Corporate Archives - Move2Connect Primitive Reflex Integration

Anxiety: how to retune your nervous system

One of the things I’m most frequently asked about is how to reduce generalised anxiety.

With the current situation continuing to unfold, we all need to look after ourselves and make sure we are not projecting our fears onto our children too.

Here is a brief explanation of how our nervous system works, and how it relates to anxiety:

In order for us not to be in a constant fight/flight/freeze cycle, we must activate our parasympathetic nervous system – or our social engagement system. In this state, we feel calm, able to think clearly, able to communicate clearly, able to listen clearly and able to see clearly. We do not falsely detect threat and are consequently far more engaging to others.

Here are a few simple things you can try, almost anywhere, which will activate your parasympathetic nervous system and help you to feel calmer:

Music – Find a recording of Mozart’s K448 – Sonata for two pianos and stop everything else. Sit in a chair and listen. This piece of music has been proven to reduce stress – and even the occurrence of seizures in kids with epilepsy!
Breathing – Try slowly breathing in through the nose to the count of 4, and out through the mouth to 8. Breathe from your belly rather than ribs!
Gargling – Try very vigorous gargling – to the point where tears start to form in your eyes. When you start getting tears, it means your vagus nerve is firing. Try and keep it up for a few seconds and then relax
Hum – this activates laryngeal muscles, which get signals directly from the superior and recurrent laryngeal branches of the vagus nerve. If done for long enough, this allows us to control our breath, slow down thoughts and enter deep relaxation
Chant – chanting “om” stimulates vagus activity to the digestive tract, and is said to improve digestion and inflammation levels in the body. Chanting “om” following stressful events is an excellent way to reduce stress levels
Laugh – laughter is extremely effective in improving mood and heart rate variability. This is because we use our diaphragms when we laugh – unless we are laughing nervously, in which laughter is shallow and comes from the ribs. Belly laughs are an easy vagus nerve workout! Personally, I have a couple of video clips that keep up my sleeve, which I can’t watch without crying with laughter.
Socialising – socialising and connecting with others is SO important. Being solitary, lonely and disconnected from others severely affects our mood and health. Being around others helps us laugh more, which, as we’ve just established, helps us keep our vagus nerve regulated… Obviously, this is rather difficult under the current circumstances, which is why Zoom is quite helpful to allow us to stay connected with others.
Yoga and Meditation – PROVEN to tone the vagus nerve and reduce stress. I was even discussing this with a respiratory doctor a few weeks ago. It is only your logical left brain telling you it doesn’t work!

All the above are excellent things to do WHILE doing or BEFORE the Safe and Sound Protocol, by the way. The SSP is a five day listening intervention designed to re-tune the vagus nerve, which activates the parasympathetic nervous system and consequently has a calming effect on all the systems in your body.

If you want to dig a bit deeper and help reduce your anxiety permanently, you are welcome to contact me.

Corporate FPR: Fear Paralysis Reflex Neuroplasticity SSP: Safe and Sound Protocol Uncategorized

Vagus nerve hacks to regulate your nervous system any time, anywhere.

One of the things I’m most frequently asked about is how to reduce anxiety using vagus nerve hacks.

If you can’t stretch to using the Safe and Sound Protocol, or just need to know how to keep calm and self regulate ahead of a stressful upcoming event, here are a few simple things you can try, almost anywhere:

vagus nerve hacks

Music – Find a recording of Mozart’s K448 – Sonata for two pianos and stop everything else. Sit in a chair and listen. This piece of music has been proven to reduce stress – and even the occurrence of seizures in kids with epilepsy!

Mozart’s sonata for two pianos K448

Breathing – Try breathing in through the nose to the count of 4, and out through the mouth to 8. Breathe from your belly rather than ribs!
Gargling – Try very vigorous gargling – to the point where tears start to form in your eyes. When you start getting tears, it means your vagus nerve is firing. Try and keep it up for a few seconds and then relax
Hum – this activates laryngeal muscles, which get signals directly from the superior and recurrent laryngeal branches of the vagus nerve. If done for long enough, this allows us to control our breath, slow down thoughts and enter deep relaxation
Chant – chanting “om” stimulates vagus activity to the digestive tract, and is said to improve digestion and inflammation levels in the body. Chanting “om” following stressful events is an excellent way to reduce stress levels
Laugh – laughter is extremely effective in improving mood and heart rate variability. This is because we use our diaphragms when we laugh – unless we are laughing nervously, in which laughter is shallow and comes from the ribs. Belly laughs are an easy vagus nerve workout! Personally, I have a couple of video clips that I can’t watch without crying with laughter – mainly Reeves and Mortimer sketches, and also something too inappropriate to discuss in this post, but it’s a scene from The Inbetweeners.
Socialising – socialising and connecting with others is SO important. Being solitary, lonely and disconnected from others severely affects our mood and health. Being around others helps us laugh more, which, as we’ve just established, helps us keep our vagus nerve regulated…
Yoga and Meditation – PROVEN to tone the vagus nerve and reduce stress. I was even discussing this with a respiratory doctor a few weeks ago. It is only your logical left brain telling you it doesn’t work!

All the above are excellent things to do WHILE doing or BEFORE the Safe and Sound Protocol, by the way.

When I take people through the SSP, I usually demonstrate a variety of movements and massages that you can use to self regulate. Some of these powerful somatic techniques are things I used to use to stay focussed and calm at school myself – I did not realise what I was doing at the time, but now I think I was incredibly self aware to know what my body needed.

If you want to dig a bit deeper and help reduce your anxiety permanently, please come and see me in clinic in West Sussex, or book a discovery call via Zoom, or attend one of my Remaining Regulated workshops.

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Babkin reflex Corporate FPR: Fear Paralysis Reflex Moro reflex Neuroplasticity

Work dynamics – coping with opposite personality types: a primitive reflex perspective

I had an 18-year long career in the corporate world, working within the fields of journalism, tour operations, information systems and information security.

What made me go freelance was my very last permanent role, for a global pharmaceuticals company. I worked in IT security, and was jointly responsible for protecting the EMEA region from security vulnerabilities, such as hacking and viruses. I was responsible for the technical side of things, and yet spotted that PROCESS and PEOPLE were the key, given the speed at which security vulnerabilities were being exploited.

About a month into my role, I went to see the EMEA IT director to explain that process was key to the company’s security. I immediately received a pay rise and was put on a fast track to senior management. However, this brought my salary almost up to the level of my line manager at a time when pay had been frozen except for in exceptional circumstances!

My line manager then used my own vulnerability – slower than average processing speed and a need to take time to think problems through – to attack me in meetings in front of an audience, requesting that I came up with complex data solutions in a split second. He ensured that I was put on a “performance improvement programme”, to which my knee-jerk response was to resign.

At my exit interview, I made sure to mention the fact that I was bullied, and that this was a case of constructive dismissal, but the guy continued to carry on like this whenever a threat came along, and the pattern has repeated itself at least a couple more times since. I have no idea whether he still works for the organisation – probably.

I then enjoyed ten blissful years of contracting, earning twice as much and working wherever and whenever I wanted, pretty much. I NEVER felt bullied in the workplace again – if I even came close to it, I would give notice and head off to another contract – and because I was in demand in my field, it was never a challenge to find work.

However, let’s look at what happened to me as a “victim” of bullying more closely, and from a primitive reflex point of view, because this is key to understanding the victim/bully dynamic in the workplace.

I always had a tendency to barge into the workplace full of ideas and fresh perspective. That is why people used to hire me, after all. I have a creative and yet sensitive personality. I clash hideously with those who have a rigid outlook and a sensitive personality – or indeed a rigid outlook and an aggressive personality!

My line manager had (has?) a very rigid outlook. He was data-obsessed and highly technical. He could not think outside the box at all. He was more than likely highly left-brain dominant He was my absolute nemesis. I am a right-brained, creative, outside-the-box thinker. I hate to work to plans – I tend to wing it towards achieving an objective – but with a very broad idea of a plan rather than a plan with rigid timeframes. This way of working utterly infuriated my line manager, and yet entranced our director, probably because of my completely unique way of looking at things, as well as my rather useful language skills, which were used to the utmost to charm various IT managers across the EMEA region into buying into new processes.

Before I left the company, I went on a rather good training course on working with opposing personalities. We were introduced to the “colour” personality types, which tie in with Myers-Briggs types. I was not surprised to see that I fit firmly into the yellow category, but have splodges of red and a little bit of green – but absolutely no blue whatsoever… so I’d make a terrible computer programmer or tester!

Where do these personality types fit with reflexes?

Well, my very blue former line manager had sweaty palms and very odd eye contact and a need to be in full control. His Fear Paralysis reflex was more than likely off the scale. His bullying outbursts in meetings were Moro, and his inability to trust or connect with others more than likely to do with a strong Babkin reflex.

Interestingly, my reflex profile as a predominantly yellow person is not that dissimilar to my former line manager. However, I am predominantly right-brained in the workplace, and therefore used to find the constraints of being left-brained rather limiting.

I’m now far more relaxed about different personality types, having worked a lot on my own FPR, Babkin and Moro reflexes.

The reason why I wrote this article is that I feel that yellow and red personality types are far better suited to running their own very unique businesses, while green and blue may be better at either staying within the confines of a permanent role and working their way up the ranks, or contracting – but working for others.

Those who are very red or very blue may find reflex integration very beneficial in order to work in the most optimal way with yellow and green personality types.