How you can use your breath to support the embodiment process.

Breathing slightly deeper than normal mainly has two effects:

It enhances relaxation, and it increases body awareness.

When you breathe slightly deeper than normal, signals go from your diaphragm via your phrenic nerve to your brain, signaling “I am safe”. So without you even thinking about relaxing, you will relax more when you breathe deeper because of this mechanism. A deeper breath is translated into a signal of safety throughout your nervous system. 

Another thing that happens when you breathe more, is that the signals from your inner feeling sense are turned up. You can compare it to a light dimmer. Imagine that you are walking into a dark room. You cannot see anything. When you turn up the light, you start seeing the gross structures, and when you keep turning up the light, you become aware of more and more detail. It is the same with the breath and sensations in your body. Turning up the volume of your breath is like turning up the light in the room, and you start becoming aware of more and more detail of what is happening in your body. 

I always say that increased awareness and increased relaxation need to go hand in hand. If we only turn up the awareness, we become overwhelmed. If we only turn up relaxation, we fall asleep. So increasing BOTH awareness AND relaxation at the same time helps us become aware of what is happening in the body, AND enables us to be OK with what is happening, relaxing in the presence of what is happening, so that we can integrate it and make peace with it at a felt level. 

Relaxation is also a prerequisite for awareness, because if we do not relax, there is also a limit to how much awareness we can develop. It is because we have tensed up, that we stopped being aware of our body in the first place. 

So awareness and relaxation go hand in hand: the balance of both is necessary for a sustainable and healthy practice. 

What is the effect of stress on your cells?

When you are stressed, a signal goes through your HPA-axis: from your hypothalamus (H) to your pituitary (P)  gland and then to your adrenal (A) glands, and the end result is that your adrenals secrete adrenaline and cortisol. If you get stressed because of something dangerous happening, the signal through your HPA-axis is a good thing, because it puts your body in a state where it is able to deal with danger. You become alert, blood goes to your muscles, glucose is released into your blood-stream, so you have energy to deal with the situation. When you have dealt with the danger and find yourself resting back in safety again, the secretions of adrenaline and cortisol stop, and everything goes back to normal. 

If you get stressed for other reasons than an immediate danger you have to deal with, and if this stress is becoming chronic, the release of cortisol also becomes chronic. 

PROTECTION OR GROWTH?

When cortisol is released into your bloodstream, your cells get the message that there is danger in the environment. Your cells are basically in one of two states: protection or growth. In growth-mode they take care of the daily maintenance, metabolism, digestion, repair, regeneration. In protection-mode they stop all of that, and save energy until the danger is over. When your cells are in protection mode at all times, there is no time for the natural healing and regeneration processes that take place in growth mode. Chronic stress therefore, makes your body at a cellular level, a breeding ground for all kinds of disease. 

THE IMMUNE SYSTEM AND CHRONIC INFLAMMATION

Cortisol is a natural anti-inflammatory hormone. In a non-stressed state, it is released when an infection is dealt with by the immune system. When cortisol is released, the immune system is suppressed, and the inflammation stops. When cortisol is chronically elevated, as in cases of chronic stress, it loses its effect as an immune suppressor, and chronic inflammation, and auto-immune inflammation can go on uncontrolled. 

THE ENDOCRINE SYSTEM

Secretion of cortisol leads to elevated blood-glucose which leads to elevated insulin. In women, increased insulin leads to increased secretion of testosterone which leads to endocrine imbalances and diseases such as PCOS and infertility. (1)

In men insulin resistance leads to reduced secretion of testosterone. (2)

In both cases, we can see chronic stress as a driving force behind infertility. That makes sense when we look at the intelligence of the whole organism - a stressed organism prioritizes survival and not propagation.

TREATMENT?

My opinion is that when we face chronic disease, like chronic inflammation or chronic metabolic or endocrine disease, we first need to look at the stress levels of the organism, and do whatever we can to help the organism come into safety, relaxation, into growth mode where it starts healing itself, instead of going straight to correcting the symptoms through medications with a lot of side effects. Stress can be regulated and managed through easy methods free of costs, with no side effects. 

1. The contribution of hyperinsulinemia to the hyperandrogenism of polycystic ovary syndrome

https://journalofmetabolichealth.org/index.php/jmh/article/view/50/184

2. Insulin resistance and low testosterone

​​https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/90/5/2636/2836773