Oh My, My Amygdala’s on fire!  Tips for how to put it out.

Well not really on fire, but that’s the part of the brain that’s triggered whenever you feel  or think a stressful thought. It’s the “Uh-oh” response that’s evolved from, “Uh-oh there’s a tiger in my cave” to,  “Oh crap,” there’s a mortgage bill in my mailbox.”  Your amygdala, Greek, for “almond,”  because, drum roll… it is shaped like an almond, resides deep within the middle of your brain within your limbic system. It’s the hangout place for emotions and long term memories. It’s also where negative experiences get encoded.   In short, this is  your body’s super-charged-on-steriods-danger detection software. It’s sniffing for smoke or anything else that looks, sounds, smells, or feels like danger. Once triggered, the amygdala sets up an elaborate hormonal-tag team response to mobilize our bodies to fight or flee. We are pumped. Literally pumped with hormones that elevate our blood pressure and divert blood away from unnecessary organs like our stomach or brains so that our arms and legs can get us the hell away. The only problem is, we are not running or using that hormone flood as intended. In fact, those stress hormones end up recirculating in our bodies polluting and oxidizing our innards like a festering self-destruction machine. Yep, “stress,” as it’s called is the basis for 90% of our  doctor’s visits. The more often the stress response is triggered the less capable our bodies are at running that other most amazing software program namely:  The fix-it-up spontaneous healing immune defense program. But before you go flooding your body with more stress hormones there is a way to STOP the stress response and invoke the RELAXATION response which then triggers those amazing call-off-the-dogs-everything’s ok hormones to course through your veins. You’ve already heard of a myriad of techniques from meditation, deep breathing, yoga, progressive muscle relaxation, tai chi, guided imagery etc. But wait , there’s more…. You can rewire your brain and eliminate repeat offender stress thoughts using Tapping. Not tap dancing, though that WOULD do a lot for you from your blood to your brain. I am talking about a self-help technique of tapping (no shoes required) on acupressure meridian points. In his book “The Tapping Solution,” Nick Ortner, shares the Harvard Medical school research, performed with fMRi’s and PET brain scans, which shows how the amygdala’s red alert is called off when acupoints are stimulated with needles. What’s more exciting is the randomized controlled trial that Dr. Dawson Church (a man with whom I trained in EFT) performed to answer the question, “What happens to cortisol levels (that all important belly-fat stress hormone) and psychological symptoms of anxiety and depression after a session of EFT ( Emotional Freedom Technique) tapping?” The results astonished even the researcher. In 83 subjects after an hour long EFT tapping session, an hour of conventional talk therapy, or no treatment (control group), cortisol levels in the tapping group dropped significantly down by an average of 24% with some showing results as high as 50%. In the control and conventional talk therapy groups, there was no significant change in cortisol levels (other than that which happens normally throughout the day.) 

     Not only does tapping halt the stress response but the combination of stimulating acupoints while thinking of an upsetting event actually RETRAINS the brain.Think of it like this: Tapping is the ultimate “computer-bug” fix. Tapping while thinking of an upsetting problem both triggers and deactivates the amygdala, scrambling it long enough to get the hippocampus in on the process. The hippocampus (also in the limbic system) controls contextual associations which compares past threats with present signals. It’s a matcher machine. It says, “This looks like that old danger, so this must be danger.”  In retraining/rewiring the brain, you stop the amygdala from triggering, which stops the hippocampus from making a false match.  That “old experience” no longer looks like danger; so It gets filed it in the “no big deal” category. 

     So the next time you find yourself spiraling into a fight or flight mode from anything thing like a bill to a break-up, think about what tools you might use to retrain and rewire your brain.  To learn more about tapping there is tons of free information online  and you can always call on me at tsgoyna.com.