lifting your chest instead of breathing with the whole rest of your body. You've probably heard that before, about shallow breathing. But another way that you can trigger this is by driving when you're upset. A lot of people, myself included, have the tendency to push off of the steering wheel into your seat.
 
I think it has something to do with when you're frustrated there's not much physical that you can do about it that is socially acceptable. But when you're driving and you're upset, you can push, you can engage all of those muscles, without it being at all socially unacceptable. And that can feel satisfying!
 
But the pressure of your arms, pushing your upper back into the seat of your car, can have the exact same effect on those spinal nerves that go into the lungs, get too tense, and tell the brain, “I can't breathe”, and you can actually induce anxiety or even a panic attack while you're driving. Point is, please relax your grip and take a deep breath!

Right now, aesthetically, our culture thinks having a flat stomach, having a sucked in stomach, is appropriate.

Functionally, that's not appropriate.

​Functionally your belly needs to move in and out, it needs to have enough space in it as a container to hold all of your internal organs, to allow for things like digestion and elimination- the size of which then is going to fluctuate throughout the day.
 
And your belly is a supplement to your breathing, so it does need to move out and in. And most people that practice belly breathing, the first couple of times they try it (like for example a yoga class if you're sitting up and you try to belly breathe) people find they actually have to push their bellies out in order to expand that, because we have spent our lifetimes sucking in. When you suck in you're creating pressure, you're squeezing the balloon that is your abdominal cavity, and that pressure has to go somewhere- up or down.
 
Once we start breathing with your rib cage, once we let the ribs expand and contract the way that they're supposed to, we can take a lot of pressure off of the belly-

• On the one hand, because now the belly is not solely responsible for taking a deep breath.
• And on the other hand because in order to breathe with the ribs, we can't walk around with the chest thrown out. We need to actually relax the ribs a little bit, which also does feel really good, I'll tell you what!

 
And in relaxing the ribs and moving through the breath through the rib cage itself, we take pressure and work out of the belly.
 
So, breathing well becomes a structural, a postural kind of thing that requires less tension, less concentration, less exertion than what we've taught ourselves to do over the course of our lifetimes.
 
That “boobs out belly in” position is hard to maintain, and it's hard on our bodies! Coming back into all of that alignment so that the ribs can actually move- it’s a relaxed place, it's kind of nice to hang out there.
 
So next week I’m going to teach you how to take a thoracic breath, how to feel your ribcage actually move when you breathe. And we’re going to play around with that in our next episode.

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But if you do anything like sing, or do a podcast, or any kind of public speaking, or presenting on a stage or in front of the zoom screen, if you play a musical instrument, if you have a manual hobby, like gardening or anything that requires some exertion a little bit more than knitting (both gardening and knitting, our hobbies of mine, I'm not knocking that!) but the manual exertion type hobbies- the breath is going to be something that is very important for your stamina, for your endurance, for your longevity in those as well.
 
So next week we’re going to get into a little bit more about how to breathe better. For today, I want you to just think about where does your breathing actually happen.

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​Resources:
Make Peace With Stress
Expanding Resilience
Herbs and Stress
A Holistic Perspective on Stress
 Exercise Your Systems: Vagus Nerve

I wanted to talk about what it really means to have a holistic perspective, not only in terms of the pelvic floor that I focus on so much, but in that whole body, inside and out, top and bottom side to side, front and back setup that I am so passionately interested in, as well.
 
The best way I can describe it is that your body is a system of levers and pulleys- your bones and your joints- and they are covered with rubber bands- muscles.
 
So, any misalignments in your bones, any stuckness in your joints, and/or any tightness in your muscles, affects everything else.
 

• Maybe your neck is tight and that causes pain in the opposite hand.
• Maybe your pelvic floor is tight and it causes face and jaw pain.
• Maybe you're like a friend that I was just talking to has been doing pelvic floor exercises, and you've developed a pain in your calf, that is a direct result of that pelvic floor being now too tight, too engaged.
• Or maybe you've had foot pain. And now that pain has moved to your back.

 
The point is, everything is connected, and I don't mean that in any wishy washy kind of metaphor, it's literally the case that the foot bone is connected to the head bone.

So try this. Make a fist. That clenched fist represents a tight muscle.
 
I know there's a lot of muscles in your hand, there's a lot of muscles in your forearm that caused this. Just imagine the whole thing is one tight muscle.
 
From here, how can you strengthen that muscle? Well, you can't. It's stuck there. You have to loosen your grip and pull your fingers back, let go, stop making the fist in order to be able to do anything to that muscle in the first place.
 
So sometimes the answer to a tight muscle is stretching. But all the time, the answer to a tight muscle is to stop holding the tension in the first place.

This is a little less well-known herbal remedy- it’s not an everyday plant like Chamomile or Lavender, but boy oh boy is it helpful here. This is Solomon’s Seal- this is a root medicine that encourages our connective tissue to heal. 

Connective tissue damage is typically a long-lasting problem because it has so little blood flow- when you look at an anatomy picture of the muscular systems, the white tissue that connect muscles to each other and to bones is this connective tissue, and it’s white because there’s not much blood in it!

Typically, you can find Solomon’s Seal in an infused oil, which is a nice topical remedy to massage into your neck and jaw, and you can also find it as a tincture. This is an alcohol-based herbal remedy that you can use directly on the skin, though it may stain the skin a bit, and/or you can take it by mouth also. 

I’ve gotten a really nice infused oil from Avena Botanicals in Maine, and my favorite tincture is from Angel Shockley in VA. She has agreed to let me mention her as a resource for her tinctures but she says, and I quote, “There's only one catch - I don't post tinctures for sale in my shop. Anyone wanting to get some would need to reach out to me.” So on Etsy you’ll look for VAHerbAngel​, and I’ll link to her in the transcript as well. Then send her an Etsy message if this is something you wanted to experiment with.

Her Solomon’s Seal tincture is so rich and well made, I swear it tastes like chocolate! I just take a couple drops by mouth almost every day- not very much, because it’s so concentrated and so precious. When I’m consistent with this, my neck and face feel so much better, even if I’m doing an extra lot of talking or computer work.

There’s one more herb here I want to mention, and it's Blue Vervain. It’s even less well known than Solomon’s Seal in terms of general herbal knowledge, but if you’re either in frequent and great discomfort, or getting into herbs and wanting to step outside your comfort zone a bit, let me introduce you to Blue Vervain. 

There are a number of plants that might be called Blue Vervain- I’m specifically talking about Verbena hastata. Blue Vervain is an intense bitter, that really shakes up the nervous system. The herbalist Matthew Wood describes it perfectly, so I want to read you the description from his book New World Plants: 

“It is suited to people who are very intense, even fanatical, laying impossible standards on themselves or others. They strain to live up to these impossible standards, or to impose them on others. Yet, they have not the strength to sustain this activity, so that they are too intense mentally and emotionally, but suffer from physical weakness.” He goes on to say, “The specific indication to look for is stiffness in the nape of the neck.”

When Matthew Wood calls this a specific indication, that stiffness in the nape of the neck, a specific indication in the herbal world is a direct link. When you see this thing, think of this herb. In general, herbs aren't "for" our problems, but in specific, acute cases there are some very clear lines that we can draw between a problem and a solution, being a particular herb. In this case, Blue Vervain is the first thing to call upon for help when you've got stiffness at the nape of the neck. 

Another one of my teachers simply said, “It’s good for whiplash, and tall people.” Which, I guess I'm considered tall, I'm 5'9", so I do keep Blue Vervain. And when my neck, especially the back of my neck, is acting up and I lose range of motion, I turn to Blue Vervain. 

Bitters relax muscles, among other actions, and this deeply bitter plant has a specific affinity for relieving tension and heat at the base of the skull. It’s a serious bitter, though. In large or even medium doses it can be an emetic- that means it makes you throw up. I have a bottle from Barefoot Botanicals in Doylestown that is about 2 years old now. It lasts that long because I only take a few drops when I’m feeling stiff-necked, both literally and metaphorically.

It does NOT taste good, I'll warn you of that again. But it is very strong medicine and you don't need a very high dose. 

So there you have it- a couple of my favorite herbs, specifically about TMJ, tongue tie, and headaches. I really hope you find relief, both with the movement in the last episode and with the herbal ideas in this episode. And I'd love to chat with you more about this. Reach out on the socials or in email and let me know if any of these are help you! The transcript for this episode will be on the blog on Friday.

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If you've ever experienced TMJ, tongue tie, or headaches coming from your face and neck tension, you know what I'm talking about. The best graphic I ever saw of it showed the tension lines going over the jaw and coming out of the eyeballs like lightning. That was perfect to me.  

First things first: I'm not going to fix your tongue tie, TMJ, face pain, or headaches during this here little podcast episode! I want you to get your expectations set early. This is a complex issue, with skeletal, muscular, nerve, and habit components. Plus, I understand that watching demonstrations of things that can help is often more helpful than just listening to me describe them, so I encourage you to go check out the additional resources I'm going to share with you.

What I am going to do is talk to you about some of the factors that contribute to exacerbating your discomfort, that you probably have some control over. I'm also going to talk about some stretches and moves, that might help you be less uncomfortable when you have an episode.

If you're wanting more specific moves, then I want you to take a look at my Face Tension and Pain mini course at my website, paulasherbals.com. I also have some ribcage and back stretches in my free Resources hub on my website as well. 

First, let's get aware of the things we do that are causing muscle tension in your face and neck in the first place. There's familiar things, like gritting your teeth. There's also less familiar ones. A big thing I experience, and that others have been surprised to realize they experience too, is working my whole jaw, or sometimes just my tongue, when I'm doing some kind of manual task. This is usually when I'm cooking or washing dishes- during these repetitive tasks like stirring and chopping, I find myself mimicking the motion with my face! I don't know definitively why this happens, but I have a theory.

Personally, I have tongue tie, which means that my tongue doesn't move very much because of how it's attached behind my bottom teeth. So my face and neck muscles have to do almost all of my talking- which is no small task, since I talk for a living

And also, as a pilates instructor, I have frequently found myself cuing clients to relax their shoulders during a completely unrelated stretch, like a quadriceps stretch. The line I use is, "Your shoulders don't stretch your quads, no matter how hard they try!"

I think that's what's going on here. My face and neck muscles are accustomed to overuse, so when my arms are working they try to as well. It's really hard to stop this- it takes constantly becoming aware of it, stopping it, and repeating that indefinitely. Eventually you start anticipating it and trying to not let it happen in the first place- this is how you know you're making progress! But catching yourself straining face and neck muscles when they're not needed is certainly an important step to lessening the strain on those muscles in the first place.

Another contributor to your pain is Tech Neck, I'm guessing- this is the situation when we spend too much time in a forward head thrust looking at screens, usually, but also driving, reading, and such.

A forward posture like this means that everything behind your face- the back of your neck, the base of your skull, the muscles on your skull, and the muscles down over the back of your shoulders- they all stiffen. They're trying to pull back and prevent a forward collapse of your heavy head, while your head is dragging them forward. And they end up stiff and frozen, and also overstretched so you can't even strengthen them like this. You can't build strength into an overshortened or an overstretched muscle.

It means that everything in front stiffens as well, in an attempt to prop up your head. The muscles at the front and side of your neck, into your jaw and your collarbone, and into your face, start trying to brace you up.

We need to get your ears back over top of your shoulders, where your head is balanced between the front and the back of your neck, and nothing is working in a way that it's not supposed to be. The passive way to do this is to lay flat on the floor on your back. You can put something under your knees, or even rest your lower legs up on a chair or the couch, but the point is to let your neck relax in line with your shoulders.

When you're really tight like this, laying on your back is going to have your head tipped up. This is because that forward position forces your neck to bend up, to lift your chin so you can still see. Pay attention to where your gaze is when you're lying down- it should be going straight up; if you had a Nerf dart suction-cupped on your forehead it would point straight up, not diagonally back, in an ideal world. Let your neck relax so that your forehead tips more straight up, instead of backwards. Your ribs are probably arched up towards the ceiling too, so relaxing them down and relieving the excess curve in your upper back is necessary as well. 

Now, I do have a mini course available specifically about Tech Neck, if this is a big problem for you. That is available on my website, PaulasHerbals.com, under Work With Me. This mini course has more active stretches that you can do to actively draw your ears back over your shoulders. This lying back and letting your neck stretch is a passive stretch that works. If you need more active things, check out my mini courses on my website.

Here's one tiny move that has been amazingly helpful to me. We know that staring at computer screens all day isn't good for us. And you also may know that the act of looking at a distant object or vista or just anything further away requires your eye muscles to relax- which is the opposite of the computer strain.

So, try this. Give yourself a few neck stretches- a few slow, deliberate Yes's and No's, a few side to side tilts, a few gentle full circles in both directions, paying attention to your range of movement.

Now, hold your hand out in front of you, with your index finger up like you're saying "Number 1!" Focus you eyes on your finger, and slowly and smoothly pull your arm in until your finger touches your nose or the center of your forehead, then reach it all the way back out. Keep your eyes focused on your finger, and feel your eye muscles shifting to stay on your finger.

After you've done this, repeat your neck stretches. You should feel more range of motion. There's some quirks of anatomy here that closely tie your eye muscles to the the base of your skull muscles, so moving and stretching and reliving tension in one of those sets of muscles relieves it in the other set at the same time. Wild, right?!

This has been a little look into three physical things you can do to help your ​face and neck and jaw tension, whether you're suffering from TMJ, headaches, tongue tie, or anything else.

I always recommend doing these things BEFORE you're in pain, so you know what they feel like and then you'll also know if you're doing them right when you need them! So practice these things- they might help stave off a flare up of your pain, or help you relieve some discomfort if you're in the middle of one.

Next week, I'm going to talk to you about some herbal remedies that have also saved me a lot of grief from my tongue tie over the years. These are plants that can relieve tension, heal inflammation damage, and are particularly, specifically helpful with the kinds of pain and problems these face and neck muscles give us.

Listen to the episode here

If you’ve been following along with the stress series I’ve got going right now, you’ll recognize that the last few episodes were all about a broad, holistic perspective on understanding and starting to manage your stress with internal and external supports, like with herbs or movement, for example. 

It seems like a good time, then, to get a little more focused and specific. While what I teach is all based on the idea of whole-body approaches to wellness, we accomplish that by looking at the little, specific parts that are foundational to your overall wellness and how we can improve them.

One of the most frequent specific parts you’ll hear be talk about is the pelvic floor, and there’s 2 reasons for this- 
Everyone has a pelvic floor, and it serves as a huge part of your whole body’s stability, mobility, and functionality. If there’s a problem in one or more of these areas, the pelvic floor is involved
Lots and lots of people have mild to moderate issues with their pelvic floors that they are just living with, either not knowing or not willing to deal with it right now because something else is on fire and is more important. I get it. 
So I call attention to the pelvic floor and its impacts on your health and wellness, because it’s something that not enough people know enough about, to realize they can change and improve their PF function without too much complication- without adding another dumpster fire. 

I’m trying to put out the embers of minor PF issues before they develop into a 5 alarm problem, and it’s pretty simple and straightforward to start this work- it’s not as overwhelming and complicated as many people fear.

What does this have to do with stress? Well, a whole bunch, it turns out. ​

One definition of “stress” is “work”. The work your body does, whether it needs to or not, is stress for it. This is normal. This is how muscles strengthen and bones grow, this is how vision works and thinking works. But- it’s easy to see how you can create more work for yourself with internal stressors. Worries, beliefs, fears, all the things we think about, that we “stress” about, have physical impacts on our bodies. In particular, we can look at how what’s on your mind impacts your pelvic floor. 

In general, chronic stress like from chronics worries, causes your muscles to tighten in your whole body. For example, your neck gets tight, usually in a forward pose we call tech neck. This will impact your shoulders and arms, your vision, your jaw, your sinuses and ears, and  the rest of your spine down to the tailbone that connects to your pelvis.

Also, your digestion is a series of muscles so tension restricts it and slows things down- this adds weight! I’m not talking about the unhealthy, unhelpful “lose weight” pressures that diet culture dumps on us. I’m talking about the literal weight constipation causes in our abodmens, that puts pressure on all your other internal organs, ligaments, and such. That’s no good. 

Another muscular tension piece to think about is your blood vessels- arteries are muscular! When they’re tense, they’re smaller, restricting blood supply AND increasing pressure through them. Also no good. 

So emotional stress is a very real thing that impacts your physical, tangible body in very real ways. There’s lots you can do with, to, and for your whole self- body and mind- to help these impacts. For starters, I can refer you back to the three part podcast series I just finished about Holistic Perspectives on Stress! I talk about some external supports, like breathing and movement, and internal supports like herbal remedies, that can help. Relieving total, overall, general stress will help relieve the pelvic floor specific impacts you may experience. ​

Another way stress impacts your pelvic floor is through posture. 
​
Think about the posture that is sometimes called a ‘human cashew’- all curled in on yourself. That’s a common pose when you’re worried or afraid or stressed, or working at your computer, or watching tv, or driving… I think you can see where I’m going with this! Posture is a big deal, and it impacts all of you.

When you‘re all curled up, and we’re talking about how this pressures your pelvic floor, think of squeezing a balloon. The bends in your belly from curving your spine displace all the contents of your abdomen and if you have any pelvic floor dysfunction, you’re going to feel it there. This could be back pain, it could be heaviness or dragging feelings, it could be incontinence or near misses in the bathroom department, it could be reflux or heartburn; or even headaches, TMJ, hip problems, and breathing restrictions. All these can be caused simply by posture.

Good posture isn’t about aesthetics, it’s not about just trying to look good. It’s about function in your body. When things are stacked and aligned appropriately, all the everything in your torso works better. If you’ve ever watched Downton Abbey, think back to the beautiful posture of the ladies in the show. It’s not only upright and regal, it’s relaxed! They're not stiffly holding themselves, it’s almost casual. That’s what I’m talking about- strength and ease through good posture.

Now, there’s lots to be said about finding and practicing good posture. The online pelvic program I teach, both 1:1 and in small groups, is focused on this functional stacking from the feet all the way up your body including the pelvis, for posture and form. But if you’re looking for the first, most basic step to start practicing better posture at your desk, check out my Sitting Pretty free workshop in the Free Resources section of my website. It’s a little training video that will teach you how to sit better, as the first step to improving your posture and its impact on your pelvic floor. Again, this is available for free in my Free Resources Hub at paulasherbals.com

There’s one final way that stress can impact your PF that I want to talk about here, and that is through exercise and movement. Now, to some extent, emotional and postural impacts of stress on your pelvic floor might be considered a little more “passive”. They’re just there, being bothersome, all day long, and if you use the tools I’ve given you in this episode you can start to make simple and profound improvements for yourself. 

This topic of exercise and movement, however, is a bit bigger, and definitely what I consider to be an “active” ingredient of your pelvic floor issues. 

Now, this may be an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think exercise should be a punishment. In practical terms, you aren’t ever going to “work off” food or being sedentary or whatever else you might feel badly about. And in cultural terms, you don’t DESERVE to feel badly about any of it! 

Move because it feels good to you, let it feel good- or not, and then experiment with some other things to find something you DO like- and rest more than you have been because if you’re alive you’re probably working too hard! There, I said it. 

Ok, all that being said, there’s very real, practical implications to exercise and the pelvic floor. If you’re experiencing stress incontinence- when you leak during exercise, or sneezing or coughing or laughing, or any time that comes from movement, you don't need this! And you don’t have to put up with it, it’s not something you’re destined for. 

What does "R & R" look like to you?

Everyone has their own particular favorite way to rest, restore, relax, and recuperate- mine involves a hammock and a pillow and a book and a nap- but at the heart of this idea is one particular body structure- the Vagus Nerve. 

Our fight-or-flight stress response, called the Sympathetic Nervous System, is responsible for creating and regulating all our reactions to stress, and it has a clear headquarters- called the HPA axis- that controls the feedback loops that respond to all the internal and external stressors we experience.

By the way, it's our culture-informed thinking that distinguishes between "good" and "bad" stress. To our HPA axis, it's all the same stress. Survival is an extraordinarily basic need, so a phone beep is the same as a tiger. I talked a bit more about this in episode 2 of this Season 2 Stress series.

On the flip side, our R&R system, the Parasympathetic Nervous System, is the one responsible for actually opposing the stress response and allowing us to, well, live. The PNS is spread out all over the body. There's no headquarters for the Parasympathetic system because we were designed to live in this state most of the time, so it's expecting to be the default position of our nervous system. 

Take that in for a second. The Parasympathetic Nervous System, the R&R system, should be our default.

But which system are your more familiar with? Right. Fight or flight, the Sympathetic Nervous System.

We live in fight or flight, we're bombarded with messages to it and  information about it. That's why it takes work and practice to get back to the rest and restore state, that PNS that should be our all-of-the-time situation. It's kinda backwards, to have to work to get into a resting state, but this is the world we have created. We have to make do. 

So what we've got so far is the 'fight or flight' stress response, which is the Sympathetic Nervous System, this is the one we're all familiar with in our experiences and also that we hear a lot about; and we've got the 'R&R' living response, the Parasympathetic Nervous System, the PNS, which we want to get back to more frequently and more quickly for a bunch of reasons I'll tell you about in a minute.

When we're trying to access the PNS, when we're trying to get into that R&R state, it's not as easy or straightforward as accessing the fight or flight sympathetic system is. I mentioned there is no specific headquarters for the PNS and that it's spread out all over your body. However, the Vagus Nerve comes closest to filling this role of PNS HQ.

And guess what- you can exercise your Vagus! This means you can strengthen your ability to get back into (and stay in) your R&R state whenever stress has bumped you out of it.

Try this. Lie on your back and find the bony triangle markers in your pelvis- 2 hip points on either side of your hips, and a pubic bone down front in the center, south of your belly button.

You're lying on your back, so these 2 hip points and pelvic bone point should all be pointing straight up at the sky. We're not working with the side of your hips, we're working with the front of them.

Assorted belly-ness is not the point here, the bony markers are, and may I just state for the record that size is not an indicator of health, nor is health an indicator of value. Exit soapbox.

So these 3 bony markers, right, they need to be parallel to the floor. Do a little tilting forward and back- you'll find that the pubic bone raises and lowers relative to the hip points. Then find that parallel to the floor position. This is called a neutral pelvis.

Next, your ribs are probably arching up towards the ceiling. Bring them down to the floor, so the upper back is relaxed down and you feel a flatness across the shoulder blades, not a pinching or winging position. This is a neutral rib cage.

Now try these 2 positions at the same time- both sitting, and then standing. When you're upright your neutral pelvis is now perpendicular to the floor (straight up and down, aka 90 degrees to the floor), and the ribs are down over the hips, not popped forward in fake "good" posture. 

These are the quick and dirty directions- I give more clarity and demonstrations in videos in my free Resources Hub.

Once you've aligned your skeleton, it's time to start letting it move in this position:

Obvious, right? Well, no. We do a lot of our daily breathing with either our belly or our chest, which causes problems.

Now, breathing practices are different, and have their own purposes. I did talk last time, in the last episode [edit to add, 2 episodes ago!], about breathing as an external activity you can do to help manage your stress response. This time, I'm talking about your daily, not-really-thinking-about-it breathing, but learning this will help you in your breathing practices too.

Since your belly is so crammed with stuff but there are no bones in your belly, it's all held in place by an intra-abdominal pressure created by your core muscles. When you just use your belly to breathe, it messes with this abdominal pressure and that can lead to problems like pelvic floor issues, hernias, or even reflux.

Breathing with your chest is difficult, since the breastbone doesn't actually expand. This means your breaths will be shallow, making you breathe more often, and it can create anxiety responses because of the pressures on your upper back spinal nerves when you make the upper back arch to lift your chest to breathe in. 

But because most of us walk around thrusting our chests out in fake good posture (you can fix this with Exercise #1 pleasepleaseplease), we HAVE to belly and chest breathe since the ribs have nowhere to go. ​

After you do exercise #1, once you've gotten your ribs relaxed down, it's time to reintroduce your ribs to the breathing machine again.

Take a belt, an exercise band, or your hands and wrap them around your rib cage so you feel the front, back, and sides of the rib bones. Slowly take a breath in, and feel for 360 degrees of rib cage expanding, all the way around. Feel tension increase in whatever you have wrapped around your torso as you inhale and expand the ribs, and feel that tension decrease as you exhale and close the ribs back together. Relax your shoulders and your belly, we're trying to move only ribs.

This might seem simple and not worth the effort of trying as you listen to me, but I challenge you here and now to see what it actually feels like in your ribcage. By popping your ribs forward, in that fake good posture, you've probably lost a lot of the muscles in and around your ribs, and the points where the ribs meet your spine are probably really stiff and inflexible. It is HARD to get your ribcage to move in the way I'm describing here. I challenge you to see for yourself.  

It takes practice to get all this moving again, but once you do your ribs can do the work they were designed to; they can buffer the breathing pressures they were made for, easing the load on your abdomen and upper back. This lets the pressure on your Vagus nerve normalize as well.

Keeping unnatural pressure in your torso because of poor posture keeps the Vagus from responding appropriately. Aligning and normalizing the way you hold and move your body is the first step to improving how your Vagus nerve works. 

Once this proper positioning is in play, it's time to talk about tone. You might know of tone in terms of muscles- this is when muscles have a certain amount of engagement all the time. They are ready to respond. Nerves, including the Vagus, can also have tone and be more or less prepared to respond. Good tone is always a good thing.
​

Since the Vagus goes through so many head and neck structures, there are a bunch of ways we can directly impact it to help strengthen it. 

Here is a list of small practices you can work into your day. All of these trigger the Vagus nerve to activate, building its tone and also relaxing things in the body so they work better:

• Chill your eyes, with cold fingers, cold water, or cold eye packs
• Sing
• Gargle
• Belly laugh
• Do breathing practices
• Do yoga, tai chi, and chi gong
• Get a massage and acupuncture
• Taste bitter flavors
• Get more sunlight
• Have healthy, supportive relationships

These ideas will improve the tone of your Vagus nerve. Why do you care? When you've got good Vagal tone during a stress response, you'll:

• Process information faster
• Concentrate better
• Have more appropriate and effective responses
• Return to resting "R&R" state faster

And good Vagal tone is associated with:

• good blood sugar regulation
• lower rates of diabetes, stroke, CV disease
• better mood
• less anxiety
• more stress resilience
• greater closeness to others and altruism

​So, we're trying to access the PNS after you do experience stress, so that you can return to an R&R state. You can help this along by aligning your skeleton to ease physical stress, and by practicing triggering your Vagus nerve so it's got good responses when you need them. All of these are pretty simple, beginner level ways to exercise you Parasympathetic Nervous System, and stop living in the fight or flight system.

Now my question to you is, do you already practice any of the exercises I gave you today, or have you been inspired to try something new? Share how it feels for you by leaving a comment, and tagging me @paulasherbals if you're commenting on Instagram. I look forward continuing this conversation!

​Whether we’re talking about stress or any other body system that can use support, herbal remedies are an important part of a holistic approach to your wellness because how you treat your insides is just as important as how you treat your outsides.

In the last episode, I talked about the external things you can do, the activities you can do with your body to influence and improve your stress responses. If you haven’t listened to this, I recommend you download it now and catch up!

Today I’m going to talk about the internal things you can do to help manage your stress responses. My focus is on the herbs and the remedies that you can work with, but I do want to mention things like a good diet and drinking more water and taking your multivitamin can also all be parts of these more internal supports. I’m not a nutritionist and I don’t want to go there, so eat well and drink more and follow the good nutrition advice of the professionals!

I am, however, an herbalist. Yes, I’m a movement coach and a pelvic floor specialist, and also an herbalist. If this is a surprise to you, then I suggest you check out my season 1 episode 8 where I introduce myself and explain why I’m not a guru! My very first podcast episode, labeled number 00, will also help you understand who I am and how you got here on a podcast about whole body wellness, inside and out.

In my capacity as an herbalist, it’s so important to me to say first that plants weren’t invented for our things. Pharmaceuticals were, and they work well in that capacity. But plants are their own complex chemical beings, and it’s more useful to think of them as a friend group. Different people play different roles in your life, but these people also stand alone and have their own lives. Different plants can play different roles in your life, but they can have a very different relationship with another person at the exact same time. Plants don’t exist to solve our health problems. 

My classic example of this is coffee. You might drink a cup or 2 in the morning. Someone else might live on it, fueling their bleary eyed workday and demanding more of their body and the coffee bean than is reasonable or healthy. On the other hand, I am one of those people who can’t drink coffee at all- it gives me heart palpitations and makes me vibrate like I’m going to stick to the ceiling and I get nauseous right away. Same plant, different relationships with different people.

The point is, there’s no “herbs for stress”. What there is, is a group of plants who interact with us and our nervous systems in different ways that end up helping us regulate, resist, and be more resilient to our internal and external sources of stress. 

When you find a “stress” blend in the tea section at the store or in a tincture bottle at a health food store, or if you sit down with a clinical herbalist who makes specific suggestions or even blends you up a personal formula, the individual herbs in that blend haven’t been randomly chosen- I hope!- simply because they’re “stress” herbs. 

We’ve got 3 basic categories of herbal stress relief-

1. Nervines
2. Adaptogens
3. Tonics or nutrititves

Let me give you the super short, mini overview:
Nervines influence the nervous system. 

• They might stimulate it, not in a caffeine way but more of a circulation way, opening up the ability for nerves to communicate
  • Lemon Balm
  • Peppermint
  • Ginseng 
• They might calm it- think of pain, or spasms, or anxiety
  • Chamomile
  • Passionflower
  • Valerian
• They might soothe it, reducing physical inflammation in the nerves themselves
  • Oats 
  • Lavender 
  • Rose 

Adaptogens- you’ll never guess! They help us adapt to stressful environments so we function better. This is a class of plants that have been know and cultivated in east Asia, in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurvedic practices in India, for millennia.

They were given the name “Adaptogens” by the Russians in the 1950’s and 60’s while they were trying to figure  out how to force more work from their workers in terrible conditions. There is some terrible research behind the knowledge we have now, and I believe we can best honor the people who suffered for these experiments by working with these plants in pursuit of recuperation and health, which honors their more traditional understanding, instead of using them to force long work days days and all nighters and those types of personal abuses that were desirable under communism, and are often sources of misplaced pride in today’s grind culture.

Adaptogens all act differently- they fall on a spectrum between calming and stimulating, but all of them help improve energy levels. Also, which plants specifically fall under the heading Adaptogen is sometimes up for debate, but that ability to have personal and professional experience and discussions is one of the things I like best about herbalism!

Adaptogens you may have heard of include 

• Tulsi
• Ginseng 
• Ashwaghanda 
• Rhodiola 

Tonics or Nutritives are herbs that blur the lines between food and medicine. These are plants that contain very high amounts of things like minerals and other micronutrients that help your body repair and restore itself long term. They are often worked with as teas that steep overnight so they get very strong and concentrated:

• Skullcap 
• Nettles 
• Dandelion

​Nervines, Adaptogens, and Tonics- these are 3 groups of herbs that play different roles in helping us resist, recuperate from, and build resilience to our stressful lives. The point of giving you this overview is NOT to make you an expert after a few minutes of a podcast! 

Rather, I wanted to introduce you to the idea that plants have chemical complexities, almost personalities, and that our familiar, more medical approach of “take 2 and call me in the morning”, that idea that there’s a pill for your condition, doesn’t work with plants. 

This isn’t to overwhelm you, I’m not suggesting you now have to become knowledgeable about all the possible plants that might help you manage stress better. Instead, what I hope this does is give you an overview about why there are so many ingredients in stress blends, and also why your favorite blend might be different than someone else’s!

Finding the herbs that work best with you can be like dating- you might just wade in and start sampling all of them, or you might work with an herbalist who matchmakes FOR you, simplifying and shortening the process!

If you are listening to this and now wondering where to start, there’s a couple of simple things you can do first. These ideas are in increasing order of your own personal involvement: 

1. Everyone has a ‘healthy’ friend- ask them what their favorite tea blend is that helps with their stress, and they’ll almost guaranteed offer you a sample. Try it!
   
   
2. Take a look at the tea section the next time you're at the grocery store. The different blends will be different, but all of them should be relatively effective in their own way. So pick a likely looking box and make yourself at least a pint of tea every day for a week or two and see how you feel
   
   
3. Pick an herb from the examples I shared a few minutes ago when I was telling you about Nervines, Adaptogens, and Tonics. They’ll be listed in the shownotes, and I’ll link to the ones I have specific write ups about in my free resources hub. 
   
   ​Choose one that sounds interesting to you, and then pick a tea blend from the store with that herb as the main ingredient. It might be named after that herb- for example, the brand Organic India has a line a Tulsi based teas (as do others but their brand name comes to mind right now!) like Tulsi Ginger and Tulsi Rose and Tulsi Green Tea. Or, you might have to check the ingredients list on the back and see what the first or second herbs listed are- those are the main ingredients.
   
   
4. Get a nice herb book (I will link my favorite general purpose books in the shownotes) (here are my favorite books, in my free Resources Hub) like one by Rosemary Gladstar, Maria Noel Groves, or Anne McIntyre, and read their stress sections. Again, pick a likely sounding herb and look for that as a main ingredient in a tea blend.
   ​
5. The final, most involved suggestion is to make an appointment with a clinical herbalist and let them work with you to choose your best starting point. It’s more work than grabbing a box of tea off the shelf at the store the next time you’re out of eggs, but it’s a whole lot LESS work than figuring out your Goldilocks formula on your own, if that’s what you want or need!

​And keep in mind, if you pick an herb to try out- or for that matter, an herbalist to work with- they may not be a good fit. That's perfectly fine. You know more about how they work now, plant or person, and you might be able to suggest them to a friend of yours sometime who they would fit better with.

One final note is that I'm mostly talking about tea here because it’s super simple to put hot water on a teabag, and you can find them most anywhere. Tea is one of the easiest starting points to working with plants, but another pretty common remedy you’ll see on the shelves if you go to a fancier grocery store or an independent health food store or maybe an herbalist’s shop or stand at a farmer’s market, is a tincture. 

This is a more concentrated remedy than tea- usually it’s an alcohol-based extract of the plant. Think of putting vanilla beans in vodka to flavor it, but stronger and with the purpose of extracting the therapeutic benefits of the plants, not just flavor. It might not be alcohol, there are other options like glycerine or vinegar, but the point is these are remedies in little bottles with dropper tops that you take by the drop or the squirt, as compared to tea that you drink by the pint or the quart. You might take the tincture directly in your mouth, or you can add it to other drinks to dilute and disguise the flavor- the instructions will give you direction as to how and how much to take.

Because they’re more work to make tinctures are more expensive than teas, but because they’re concentrated they’re also used in much smaller doses so they last longer, and because they're already liquid they’re much easier to work with than tea is. So if you’re feeling like tea is too much work, too many steps with water and containers and hot or whatever is getting in your way, you can venture into the apothecary section of your grocery store or farmer’s market and try tincture-based remedies instead!

I’ve mentioned a lot of specifics today that I’ll link in the shownotes and the show transcript when it comes out later this week. I’m trying to give you a broad overview of how to start working with herbs that can help you manage stress on your own. If the idea of sitting down with an herbalist sounds more your speed, or you come to that decision later on, do a local search and see who might be practicing in your local area. If you come up empty then reach out to me and we’ll see if we can find you a good herbal fit.

Listen to Today's Episode


​​

Welcome back to our ongoing series about a holistic perspective on stress. Last time we talked about the broad strokes of how we understand and manage our stress responses, and what to focus on. If you haven’t listened to that episode, hit pause and download it now so that you can catch up really quick. 

I think, personally, that the topic of Stress is a great way to really explore full body ways of thinking. Everything that your body does internally, or notices externally, is a source of stress- this is how things get done in the body! It’s not inherently bad to experience stress. And the way we react, how our bodies automatically respond, is all by itself holistic. Every system in the body is constantly playing a balance game- turning up and turning down, inputting and outputting, resting and reacting. 

So when we talk about “stress” as something to reduce or eliminate, we’re really talking about things you can do to help your internal systems find equilibrium, and things you can do to block or shield external stressors, including taking supplements that help your internal systems function

Today, we’re going to look closely at the external stressors coming at you, and the things you can physically do to help yourself manage stress responses are going to sound like a familiar list:

1. Breathing practices
2. Moving or exercise practices
3. Meditation practices

The fact that these are all called “practices” is important, even though you’ve probably heard the terms so much that you don’t even notice them anymore. We automatically breathe, move, and even meditate- think about how it feels to daydream, or to take a walk to clear your head. But to practice these things on purpose will strengthen your ability to respond well and appropriately to whatever’s going on for you.

The reason we care is because these active choices you’re making directly impact your nervous system. Later on in this series I’m going to tell you more about the “rest and digest” system. For now, just know that this is the system in your body that not only OPPOSES the fight or flight system, meaning it actively shuts down chronic stress when it turns itself on, but it’s also supposed to be the default position of our nervous system. We tend to live in fight or flight, but we’re supposed to live in rest and digest and our bodies want to get back there!

Now, the second practice is where I think things get interesting! This is Exercise and Movement. Exercise certainly stresses the body, that’s it’s job, and the idea is that on the other side of exercise we’ve “worked it all out” in some way and that makes us feel better. So for me the big question is, Where’s the line between helpful and just more stressful?

Again, there’s more details coming in later installments of this Stress series, but the CliffNotes version of one of the major processes going on here looks like this:

When we’re constantly exposed to micro-stressors (as in, when we live our familiar lives!), our stress response is a constant, low-level drag on ourselves. Immune function is sub-optimal, digestion is slow, sleep isn’t great, you see what I mean? 

But, when we have some sort of big “event” that causes big stress (think exercise or getting cut off in traffic), AND we manage to have a concrete end to that stress (like ending the exercise class and drinking some water), doesn’t it feet really good?

That constant, low-level drag keeps us in limbo between actually having an acute response, and feeling fine, by dripping out our stress chemicals. It’s the same lifestyle that our ancestors might have recognized as seasonal lean times like Winter, for example. And when we experience this, we might start losing lean muscle, storing fat, sleeping more, and experiencing brain fog- all things that would help us survive a long winter. 

In contrast, a big event dumps those stress chemicals in large enough amounts to reach the critical trigger point that also shuts them off! And you can reach this critical point with only 45 minutes of walking at a pace that makes talking a challenge. It’s that simple and straightforward.
(I’m paraphrasing here, but if you want all the good details I recommend you look into herbalist Tammi Sweet’s Anatomy courses, especially the Heart Coherence.)

One more piece here is meditation. There’s no question that meditation is a mental practice that helps us respond to, recover from, and be more resilient to stressors. And again, there are lots and lots of ways you can go about learning any of the many types of meditation, many of which include breathing practices. Personally I’ve used Chopra Center guided meditations, the Insight Timer app, and the “morning pages” style of journaling to quietly meditate. 

But here’s the fun idea I want to introduce into this discussion about breathing, movement, and meditation as practices that manage stress responses. Are you familiar with moving meditations? 

This can look like walking, or walking in a labyrinth, or doing a meditative practice like tai chi or qigong. It can be an engrossing yoga class, and I’ve seen it happen in my reformer pilates classes. Basically any movement that is slow enough for you to focus deeply on your movement and your breathing, and keeps you focused for at least 45 minutes, is a moving meditation. 

And to me, this is the best of all worlds, a win-win-win! You’ve got your breathing, your movement, and your duration.

But however you physically get involved with improving your stress responses, the old adage ‘practice makes perfect’ certainly applies here. The more you practice, the easier and faster it is to get into the proper headspace and actually do the practice.
 
I call these types of practices “external” because these physical things you can do, these practices like breathing, movement and meditation, are choices you can actively make for your body.

Yes, you breathe all day every day but DEEP breathing exercises are something you do deliberately. Yes, you end up moving around during your day but choosing to do 45 minutes of moderate exercise takes deliberate thought, or they won’t happen. 

One more thing- there are passive, external practices you can choose as well. Did you ever hear of a “Digital Detox”? This is a deliberate disconnection from all things technology, and it’s one major way to manage the stressors that are coming at you. By removing yourself from the constant deluge of information and noise on TV, social media, email, notifications, ringers, alarms, you’re actively relieving your nervous system of the need to respond to them. 

This can be as easy as a few minutes drinking your first cup of something hot in the morning while staring out a window and refusing to do anything tech related until you’re done, or it can be as immersive as a long weekend at a cabin in a state park with no wifi or cell service. Since your internal systems are constantly filtering out stimuli and stressors, giving them a break can only help!

So we have both active and more passive external activities that we can choose to take on to help manage our stress loads and reactions. This means, logically, that there are “internal” considerations too- and this is what we’ll look at next time. You have internal systems that are already reacting to stressors- the nervous and endocrine systems causing the stress responses, the digestive and immune systems shutting down to stay out of the way, the muscular and cardiovascular systems reacting…and the ways you can influence these systems include some fantastic herbal and food based remedies. 

So stay tuned for next week’s episode!
LISTEN to today's episode