Erica: Welcome to the Executive Function Brain trainer podcast. I'm Dr. Erica Warren.

Darius: And I'm Darius Namdaran and we're your hosts, sponsored by Ivey. Imagine turning your meeting's audio into a live mind map instantly so you remember what matters. Well, try Ivey for free now at ah, Ivey app. That's IVVI app.

Erica: Sponsored by the Executive Functioning Coaching Assessment. A quick online assessment that uncovers challenges and develops personalized strategies for success.

Darius: Hey Erica, what are we going to think about today?

Erica: We're going to think and we're going to talk about the role of the autonomic nervous system when it comes to executive functions.

Darius: Okay, take us away.

Erica: I was listening to a number of podcasts the other evening and just had all of these ridiculous, ridiculous realizations and scribbled down all these ideas and then came up with this podcast idea. So this is all from a late-night inspiration and, a lot of great excitement about how we can really use our bodies to control our executive functions. And what are the little hacks that we can do. And I don't actually, I shouldn't even use the word hacks. I don't like hacks. It's not hacks. It's really about. You could call it tools, but I don't even like that. Let's call it low hanging fruit that you can reach that can help you to regulate yourself throughout the day. Okay, so let's first of all talk about what is the autonomic nervous system. It is a part of the peripheral nervous system that controls involuntary bodily functions. Anything like your heart rate, digestion, breathing. It maintains the body's balance, or I like the word homeostasis. That's a good word. And it operates automatically without conscious control. However, if we become conscious, we can control it like our breath. Right. We can control our breath. We can't really control our heartbeat, although I know some people that say they can. Right. I suppose if you work on it and that you're conscious enough about it, you can control your heart rate.

Darius: I can. When I was a marksman, I used to shoot guns as a young person. And in rifle shooting, you have to breathe and then intentionally lower your heart rate, slow down your heart rate, and then shoot in between heart rates so that you have the most stable. It's standard practice for shooting.

Erica: Funny that you say that, because I know of an artist that does micro art, and he had to learn how to control his breath and his heart rate so that it didn't disrupt his hand motions.

Darius: Oh, wow.

Erica: Yeah, it is possible, but it's not something that we often do. We often change our, we'll say, oh, take a deep breath, right? We often work with our breath, but we don't control all of those. So there are these things that just kind of happen in the background, and that is the nervous system. And there are two branches. There's the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. And the sympathetic is all about fight and flight. It triggers the amygdala. It prepares the body for stress and danger. It increases your heart rate. It dilates your pupils. It inhibits digestion and releases stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. And on the other side of that coin is the parasympathetic nervous system, which is where we rest and digest. And it promotes, relaxation and recovery. It slows the heart, it stimulates digestion, it reduces stress. So all in all, it. It's. It's this balance between arousal and relaxation, and it allows the body to recover. So it's a really extraordinary system that we have. And when I was listening to this podcast about the autonomic nervous system, I was like, oh, my gosh, what a great tool, particularly the parasympathetic nervous system, for helping us with executive functions. Right? Because we often say, like, oh, when you're dysregulated or you're just not yourself, we often say, well, do meditation, do deep breathing, and, and it's nice to know what we are doing. We're actually activating a part of our nervous system which helps us to relax. But it's, again, I often say, like, how are we supposed to strengthen our executive functioning skills if

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Erica: we don't understand the tools, if we don't understand what working memory is? Inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility. And it's made me go deeper into the idea that, okay, we not only need to know what executive functioning is, we also need to know what the nervous system is. Right. It's dropping into our body. Our body and our realization of our body can affect our brain, or our brain can affect our body, but if we want to impact our brain, then we have to learn how to use the tools not only of our brain, but the tools within our body. Yeah. so that's where I was like, wow, this is really incredible information for us to be able to learn how to manage our own executive functions. Isn't that interesting?

Darius: Yes, yes.

Erica: And. And now you might say, how can the autonomic nervous system impact executive functions? And I want to say that it affects us in multiple Ways it can either impair or repair attention. Right. If the sympathetic nervous system is activated, it's going to impair attention because you're going to be stressed, and it sends off chemicals like cortisol and you're not. Or, you might have a very fast heart rate and you're anxious and so your attention is going to be impaired. However, if you activate the parasympathetic nervous system, you're going to be more focused because you're going to be more relaxed. And how about working memory? So again, if you're looking at the sympathetic nervous system, you're in fight or flight. It reduces working memory; it reduces your working memory load. And because stress, stress we know now, really limits the brain's ability to retain and process information. However, if we activate the parasympathetic, we can increase our working memory. So you often hear of, students that really struggle taking tests because they have test anxiety. That's because the test anxiety is activating the sympathetic nervous system and they have a reduced attention and reduced working memory. And also, if you activate the sympathetic nervous system, it can also make you impulsive so that you're not good at making decisions. You may not put enough thought into it. Whereas again, if you then do some activities which we will talk about to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, you're going to have a more thoughtful response, you're going to be better at solving problems, you're going to be more cognitively flexible. M so it really helps with those three key areas that we often talk about. Working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility. The sympathetic nervous system is not great for executive functioning. So for and fight flight, if we're activating, we're. Our heart rate is up, we're anxious, executive functions go down. But if we can actually learn to recognize when we're in that state, we can do things to then trigger our parasympathetic nervous system so that we can get back to a place of equilibrium and we can utilize our executive functions more optimally. Isn't this fascinating?

Darius: Yeah.

Erica: Does this trigger you? Trigger me? I was just so it was like 11 o'clock at night and I had had such a bad day, and I was like, blown away. I was like, this stuff is so delicious. This is good stuff.

Darius: Yeah. I went to my physiotherapist and had a few issues in my shoulder and my neck. It was funny because she said, Darius, I've checked out your shoulder. There's no damage in your shoulder. Your brain is trying to protect your shoulder and thinks that there's a problem with your shoulder, but there isn't one. But it's using pain to protect you from hurting your shoulder. And by doing that it's kind of activating the sympathetic nervous system. It's tensing things up, it's creating tension around that shoulder and in doing so is restricting the movement and weakening the muscles and actually having a negative effect. And so if you stay in that sympathetic response all the time because of stress and so forth, then you're going to make it a reality. And so it was really helpful to have that. And she gave me all these exercises where I have to sort of bend forward and then sigh deeply. And she said, your posture is too straight. She said what's happening is you're trying to hold your posture really straight and have good posture, but what you're actually doing is you're creating tension in

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Darius: your spine and your back and your shoulders and it's activating your sympathetic nervous system because you're tensing. She says you have to slouch more. And so she said, so this is what you have to do at your seat. You have to lean back in your seat and curl your back and just lean back like you're in a sofa and look up at your screen and just be completely slouched and relaxed. And it was so weird. She said, because we've been taught that we should be upright, we should, you, know, have really good posture, we should have a straight back all the time and that's the right thing to do. And she said actually no, sometimes, but not most of the time. Most of the time we need to activate the parasympathetic system and relax and allow the body to relax, regenerate, release and deal with all that cortisol that's pumping through your veins. So that's the advice she's been giving me. And I'd like to say that I'm following it all the time, but I'm not. Some of the time I am. One of the things I've started to do is have you heard about people about humming activating your parasympathetic nervous system?

Erica: Sort of. But tell me that, that really, because I'm right now I'm going through a very stressful time in my life, and I am collecting all of these low hanging fruit. So yeah, there are different notes that you can make. Like I often think of the om.

Darius: Well, the O is a form of that. And the way I first experienced it is like, you know, when you're really Sick. Some people, when they're really sick, they groan, they think, oh, yeah, they're really. Oh, oh. And they have to kind of make this sound, and it activates your parasympathetic nervous system because your body's stressed.

Erica: Right. It's automatic. It's an automatic response to it.

Darius: Yeah. And so your body is automatic, creating this soothing system to activate the parasympathetic. It's a form of comfort, you know. And sometimes you're like, oh, like my dad used to do it. I do it when I'm really sick. But then once you realize you're doing it, you can start doing intentionally. Like, I was walking outside down the sea, on the seashore beside my house. I do it every morning. And I just breathed out. And instead of just breathing out, I sighed at the end of it. It was like, and so that's what the physiotherapist saying. You need to breathe out, and at the end of the breath, kind of sigh and there's this sort of sighing, it's sort this rumbling that happens inside of you that is very physical and really quite soothing. And then there's another level, which is humming. Humming music, you know, and you're humming away, not singing, but humming. So there's scientific research done on the effects of humming for, like, 10, 15 minutes in a day and how it affects your parasympathetic system. And so if you feel like singing, try humming, because it amplifies that. And so there's something really very.

Erica: Feel it resonating more in your body. It keeps your. When you keep the lips closed, it keeps the sound within.

Darius: That's right.

Erica: It creates a certain vibration.

Darius: Yes. It resonates in your body, and it starts to. It does something to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system.

Erica: That's great. All right. You've triggered two little stories that I'm going to share. One is my little Sharpe over in the corner there. Jo. Cassie. Jojo. She is a hummer. And she hums.

Darius: Really?

Erica: She never growls. She only hums. And they get a little nervous. I'm like, no, no, no. She's humming. So when she has people around her, she likes it, and she hums. And at night, before we. She goes to bed; I always cuddle with her, and we hum at each other. It's somewhere between a hum and a grunt. And my old Shar Pei, which is why I always go back to Shar-pei, is because there's something about this hummy grunt that. That hits me in the Core. It, it just melts my heart. And my last dog was more of a. Like a. That was his. Now she just lets out this beautiful grunty hum, and we do. We just for about five minutes before we go to bed. I sit on my dog's beds, and we hum at each other.

Darius: Wow.

Erica: And it is so beautiful. And they look forward to it, and I look forward to it. And it's just become a. Like, every

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Erica: night we do it. We're in a kind of a routine, and it really helps me have a really good night's sleep.

Darius: Well, there's science behind that.

Erica: Oh, it's. It's so beautiful. You got to get a dog that hums like this. Shar Pei. You know, they have a lot of medical problems, I have to warn you, more than I think any other breed, but my goodness, their little hums just melt my heart.

Darius: I've just had to put my dog down recently, so I don't think I'm going back to a dog just yet.

Erica: Yeah, that's. That's painful. And I always say that when I lose, I'm not going to get another particularly sharp pig because there's so much work. And I always go back. It's. I'm such a sucker. And then I can't travel for 12 years because I have so many medical problems that. Or however long they tend to live, they unfortunately have a shorter lifespan than most dogs. But, yeah, they're the types of dogs they get so attached to, you can't leave them because they get sick if you're gone. So it makes life a little bit complicated. But the payback is beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. I've often said that I've always looked for my soulmate, and what I find are my soul puppies, you know, and it's pretty sweet. The other thing I wanted to say is something that Huberman, Andrew Huberman, often talks about and he promotes a lot based on the research is the physiological psi, which is what you're describing. Yes, but the physiological psi has three steps, and you are giving the last step if, you want to get to a whole new place. And I tell you, this weekend I had a very difficult day, and I did this, and it completely shifted my whole system, and it blew me away.

Darius: Well, tell me more. How does the. What are the three steps?

Erica: The three steps is you take one large inhale and fill your lungs.

Darius: Okay.

Erica: And then you just dip up a little bit more, and then you put out a long exhale. Now, I do like to add a sigh. It doesn't actually suggest that you have to do that. It just says a long exhale. But I know that when you sigh, making me maybe even a humming sigh. Because you could sigh with your mouth open.

Darius: Ah.

Erica: Or you could sigh with your mouth closed. Right. It's different. Maybe we're onto something here. Maybe we can take the physiological side to a whole new level and end with a humor.

Darius: Yes.

Erica: Or whatever works for you. But it's really quite remarkable. So you take a full breath, a little bit more, and then. Ah. If you do it once is often enough. I. I mean, just doing that. I feel a difference. If you do it three times. If you're in a really difficult space, do it three times. I was just like, whoa. Those parts that were, like, agitating me and that anxiety I was experiencing, it was like, gone. I was like, oh, I'm so relaxed. And it was so interesting because I then went on this whole spree. It's part of the spree of what brought up this whole topic for us to talk about today. Of looking for various tools to help us regulate the autonomic nervous system. And so physiological size 1. But I think we've taken it to perhaps a new height. I invite our audience to try it and try it with just a long exhale. Try it with a long ah. Ah. Like, ah. And try it with a long hum and see which one works best for you.

Darius: Yeah. And also try just humming a song.

Erica: Just hum. That will make that a separate one.

Darius: Yeah, yeah. That's a different one. That's a different style. That's like, I'm just going to hum a song. And you can choose your song. And it. The song itself might also. The music of it might also affect your autonomic nervous system too.

Erica: That's right. Because there are certain songs. Like one that just always impacts me deeply is you Are My Sunshine. I'm sure you know that's. It's one that I used to sing to my butter boy all the time. In the moment of his passing. I sang it to him. So it's a little bit of an emotional trigger now, unfortunately. And there are different songs from our childhood. These are a few of My Beautiful Things. What is that song? The Sound of Music or even Simon and Garfunkel's Life, I Love you all is groovy. I think it's called, Yesterday I.

Darius: Was Walking along the beach and singing one of my favorite songs, Louis Armstrong's what a Wonderful World.

Erica: Yeah. Like, they all have this kind of positive message.

Darius: Yes, absolutely.

Erica: And so you're not only humming a tune, but you're also integrating the message of the song, which can absolutely

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Erica: soothe the parasympathetic nervous system. So there is definitely something. And I know that whenever I'm going through difficult times in life, that's when I listen to the most music. When my life is really good, I don't listen to music as much. It's funny. I like quiet more, but when I'm going through a hard time, I want music because it kind of carries me through so that I don't get stuck.

Darius: That's right. I mean, that's why when people break up, that they have breakup music. And one of the best advice when I was breaking up and others were breaking up when we were younger was like, right, okay, you just need to listen to a decent breakup soundtrack. You know, you. We'd make up soundtracks for each other on breakup. A breakup soundtrack. And then you just listen to all these sort of, breakup songs where somebody else is singing your pain. Have you heard of the Wim Hof.

Erica: Breathing method that you can’t, see? The little list that I have in front of him m here. But you literally read it off my list. That's exactly where we're going next is the Wim Hof. He has the controlled hyperventilation followed by breath retention.

Darius: Yes.

Erica: And that absolutely affects the parasympathetic nervous system because it increases oxygen levels and improves resilience. And it improves resilience to cold and stress, which is why you can see this guy walking barefoot, you know, on snow. And how does he do that? That he's. He's over oxygenating? Well, I wouldn't maybe. Is it over oxygenating compared to us? Absolutely. He's increasing the oxygen levels.

Darius: I went to a Wim Hof night, not with Wim Hof, but with a person trained by him. And I. My wife bought me the ticket to go and do this breath training and so on. And you do it in preparation for taking an ice bath, you know, and she said, okay, so I'm just preparing you all at the beginning of it. We're going to do the breathing exercises and so on. And I'll teach you all of that and you'll really like it. And then we'll all just do a quick ice bath afterwards. Okay. And I was like, hold on a minute. I didn't realize we were actually going to do the ice bath. I thought this was just like the training and then the ice bath would be another time. But no, we all had this big bucket thing, and we all went into this ice bath after doing the, the Wim Hof breathing. So it was quite an experience.

Erica: What was that like? Was it okay?

Darius: Well, the breathing really helped. It really did help. I was terrified of it actually, to be quite honest. I used to, I think I've got some. When I was at school, we had an open-air swimming pool in Scotland. I went to boarding school, I had an open-air swimming pool, and the teachers used to march us along to the swimming pool early in the morning and tell us to jump in and we would call it breaking the ice because it was cold. It was like 4 degrees, you know, 3 degrees and Yeah, Celsius. What is that? 43 degrees Fahrenheit or whatever.

Erica: Right?

Darius: Yeah, 2 or 3 degrees above freezing basically. And it was horrible. And so it brought back a lot of that sort of stuff for me, you know. And I had some physiological responses, you know, a lot of pain in the back of my neck and back of my head and so on. But yeah, did it. They were very supportive. The breathing really helped.

Erica: Wow. Wow. Well, yeah, and, and you can do something similar by taking cold shower, which I have the same physiological reaction as, no, I'm not going to do that. But maybe I, you know, if I'm going to really test out all of these tools, I'm not going to call them tools. I'm going to call it low hanging fruit. That feels much, much more accessible.

Darius: Yeah.

Erica: Personally I'll have to, I'll have to try it. So if you don't have an ice bath, you can always take like a minute. Cold, cold shower. That's pretty shocking.

Darius: I've been taking a cold shower now, for. What month is it now? September. That's eight months. Each day at the end of a hot shower. So a hot shower finishes with a cold shower. And my kind of deal with myself is, okay, even if it's for just 10 seconds, it's just going to be a cold shower. And then it builds up and 20 seconds, 30 seconds. And some days it's a minute and some days it's just 10 seconds. It depends on what I'm up for. But it's just, it's helpful I find, to just say, okay, even if it's for a few seconds, I'll do it. Part of the reason I do it is for my skin. I think it's really helpful if you're shaving. I shave in the shower, and it closes up your pores and stops infection after you've shaved Your face. a barber taught me about that. And it's been really helpful. But yeah, cold is very helpful in multiple ways.

Erica: Okay, so, yes, Wim Hof has got some great tools

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Erica: for activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Another one is there. Well, there are a bunch of breathing exercises. Right. So we, we kind of talked about the physiological sides, kind of a breathing exercise, a very short one. But there are other ones like diaphragmatic breathing or abdominal breathing, and that's just involving deep breathing, using the diaphragm rather than shallow chest breathing. And that helps to reduce stress and lower cortisol levels. There's box breathing, and I'm just going to name some of them because there's buckets of them. box breathing, which is inhaling for four counts, holding the breath for four counts, exhaling for four counts, and then pausing for four counts. And that's also supposed to promote calm or focus. But it's breathing is so interesting because you can also take it the other way. If you're too calm and you're falling asleep in class, you're falling asleep at work, you can do breathe work that activates the sympathetic nervous system, which gets you more alert. We don't always want to be activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Right. There are times where we need to be more alert. So we can use some of these tools in different ways to also activate. Because there are breasts that will. I'm sure Wim Hof also activates the sympathetic enough that it makes you more alert. I can't imagine that you'd be very tired after doing that deep breathing. You probably relaxed, but not are you relaxed and alert?

Darius: I'd say relaxed is the main one. Alert, not hugely alert.

Erica: So it is mostly parasympathetic.

Darius: Yeah, I'd say it's mostly parasympathetic. Yeah.

Erica: Okay. Well, another One is the 4, 7, 8 breath, which is inhale for four seconds, hold the breath for seven seconds, and exhale slowly for eight seconds. And that's another one that slows the heart rate and calms the nervous system. So there are a bunch of breaths. Otherwise I have three more strategies. But is there anything that you had to say about the breaths?

Darius: Let's go into the other strategies.

Erica: So I haven't explored with this a lot, but I have explored with it some yoga Nidra. And this is a form of guided meditation that promotes deep relaxation, helping the body access the parasympathetic nervous system. It's very restorative. It also helps with cognitive recovery. It's what it does is it puts you in a state that's very similar to REM sleep, but you're still awake. So it's somewhere between awake and asleep where you're in a very deep state. And typically they walk you through almost like a body scan. And then it's. You're just listening to a meditation. There are lots of people that offer them on YouTube. You can just go try it. There are five minutes or 30-minute yoga nidras. There are lots of different ones. But if you're really struggling and you've got some time, you can really explore some even fairly long ones, even hour-long yoga nidras that are very restorative. Hypnosis is the next one that also helps to reduce stress by guiding the mind into a deeply relaxed state. And that often supports emotional regulation and cognitive flexibility. And the nice thing about that is, is if you work with somebody that does hypnosis, then you can really guide to what you want. It might even be that you want to overcome test anxiety or you might want to overcome smoking cigarettes because you just can't get through the quitting, is just too stressful for you. But there are certain things that hypnosis can focus on. Very specific. I suppose if you're even struggling with a breakup and you just couldn't get through it, you could. Hypnosis is an interesting trick that you could try another one. This is really interesting. It's. It's EMDR M Eye movement desensitization reprocessing. This is a well-researched technique which is very, very interesting. One thing for us to realize, and I love this, I heard Huberman say this, and this really fascinated and aroused my interest is that there is a part of the brain that is outside of the skull and that is completely out in the open, and that is our eyes. Our eyes are a part of the brain that are actually outside of the cranium that protects the brain. But it is literally direct access to the brain. And what they've discovered is that if you bring up a traumatic experience

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Erica: that triggers the sympathetic nervous system. And you're just, you're, you could even be in a state of post-traumatic stress disorder because you keep thinking about it and you're just not coping well. Moving your eyes from left to right while you're telling the story or thinking about it can. What it does is it triggers the parasympathetic nervous system so that when you relive that experience, you're no longer activating the Sympathetic nervous system. And it almost rescripts it. And I'll tell you something really fascinating because I had this realization and got so excited. I am, just at the tail end of becoming certified as an IFS coach, which is internal family systems. And I love this. I've never found a method that is better at helping to move through trauma. It's wonderful for activating the parasympathetic nervous system and taking old trauma, re scripting it so that it's no longer traumatic anymore. And you get to know these parts of yourself, and you give them what they need by being in what they call self, which enables you to, you know, we all have self within us where we're just together and compassionate and loving and pure. It's a beautiful idea. And I had this realization that I've been doing some IFS sessions with a friend of mine when we were going on walks, and they've been so incredibly deep and so incredibly healing for both her and me. I was like, wow, I feel like I'm downloading a lot of the therapeutic benefits when I'm doing these sessions with her when we're on a walk. And I had this realization that, my goodness, when you're on a walk, what are you doing? You're scanning the environment, you're looking left, you're looking right, you're walking left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. That is a form of EMDR. And in fact, I can't wait to ask my teacher about this. But I think that, and particularly if you're a kinesthetic learner, but I think for probably almost anybody, the act of walking and doing any type of coaching or therapy, I would imagine that the benefits would be magnified because you're integrating EMDR into the session. So that when you're talking about any kind of traumatic experience, you're kind of reactivating a different part of your nervous system that will help you to reprocess it in a way that it doesn't have to remain traumatic.

Darius: Yes.

Erica: So, isn't that interesting?

Darius: Yeah.

Erica: There are lots of different therapeutic modalities that can be used that can activate the parasympathetic nervous system. CBT. DBT. I also am a practitioner, which is the emotional freedom technique, which enables you to. It's really a combination of talk, like Western talk therapy and Eastern acupressure, where you tap on different acupressure points. I like a particular approach where you go deeply to your negativity and then, you shift and you go into your positivity which also is all about cognitive flexibility, right? So you go totally into your negativity, and then you choose the antithesis. You're choosing it. Maybe you don't believe it, but you choose it. And if you choose it and you say it as if it's already happened, it causes a major shift in your body. And so I think, you know, these are all lots of tools that we can use. Some of them you can do by yourself. Some of them you can do with other people. Or you can even combine things. You might be like, ooh, that EMDR sounds really cool. Take walks. I take three or more walks and long walks every week, like maybe six miles, but you don't have to go that far. But just taking a walk after you eat or whatever. Because when you walk and allow yourself to scan the environment, it's wonderful to get into nature. It's wonderful to get light, it's wonderful to move. But just scanning the environment is just going to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which, to pull it full circle, will help you to regulate your emotions, focus your attention, be more cognitively flexible, and have an expanded working memory.

Darius: Okay.

Erica: And if you need something tiny in the moment, there's also the idea of where you. They talk about as being almost like panoramic viewing,

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Erica: where you're looking at the panorama without looking at anything in particular. You know, you often see something in the distance or. Or even when you're thinking about something, you look up and you're not really looking at anything. You're just looking at the panorama. And that is also another way of activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Because, we have to have those rest and digest moments where we've been focused, focus, focus, focus. And then you kind of look up and gaze. Or you might just be thinking about something. You're just looking at the wall. But it just gives the body that opportunity to rest and digest so that it can get that homeostasis, and you can move forward.

Darius: Daydreaming.

Erica: That's one way to call it. Yeah, sure. Sometimes it's just a matter of you're just literally processing. You're not really doing anything. Your mind almost goes blank. At least mine does sometimes.

Darius: Well, teachers call it daydreaming. You know, so they'll say to a child, stop daydreaming and come on, focus. But actually, daydreaming is really helpful to think. You know, like Edison and so on. Used to intentionally go away, have a sleep for 20 minutes and pay attention to what he was thinking just before he went to sleep and just as he woke up from sleep. Because that liminal moment is that dream state. Often ideas come when, you're, you know, so you intentionally do that and you intentionally daydream, intentionally allow yourself to freewheel your mind to freewheel and think. Another way of talking about it in a more concrete way is in relation to procrastination, creative procrastination. You know, allowing yourself to procrastinate so that you've got enough time to actually mentally process something and digest it with your subconscious. So you kind of say to yourself, right, I'm going to sit on this for two days and come back to this on Monday, allow myself the weekend to ponder on it. And your kind of procrastinating, but not in a negative way. It's a creative procrastination. You come back to it.

Erica: I, I, I have such a reaction to that because it's been used in such a negative light. Procrastination. I would almost want to pick a different. I like the, you know, the idea of slowing down.

Darius: Yeah, it's interesting that you have that reaction because in the realm of dyslexia, often I hear in the UK a number of people talking about creative procrastination as one of the advantages of dyslexia. So you can look at a person and they're procrastinating. Rory Sutherland, a great marketing guy who's on YouTube a lot and podcasts and so on, he's such a great thinker, so funny and insightful about human behavior. And he was like, if you look at creative people, they can be so frustrating because they procrastinate all the time. But actually it's a form of creative procrastination. They need to sort of give their brain space to just mull it over. And from the outside, it looks like procrastination. From the inside, it's actually creative procrastination.

Erica: It's a form, I would like to call it creative mulling.

Darius: Erica, you've got some trauma to deal with there. I think you need to take procrastination away and start working on that word and redeem it.

Erica: Maybe, maybe, yeah, try to, try to look at it from that other. But it's almost like an oxymoron to put those two words together.

Darius: It is. And I think that's part of it. It's to shock your system into thinking, hold on. Some of the things that I thought was wrong, like slouching or procrastinating or daydreaming or sighing or humming or whatever. I don't know. I don't think you'd think humming is wrong. It's actually, you know, beneficial in the right circumstances, you know, and to understand when to do it. And I think it's like there's a time for everything. And that's really what we're saying here, is there's a time for the sympathetic and there's a time for the parasympathetic. And just like we breathe in to take breath in and we breathe out, so does our parasympathetic and sympathetic systems breathe in and breathe out. You know, there's this rhythm between the two of them. you don't want to be in one or the other. You don't want to be breathing out all the time. And neither do you want to be breathing in all the time. You need to do both.

Erica: Yeah, yeah. And it's extraordinary that we have this system and without it, well, it's really vital for our executive functions or, we need to be hyper alert and there are times where we need to be relaxed.

Darius: Okay, I'm going to throw in a few more. Okay. I don't know what's on your mysterious list here, but, how about a

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Darius: nice hot bath?

Erica: Oh, that's nice. Yeah.

Darius: Is that on your list?

Erica: It's not.

Darius: No saunas.

Erica: You know, I have a sauna, and I hardly ever use it. And you know what? It's crazy that I'm not using it. I. I think I rejected it largely because in my early 50s, I. I went through menopause and. And it just triggered hot flashes.

Darius: The heat. Yes. Yes.

Erica: I think I, might be beyond it at this point where I could. I can go in there and roast. You know what? Thank you. I'm. I am making this list of things. So., I love that you said the sauna and a hot bath because I was missing out on that.

Darius: Yeah. I've been using a hot bath a lot to just completely. To relax myself before going to bed. It's a very stressful time at the moment because of creating this startup company called Evie, like we've been talking about a little bit. And there's just so much going on when you do a startup that a lot of stress comes with it, even when things are going well. So hot bath. You know, the interesting thing is, if I'm reflecting on myself, is wonder if there are bad habits that we've associated that stimulate our parasympathetic nervous system. So I'll give you an example I scratch a lot because of eczema, but it's also, I realize now, a kind of form of comforting. You know, it's a form of distracting myself when I'm feeling a bit anxious about something. It's a response. And there's a physiological effect of the scratching, which is also quite comforting too, even though it's painful. And it's strange because sometimes I even have to go to a hot tap and just put my hands under a very hot tap to replicate the effect of scratching. And then I put it under a really cold tap to cool everything down and ice it back down and stop the inflammation. And that's less damaging because I'm not scratching my skin to bits with the eczema. So it's just, I think, I wonder how many. And it's a question that I'm just going to leave open for listeners and maybe myself and you to ponder on is what behaviors we are doing unconsciously that are trying to stimulate our parasympathetic nervous system, but maybe not in the most beneficial way. For example, drinking might be a way of kind of relaxing and de. Stressing, you know? Right, right.

Erica: But it's an. It's an external that's addictive, unfortunately. And, then we're not activating our own system to manage. We're using outer resources that then have other side effects.

Darius: Yeah, but it, it might not all be bad. Do you know what I mean? I'm not saying it's all bad.

Erica: Right. You could have one glass of wine could definitely relax you. And there are people that, like, marijuana is another one that some people like to do and that. That can even help them sleep at night.

Darius: And so there might be certain things that we're unconsciously doing that is because we unconsciously want to stimulate our parasympathetic nervous system. We find something that's worked, and we just keep doing that. But it's not maybe doing it too much. And there's other things that might help better. I wonder. Drugs would certainly be under that category where we can overdo it.

Erica: What I think is, to me, a lot of those things are numbing.

Darius: They're not. So you don't think they're stimulating the parasympathetic?

Erica: Well, yeah, I'm. I'm sure they do to some extent. But they're also numbing.

Darius: Yes. Okay.

Erica: You know what I mean? It's not a. I don't think it's a great choice. It's also shutting down other parts of the brain, and they're Disabling parts of that. So it's. Yeah, that's really interesting. But yes. And of course, a lot of the pharmaceutical companies want you to believe that that's the best and easiest strategy because they make money on it. Just like I know a lot of people now are taking. I think it's called Ozempic, this drug that, where people can eat as much as they want and they lose weight because if they have diabetes or different things, it, it, it, they can get a prescription and. But yeah, that makes me nervous. I, I would rather train my system to do it naturally than use external. Because instead of people improving their diet and improving their life in other ways, they don't have to, they just take a pill. But I would think that over time that'll catch up with you.

Darius: Yeah. You know, talking about Ozempic, there's people looking at it and its effects on cognition.

Erica: That's interesting. I, I.

Darius: Beneficial effects on cognition.

Erica: Interesting. I would. It'll be interesting to see that research because

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Erica: I suspect there'll be positive and negative. Yes, let's wait and see. We'll wait and see.

Darius: It's interesting. It's one of these interesting drugs that. Yeah. it works, but yeah, it's expensive too.

Erica: So just two more strategies.

Darius: What are they?

Erica: I touched on this, which was. Well, I had two micro recovery strategies. I mentioned the dilating of your gaze, where you're shifting from narrow, focused vision to a broader panoramic gaze that activates the parasympathetic nervous system. Morning light, going out. First thing in the morning, I go out into my garden, and I get morning light and forward ambulation, meaning forward walking and light. It deactivates the amygdala, will make your focus better for the whole day. I do that on a daily basis. And then finally, let's not leave out games and laughter. Right. Moments where everything is like, so tense and people are freaking out and then someone cuts a joke and then everybody loses it and it just like we go from amped to just laughing. Yeah, yeah, there, there's something to that. We can't forget to use that because that, that's very helpful.

Darius: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Good bit of laughter.

Erica: Silliness, but games too. You know, just doing fun things together. Dancing. Oh, how could we leave out dance?

Darius: That's something I was just about to say. You know, I think the act of dancing, moving like that to the rhythm, the music, there's breathing involved. There's so much of all of these different elements brought into it as well.

Erica: Right. You're looking around, you're moving back and forth. So you're getting some of the EMD are. You're getting so much.

Darius: And if you're dancing with someone, even better. And then, you know, sex. That.

Erica: I suppose.

Darius: So, activate the.

Erica: Activates both of them, doesn't it?

Darius: Both of them, but probably more of the better one. And, you know, there's so many things that you just. I suppose you just got to kind of wake up to. What's waking up? You’re Stimulating your sympathetic system. What's stimulating your parasympathetic system? I suppose the other thing is that often with social media and news and these kind of stimuluses are activating your systematic nervous system because you're, oh, there's this war, there's this threat, there's this risk, there's this bad politician.

Erica: There's, you know, the thing with many of these social media sites where it learns what you like and then it gives you more of what you like.

Darius: It does, yes. And so it's stimulating this. Stimulating you, but not stimulating your parasympathetic. It's stimulating your sympathetic. You. You're actually sympathizing with the person on the other side and stressing you out or whatever. And it has an effect on your body. And so there's. It. So what I'm saying is maybe there's something you can do and then there's other things you can do less of in order to amp, up the other. You know, and sometimes the whole act of taking time to breathe or meditate or pray, walk and so on, is also an act of not doing these other things that are stimulating. So as a double benefit in that it gives you some respite from it.

Erica: Well, and I think where a lot of people demonize our phones, right. And I'm typically one of them, that they're just not good for us. However, there are things that we can do on our phones that are good for us. There are hypnosis apps, there are meditation apps there. You know, I had a wonderful evening just watching really great podcasts on YouTube. I like. It's nice to see the people actually speaking. So I think a lot of.

Darius: Maybe I'll get you to agree to do a videoed podcast, Erica.

Erica: Yeah, maybe we'll do that when we. Maybe we'll do that one of these days. But yeah, because it is nice to see them.

Darius: Yes, no doubt.

Erica: Yeah. So I think that there are lots of tools out there. So it's a matter of reaching out to that low hanging fruit, taking a bite, have a taste, see which ones work best for you. Because if you can learn to regulate your own nervous system, it will also help you to regulate your executive functioning skills.

Darius: Okay, so let's wind this up. And last exercise listener. What would be your takeaways of things that you're going to say to yourself? I'm going to do X, Y and Z and let's do it together. Erica, you go, and you just think, ah, that's reminded me that I'm going to do X, Y and Z. And I'm going to go,

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Darius: that's reminded me to do X, Y and Z or to keep doing X, Y and Z. And what I mean is like I'm thinking, you know, it's reminded me to hum more during the day. I really wanted to get used to humming. I do like humming a good tune. I've got out the habit of that. I do want to listen to some good music, and I have been going to this dance class on a Tuesday night. I really love it. It's fantastic. I want to do the bath, the warm bath. I need to do more of that slouching and that sort of deep breathing and I think I'm going to do more of that intentional three step breathing that you're talking about.

Erica: Physiological sigh.

Darius: Physiological sigh sounds very fancy sighing. Okay, over to you. What does it remind you that you're going to do moving forward for your parasympathetic?

Erica: I think continuing my walks but being more intentional about gazing from left right while even thinking about some difficult things or difficult times or even talking about them. I think I want to explore more with yoga nidra, you know, and watching some videos online. I've got to get back into the sauna. I think the sauna could be really, really great for me. Yeah, the physiological side I can tell you right now works great, great. The other thing, just even throughout that we didn't really talk about it but just mindfulness, staying in the present moment. I have a little morning routine that is profoundly helpful to me where I basically speak to Mother Earth, and I get myself grounded and I speak to Father sky and I to the wisdom of the universe so that I can stay in service. And I intentionally drop into my spirit spine so I can be in my core. As my IFS teacher says, ground in core, you need to, that's what you need. He and he believes that you can't even be a good coach if you're not grounded and in core, which I agree with I agree with. If you're in core, then your heart is open and you're in your best self or just in self as they would say.

Darius: So basically spiritual practice. A spiritual practice there you're talking about like I would also. Is that what you're talking about? Basically encouraging. Yeah.

Erica: I mean I have kind of like a little morning routine where I ask out of my Mark Nepo book and then I go into my back like walking around in the light with my dogs and then I have like a little spiritual moment of connect the earth and connecting to the sky and being grateful for my life.

Darius: Thankfulness is gratitude is, is really very good for that as well, isn't it?

Erica: Oh yeah. And if you can get into the habit of, if you have a family of even at the dinner table just having everybody talk about what they're grateful about.

Darius: Yeah, I mean I love the tradition of saying grace before a meal. We changed the tradition of saying grace before a meal and made it so that everyone, including the children, got to say thank you in a way that they felt comfortable. And we just said whatever, whoever comes to the table, whatever is their way of saying thank you. Whether it's prayer or just being thankful for something. We go around the circle and people say thank you for something and if they don't want to say thank you, they say thanks pass, you know, or just thanks and move on. So everyone feels they can do whatever they want in terms of expressing thanks. And it's really lovely thing. We started it when the children were about 9, 10 years old and it was a bit awkward at the beginning. You know, we used to say grace and it used to always be one person saying. And I was like, I really want to encourage every one of us to take personal responsibility for our personal inner life and spiritual journey. And having that was a really good start. And we still do it and our children kind of insist on it now and they're adults now. Do you know what I mean? And it's lovely starting that where everyone gets to say thank you before.

Erica: A meal and it just changes the energy within the room, you know, as much as people don't like, oh, the energy, that's woo woo. But it's, it's not. Energy is everything. And they're really discovering that in the research.

Darius: And Rory Sutherland, the marketing guru guy would say it changes the taste of the food.

Erica: Oh, that's good.

Darius: And that sounds very weird, but it's really interesting because if you do experiments with people and give them butter. Okay.

Darius: You know how Butter often gets covered with a bit of silver foil.

Erica: Right.

Darius: You know, and you often have a thing to peel off the top of margarine or butter or something like that.

00:55:00

Darius: And it's completely unnecessary. It's not necessary for the packaging. But what they've discovered is that to people who have got some silver foil on the top, silver or gold, the stimulus of the silver or gold, and then eating the butter makes the butter taste better.

Erica: That's interesting, because we don't have that in the States. We don't in the United States. No, but I know what you're talking about, because my mom is British, and I've seen that.

Darius: All right. Yes.

Erica: But they. No, it's usually just in some kind of white. Something cheap.

Darius: Yeah. Well, they've done experiments in the UK on what. Which one sells better and people. Which one’s people are willing to pay more for and taste test better. And so this concept of taste testing is what Rory Sutherland was talking about, is you kind of use the reverse placebo effect, where you. And that's another interesting thing that he talks about in his book is using the placebo effect not in a critical way, but in a positive way, using it on yourself, with yourself. And this is one way that people use the placebo effect to create better tests, taste in food, and also a better user experience. And they've got all these small, subtle cues that trigger your mind to experience things differently, experience taste differently.

Erica: Right. And there are all sorts of implications. Just you even look at advertisements. That's what it's all about. Huggies diapers are. I'm going to get those. Because they hug the baby. Right. Or there's a dog food called Solid Gold Dog Food. So you can use the names to market your stuff and.

Darius: Absolutely.

Erica: This sensation. But I have just two more things to take us back to.

Darius: You got more? You got more.

Erica: There's two things popped up for me just to leave us with. And one is if you want to stimulate not only the parasympathetic nervous system, but also kind of keep you on your path, keep your eye on the prize. We've often talked about vision boards.

Darius: Yes.

Erica: Oh, I was just listening to a podcast. I wish I had written down her name, where she talks about you envisioning your perfect day.

Darius: Yes.

Erica: And you actually go through the whole day and imagine your whole day. And she was saying that when she does this method with people, she. At the very end, she says, let me know when that day happens. And she said, I can't tell you how many emails I get saying, it happened, my perfect day happened. But again, like, when you try to manifest it, then you're looking for it, then you're striving for it, and you're more likely to get there. So if you're having a difficult time in life, these. This is the perfect time to do a lot of these strategies. Even if you're not having a difficult time and you just want to optimize your potential, your life, you want to take it to the next level. You want to stay on your path. These are all ways that will help you to regulate and keep your autonomic nervous system in homeostasis and also help you to manage your executive functions in a way that will support you.

Darius: Great, Erica. Thanks for that.

Erica: Yeah. How's that?

Darius: Till next time.

Erica: Till next time.

Darius: Bye. See ya.

Erica: Sponsored by Learning Specialist Courses.com courses and resources that support educators and coaches.

Darius: Sponsored by Ivey. Imagine turning your meeting's audio into a live mind map instantly so you remember what matters. It's ideal for students and managers with dyslexia or adhd. Try Ivey for free now at Ivey. app. That's IVVI App. thank you for joining us at the Executive Function Brain Trainer podcast.

Erica: Check out our show notes for links and resources and follow us on social media.

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