Laugh in the face of Adversity?
Laughing, humming, singing and indeed anything that vibrates your neck will calm your nerves down.
Here is why 🙂
Physiology
Your nervous system has two sides to it:
1: Sympathetic = Fight or Flight system. This gets you revved up.
2: Parasympathetic: Relaxing & Calming system: This gets your body to relax and calm down.
They both need to balance but during stress the Sympathetic usually takes precedence. This helps you perform “up to a point”, after that the stress starts to be destructive. You need to calm your body down a bit.
Stimulating the Parasympathetic nervous system is the easiest way to do it.
Luckily there are a load of ways you can do this whilst still paddling.
Breathing Exercises
- Breathe through your nose
- Box Breathing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJJazKtH_9I
- Light Breathing
- Deep Breathing
- Slow Breathing
- 6 breaths per minute
- Meditation
Cold therapy
- Dip your face in cold water or Splash it if you are on your board.
- https://oxygenadvantage.com/science/vagus-nerve-stimulation/
 Self Talk
- Prepared phrases that you have used to create a calmer mind will also help you here.Â
- You have to train these phrases in training and actively trust them to calm down your mental state
Vibration
- LaughingÂ
- Humming
- Singing
- Gargling (may be mistaken for drowning)
Summary
- Our bodies are wonderful and complicated things.
- We take our mental state for granted but there are a lot of easy physical tricks that’s we can use to manage our mood.Â
