Following on from my post about emotions being expressed in our body, try these two things:
- Clench your right fist and see what you feel like.
- Now clench your left fist and see how that feels.
Now think about it for a few moments; it feels different right ?
The reason for this is because the right fist clench activates the left hemisphere of the brain and will lead to anger, whereas clenching the left fist activates the right side of our brain which will then calm you down. (This based on research done on right handed people). So I guess we should only use those stress relieving balls in our left hand based on this…
I also found this interesting:
When you see someone getting wound up, the first words that come to mind to say to them is probably something along the lines of “calm down”, but research is showing that the best thing to do is to the opposite!
When we are super stressed and have all these scary thoughts going through our head for example and our heart is thumping in our chest and our body is producing large amounts of adrenaline, things can go into a loop and the only way to stop the loop is to get the body to respond. So go and run as fast as you can for about 60 seconds or do press ups; it should help you start to feel a lot better in your mind (just don’t injure yourself and of course don’t do this if you have any medical condition that contra-indicates.
The reason for this is because when we set our “fight or flight” response in motion (the sympathetic system) as a result of getting ourselves wound up, by exerting our body physically, the para sympathetic nervous system will activate when we have stopped (eg: running) and this will help to calm the anxiety.
If your partner likes going to the gym on the way home, it’s possibly beause they see this as a good way of unwinding from the day and again the research bears this out. Let them go and lift weights and run on the treadmill rather than telling them they need to come home earlier. It’s respecting their need to wind down and particularly important for long term health for those who have sedentary jobs with very little time for walking about during the day.
Have a go with this and let us know what you find!
