Yesterday while out on my Tuesday trail run I heard an interesting thought or Idea about how we choose to react to various situations. I am sure many of you have heard of the "Fight or Flight Response". The definition to this says -  is a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival. When we find ourselves in a stressful situation our Sympathetic Nervous System kicks into gear and there is an instinctive choice that is made. Either we stay and fight or we run like hell, but that is not what really happens all the time.

In today's day and age most of us are not having to deal with life and death situations which is what the Flight or Fight Response was originally designed to help do. That is not to say we as a human beings still don't have to deal with extremely stressful situations. Instead of fighting or running away, most of us actually just freeze. We don't do anything, we don't react, we don't think and most of all we don't breathe. When we get into these stressful situations we end up shortening our breathing patterns dramatically and stop breathing through our diaphragm (I.E. Belly) and start to do shorter breaths through our chest. When this happens all rational thoughts go out the window and we just stop. We freeze in place. When this happens we leave ourselves with no way out. But there is one thing we can do when we find ourselves in this situation.

BREATHE!!!!

Stop everything and breathe. Stop movement, let the mind become aware of what is going on. Mentally back away and start to take long slow deep breaths from the nose into the belly and out through the mouth. This form of breathing allows the high heart rate you our experiencing to slow down. When the heart slows down the rest of the body slows down. When heart and body slow down, the mind has a chance to think clearly and allows for rational thoughts and decisions to be made again. This type of breathing practice can be used in all sorts of stress related issues. Such as driving in your car dealing with traffic. There is nothing you can do about this stressful situation except breath and relax. You have no control over this environment, so stop trying to. All you are doing is increasing stress and cortisol levels and making yourself miserable. 

Realize the things that you can control and deal with them through proper breathing and rational decision making and then take care of the situation. Realize the things that you can't control and then allow yourself to properly breathing and have rational thinking. Then let go of a control you don't have.