Finding a Wedge for Anxiety in the Time of Social Distancing
Many of us are struggling to find our bearings in a world that feels out of control. While we can't change the events of the moment, we DO have a measure of control over how our bodies deal with the stress.
These are scary times and it's completely normal to feel anxious and upset. I spent pretty much all of yesterday staring at the endless feed of bad news. It made me feel worse, not better. While we don’t have any power to alter politics, economics or public health precautions. We do have control over how we let that stress affect our bodies.
The nervous system we inherited from our ancestors isn’t well adapted to dealing with dangers that aren’t right in front of us. No homoerectus contemplated quarantine. Instead they saw a dangerous animal on the horizon and their bodies responded by pumping adrenaline and cortisol into their blood streams to give them the energy boost that might save their lives. Our ancestors' problems required physical responses. While we denizens of the modern world have remarkably similar bodies as our greatest grandparents the threats are different. When we contemplate social distancing our bodies still respond with the same hormonal cocktails that we did hundreds of thousands of years ago. Without an outlet for that energy, the havoc turns inwards, makes us feel anxious, and compromises our immune systems.
The solution to this conundrum isn’t to surf the internet and bombard ourselves with more stressful inputs that we can’t solve. Instead, we need to find physical outlets that make use of those stress cocktails and which will bring our internal chaos under control.
Right now is the time to double down on a physical practice that you can do on your own. There are tons of free and cheap yoga classes online. You can still go cycling or running outdoors. And you can work out in your front yard. If you know anything about my own journey over the last decade, then you know that I am a huge advocate of the Wim Hof method. The breathing method just takes a few minutes to learn. And it’s an extremely quick way to bring your stress hormones under control.
We also need to do everything we can to keep our immune systems healthy. We know that COVID-19 affects elderly and immunocompromised people much more than the general population. The Wim Hof method can’t do anything about transmission--you still need to keep up social distancing, washing your hands, and follow all the public health protocols in place. However, clinical trials in Holland back in 2014 showed that Wim Hof breathing can help suppress out of control immune responses. Since the worst damage from COVID-19 comes from an out of control immune reaction to the virus (not the virus itself) it at least stands to reason that it should help you if you get infected. I did a video about this about a week ago (see below).
I dig into all of this a lot more in The Wedge. I offer up ten techniques that have worked for me to help control my autonomic nervous system in the face of all sorts of different stresses. Some of those things are probably not going to be practical in the era of social distancing (sorry, I don’t think anyone is going to be able to head down to Peru to try shamanic plant medicine in the next few months). However at least half the book includes techniques you can adopt right now. More importantly, it should help you adapt and get more out of just about any practice that you’re already doing.
I really wish I had the ability to release the book right now, but I’m stuck with an April 13, 2020 release date. However, I do have a few books on hand that I can sign and send to people in the United States through the post (assuming the post office remains open). This is a link for how to get one.
More important than that, please stay healthy. Wash your hands. And keep breathing. We might not be able to change the world right now, but we can help how we respond to it.