An Unexpected Way to Learn to Be Less Reactive
Have you ever wondered why you react strongly to certain situations or why your emotions sometimes seem to take control? In this enlightening episode of The Mindful Coach Podcast, I explore the fascinating world of the limbic system - a crucial part of our nervous system that shapes our emotional experiences and responses - and holds the key to helping us learn to make better choices instead of being reactive.
Understanding the Limbic System
Drawing from my experiences with Hakomi training and insights from John Eisman, I explain the limbic system's role in our daily lives. From the joy of greeting a beloved pet to the instant defensiveness when criticized, our limbic system is constantly at work, influencing our behaviors and relationships.
Key Insights:
- The limbic system as the emotional powerhouse of our brain
- How automatic responses can hinder genuine presence and connection
- The importance of recognizing limbic reactions in ourselves and others
Cultivating Mindful Awareness
I discuss practical techniques to develop a more conscious relationship with your limbic responses:
- Intentional Presence: Learning to bring focused attention to everyday interactions
- Pausing and Savoring: A simple yet powerful exercise to enhance positive experiences
- Choosing Response over Reaction: Developing the ability to make conscious choices in emotionally charged situations
The Power of Choice
By understanding and working with our limbic system, we can transform our automatic reactions into thoughtful responses. This shift not only enhances our personal relationships but also empowers us in our professional lives, especially as coaches and helping professionals.
Whether you're looking to improve your emotional intelligence, enhance your coaching skills, or simply live a more mindful life, this episode offers valuable insights and practical tools to help you navigate the complex world of emotions with greater ease and intention.
Takeaways:
- Understanding the limbic system is essential as it influences our emotional responses daily.
- Mindfulness allows us to consciously choose how we respond to our limbic reactions.
- Noticing and savoring positive moments can enhance our overall emotional well-being significantly.
- Developing awareness of our responses can prevent us from reacting impulsively in challenging situations.
- Practicing mindful awareness helps us recognize subtle emotional cues in ourselves and others.
- Embracing the present moment can transform mundane experiences into profound moments of joy.
Links referenced in this episode:
Transcript
The Mindful Coach Podcast.
Speaker A:Hello, and welcome to this edition of the Mindful Coach Podcast.
Speaker A:I have a really important topic today because this is something that affects every single person on the planet.
Speaker A:You, me, everybody.
Speaker A:And I'm talking about something that makes your life so rich and so powerful and beautiful and at the same time can make our lives miserable.
Speaker A:What I'm talking about the limbic system, part of our nervous system.
Speaker A:Every single person on the planet has one and many animals have one.
Speaker A:In fact, that's one of the best ways I know of to describe it.
Speaker A:If you're not familiar with the limbic system and what it does for us all is was best described to me by John Eisman, who was one of the main founders and teachers and leaders in Hakomi, a mindful, somatic coaching method.
Speaker A:I spent many hours working with John Eisman.
Speaker A:I said working.
Speaker A:Studying as a student with John Eisman and the other amazing Hakomi trainers.
Speaker A:And if you're not familiar with Hakomi, it's a mindful, somatic therapy that is just unbelievably elegant, graceful, powerful, steady.
Speaker A:It was state of the art 30 years ago and state of the art still because it's taking that long for science to kind of catch up with what they had as insights back in the day.
Speaker A:So what he said one day is a dog is a limbic system on four legs.
Speaker A:I just thought that was the perfect example of how to light up what a limbic system is.
Speaker A:Because if you think of a dog, it's like, you know, they're all in on whatever's going on.
Speaker A:They're like, walk up to you and you're the best thing ever.
Speaker A:You're the most important person here.
Speaker A:I'm so happy I met you.
Speaker A:You're my new best friend.
Speaker A:Or they're like sad puppy and ashamed, maybe in a little fearful and cowering a bit.
Speaker A:You know, it's like all of that emotion, all that emotive content is the limbic system in action.
Speaker A:And it's just, you know, face forward.
Speaker A:On many animals and dogs in particular, and in human beings we have a lot of other complexity, of course, but the limbic system drives your emotions and is the, I should say it is the often the source and also the engine of what it is you're feeling when someone yells at you and you want to pull back and defend yourself or stop, snap back and get angry.
Speaker A:Those are limbic system responses.
Speaker A:And then also when you feel someone says something nice to you or you hug somebody you care about, you can Actually let yourself feel that which is an art in and of itself.
Speaker A:Letting yourself have that embrace and melting a little bit into it.
Speaker A:That's a limbic system response.
Speaker A:Now, the key thing about limbic systems is that they drive so much of our language, the way that we talk, the way that we connect or don't.
Speaker A:What causes you to step into a relationship or away from, or just kind of dance around at the same level with someone where it doesn't really deepen, doesn't really get farther, just sort of, sort of get.
Speaker A:All of that is informed by the way your limbic system is responding to what's going on.
Speaker A:So if someone says to you, you know, you'd be better off if you did X, and you go, oh, I don't like getting advice from people and that, you know, you don't like it.
Speaker A:And then that sense that you don't like it, the feeling of you feel maybe contracted, you may backed up a little bit, that's limbic.
Speaker A:And so it's really important to notice that because they can drive you into doing and saying things that maybe you would be better off if you didn't.
Speaker A:So what I'm advocating here is learning to be aware of how your limbic system shows up in your senses so that you can make choices about what to do about what you're feeling instead of reacting automatically.
Speaker A:Those of you who have been around mindfulness, and if you haven't, know that there's a thing called the default mode network, this is also a neurological thing.
Speaker A:The default mode network is the way that your neurology, the way your brain works on automatic most of the time.
Speaker A:Most people are running on automatic most of the time.
Speaker A:And that's not necessarily wrong.
Speaker A:It's the way our neurology is built.
Speaker A:Why is that?
Speaker A:Because think about what would happen, what would your life be like if every time you saw something it was new?
Speaker A:It was like, oh my God, how do.
Speaker A:I don't want to.
Speaker A:These shoelaces here, there.
Speaker A:I've seen people tie shoes.
Speaker A:How do I do that?
Speaker A:And you work and you figure it out.
Speaker A:And the next day it's like, I.
Speaker A:How do I do this?
Speaker A:You don't have a memory, you don't have a muscle memory of doing it before.
Speaker A:Well, you know, memento style, life.
Speaker A:If you're not familiar with the movie, check it out.
Speaker A:It's a great movie about a guy who basically had no ability to make new memories.
Speaker A:And so consequently, the brain, though, learns how to do that.
Speaker A:And then what first takes so much energy I'm going to learn how to tie my shoe.
Speaker A:I'm going to focus really hard and get the muscles and my fingers to do a very unusual sort of move.
Speaker A:And you train your hand to do it.
Speaker A:And then pretty soon after a while, you don't have to think about it.
Speaker A:It's just like, shoe tie, boom, shoe tie, boom, you're done.
Speaker A:There's no.
Speaker A:All that energy that it used to take to think about it and make it work has gone into a neurological path that is already wired and is pre firing, I mean, easy to fire.
Speaker A:So you just boom and you're done.
Speaker A:Very similar process for learning to play the piano or an instrument or riding a bicycle or basically anything that you want to learn.
Speaker A:The whole point of learning is that you commit it to a place where you have ready access to it.
Speaker A:Now, the difficulty with that is that it can prevent you from really paying attention when you want to, or you would be better served by doing so.
Speaker A:Let me give you an example.
Speaker A:Let's say that I work with someone and I've been working with them for several years, and they walk in the room and I see them and they say something to me and everything's fine.
Speaker A:But because it's normal and expected, which is what the brain looks for, like normal, expected stuff, oh, there's, this is called, say Joe.
Speaker A:There's Joe, looks like Joe, same Joe, no problems.
Speaker A:Your brain doesn't see anything different, so it doesn't jump out of your, of your experience.
Speaker A:Experience.
Speaker A:Your brain doesn't go, pay attention, bring extra energy to this.
Speaker A:Now if Joe walks in the room with a birthday cake, oh, well, that's unexpected.
Speaker A:So then your brain will go, oh, look, an unexpected thing, and you'll jump to paying attention.
Speaker A:Now what we'd like to do as mindful people on the planet is to be able to bring that birthday cake kind of attention to any moment that we wish.
Speaker A:That's the secret to being mindful and present in a conversation on demand.
Speaker A:When you want to, you can summon this presence, this enlivened awareness to pay attention in really high resolution to what's going on.
Speaker A:So when Joe walks in the room and I look up, if I choose to, I can choose to really look at Joe.
Speaker A:And rather than it being the same shoelace that I've tied 10,000 times so I don't have to really pay attention, pay attention and notice, oh, Joe looks, Joe looks a little sad today, just subtle.
Speaker A:But I can just kind of see in the gate and the downward gaze and kind of a turned Head a little bit, a little introverted sense, maybe a little hunched over, maybe even a little.
Speaker A:Just clearly a sad vibe, right?
Speaker A:Take all that together and you put it together.
Speaker A:Sad.
Speaker A:And then you can say, hey Joe, how's it going?
Speaker A:And you can inquire is a way to say I'm noticing, I'm paying attention, I'm, I'm vibing here, I got it.
Speaker A:I, I'm checking in with you.
Speaker A:Maybe you've got it wrong, but chances are if you're been around a little while and you practice this a little bit, you'll get a really refined sense of what's going on with people by just paying attention.
Speaker A:It's such a luscious place to live, to be able to be present with someone in such a way that you can really, really tell, tell in a deeper way what's going on with people, even though those things are unspoken.
Speaker A:And you do have to be cautious.
Speaker A:You don't want to invent stories.
Speaker A:You don't want to go oh well this means that, and that must mean this and Joe must be having these kinds of problems.
Speaker A:That's just a story you don't know.
Speaker A:All you know is that you have a feeling.
Speaker A:From what you're seeing, your limbic system is resonating with an experience that feels like it might be sadness.
Speaker A:It's not your sadness because you didn't feel that way.
Speaker A:So this is true empathy and you don't want to take it on and say, oh Joe, I feel your sadness and it's crushing me, man, you're crushing me with this.
Speaker A:Being victimized, so many empaths are.
Speaker A:They feel so victimized by their sensitivity.
Speaker A:And I can relate to that.
Speaker A:That's you go to my website themindfulcoach.com and look up an article called the Gift and Burden of Empathy.
Speaker A:So we're coming back to the limbic system, noticing how it works for you.
Speaker A:So it's.
Speaker A:And also naming that the brain wants to take away, not take away, it wants to, it wants to reduce the amount of energy that is needed to pay attention to any particular moment.
Speaker A:Because the brain, the part of you that has to focus, really focus and look and see what is right in front of you in the moment, non judgmentally is an expensive operation, meaning the executive part of the brain, which is the part that can do all this kind of big picture sensing is a high energy operation, right?
Speaker A:It takes a lot of juice, literally energy, literally metabolism of your, of your body to, to make those kinds of experiences, thoughts happen.
Speaker A:And as a result the body works to conserve it because you can only do so much.
Speaker A:And if you, you know, if you want to find out how much you can actually do, then decide to pay attention to like a clock for like, and just notice how long can you actually pay attention.
Speaker A:And what you'll find is that you'll, it's something that's this static in some ways.
Speaker A:As a clock, you'll find that you're able to do really well for like, oh, 10 seconds, maybe more.
Speaker A:I got pretty good at it at one time, but it took a lot of work.
Speaker A:And the point is that what happens is your brain just runs out of energy to do, to pay attention.
Speaker A:It's like there's a reservoir inside your nervous system.
Speaker A:Let's just say it holds a gallon of energy, which is a silly metaphor, but, or, but still, it takes so much fluid to run this energy capacity.
Speaker A:And as that drains, when it gets to the bottom of it, there's no energy left and you will just disappear into your thoughts.
Speaker A:And that's okay.
Speaker A:There's nothing wrong with.
Speaker A:That's just the way that it works.
Speaker A:Then what happens is you rest.
Speaker A:So that part of your brain that was doing the attention begins to rest and that reservoir starts to fill up again.
Speaker A:It reaches a certain threshold and you'll go, oh, I forgot to pay attention.
Speaker A:I'm not paying attention anymore.
Speaker A:The moment, that precise moment that you become aware that you were not aware is a mindful moment, pure mindfulness.
Speaker A:Waking up to the fact that I'm not paying attention.
Speaker A:Now I am paying attention.
Speaker A:Remember the definition of.
Speaker A:Widely accepted definition, I should say, or used anyway, by John Kabat.
Speaker A:Zinn is paying attention on purpose, on underscore, on purpose in the moment, non judgmentally on purpose.
Speaker A:And so sometimes I'll have clients or students ask me, how do I know if I'm being mindful?
Speaker A:And the answer is because you chose to be.
Speaker A:So here we are being able to learning how to be present with our limbic system experience in a way where we can make choices about, oh, I'm having a good feeling, I'm having a bad feeling, and having this executive part of our awareness, paying attention, going, oh, wow, I am having that experience.
Speaker A:If you're, if you can have those thoughts, that's the right place to be.
Speaker A:Because then you're not like, I'm mad and I'm mad at you and I want justice and I'm going to get justice.
Speaker A:I quit.
Speaker A:Okay?
Speaker A:And you know, I'm not saying that that's wrong.
Speaker A:I'm just Saying that maybe you want to have choices.
Speaker A:And if you do have choices and that's the choice that you make, good for you.
Speaker A:Then you made an intelligent choice or at least a reasonably conscious choice among several.
Speaker A:Rather than just getting triggered and being reactive and doing something that you wish you hadn't done or saying something that you wish you hadn't said, said and then having to clean up the mess afterwards.
Speaker A:We've all been there, right?
Speaker A:Saying something ill advised to someone that may be hurtful or that damages the relationship or even the career.
Speaker A:And, and then when you do, you kind of come to your senses and go, oh, I, you know, I should have said something else, I wish I something else.
Speaker A:And then you're having to repair all of that.
Speaker A:Think about how much damage in the world happens because of moments like that where people are simply being reactive.
Speaker A:They're not being thoughtful, they're not making choices, they're reacting.
Speaker A:And I'm not saying that that's bad, I'm just saying that it can not, it might not be the best choice.
Speaker A:Choice.
Speaker A:There are plenty of times when you know, you want to very quickly say no and be strong about it.
Speaker A:There are plenty of situations like that.
Speaker A:And that can feel like very reactive at times.
Speaker A:Better still is to be present with.
Speaker A:This is one of these situations where I need to be strong, forceful, declare, boundary and enforce it.
Speaker A:And you know, that's one of the kind of myths of mindfulness is people often think, well, if you're mindful, you're just kind of in this mushy place where anybody can walk over you and you're, you must learn to be okay with whatever anybody does.
Speaker A:That's just not so.
Speaker A:On the contrary, the more mindful you become, the more you become aware of the impact of toxic situations and unhealthy people environments.
Speaker A:And so the less tolerant you become of staying in those situations and also I would add, the more empowered you become to changing those situations.
Speaker A:Instead of being reactive in habitual ways that don't further the cause, you can make better choices.
Speaker A:So we're coming back to the limbic system, learning how this works in yourself, and I'd like to give you an exercise that can help you with this.
Speaker A:I've talked about this before because it's one of the most important exercises that I know of and that's to pay attention to the things that you like automatically that happen on purpose.
Speaker A:Excuse me, that happen automatically and frequently in your life.
Speaker A:Simple daily things.
Speaker A:I like nature, I like animals, I like the sky, I like the stars.
Speaker A:And the moon, those kinds of things.
Speaker A:When I see them, I have a somatic response and an emotional feeling of like, oh, man, I just love that.
Speaker A:So beautiful.
Speaker A:So it goes so far.
Speaker A:It goes so deep.
Speaker A:Bigger than me.
Speaker A:You look into this night sky, you know, the cosmos is so much bigger than my little spot on the planet.
Speaker A:And that causes me.
Speaker A:And it's so beautiful that I just relax and part of me opens up and feels connected to something mythological, almost eternal.
Speaker A:That moment of connection is really powerful.
Speaker A:Learning to find those moments that happen automatically or not just fine, but noticing those moments when they happen.
Speaker A:So I'm charging you with this task.
Speaker A:Notice when that happens.
Speaker A:And then here's the magic notice.
Speaker A:And then press pause on that moment.
Speaker A:Let yourself really have it.
Speaker A:Wow, that mountain is so beautiful.
Speaker A:I love the way that instrument sounds.
Speaker A:Look at this flower, look at that color.
Speaker A:The way that this person laughs is just so delightful.
Speaker A:Letting yourself feel the pleasure of it, in a way.
Speaker A:And just as another teacher of mine would say, let it inform your senses.
Speaker A:Now, this isn't intended to say, take an experience like that and make it into a divine revelation, although it, you know, you can go there if you want to, but don't intentionally amplify it.
Speaker A:Just steep in what it is.
Speaker A:Like a chef that tastes a food to see how it lingers on the palate in the way there's a wave of flavor, then another flavor, and then late flavors.
Speaker A:And there's these waves of experience that can come.
Speaker A:So give those moments to yourself and remember to press pause and savor them for a little while.
Speaker A:Why?
Speaker A:Because what we're doing.
Speaker A:Remember the discussion about the default mode network?
Speaker A:We're learning how to interrupt the default mode network, in this case with yummy experiences, with good experiences that aren't conditioned on what anyone thinks or what anyone does.
Speaker A:They're just pure goodness.
Speaker A:Those are important aspects of our life, characteristics, things of things in our world.
Speaker A:And when you find those kinds of things, they become allies to you, to connect you to what's true and good in yourself and in the world.
Speaker A:So, yeah, search those things out, Even make yourself get into context and situations where you're going to explore them.
Speaker A:I went to a concert the other day by a band I just love.
Speaker A:And for like an hour and a half, I'm just like, oh, my God, this is so good.
Speaker A:I just love it.
Speaker A:I was just immersed in the pleasure of this precision and the harmony that this particular band was playing with, which I just.
Speaker A:It's a blissful experience for me.
Speaker A:Letting yourself have Those moments, rather than I really should be doing something else.
Speaker A:There's nothing wrong with wanting to do something else, but when it robs you of the beauty of a sunset, because the truth is, there's always going to be something else to do.
Speaker A:If you've got to catch a plane, that's one thing.
Speaker A:But if it's just the generic press of things, that press is a limbic experience.
Speaker A:You don't want to be at the mercy of your limbic system.
Speaker A:So you notice, oh, I want to enjoy the sunset.
Speaker A:I really feel like there's so much I got to do.
Speaker A:And that may be true, but I've got 15 seconds to take a breath and let myself feel good about the moment that I'm having instead of being worried about the one that I'm not.
Speaker A:It's really important, letting yourself have the moments that you're having, the good moments of this particular case, because that's what we're searching out.
Speaker A:Let me find the good moments and steepen them for a little while.
Speaker A:And I'm not talking about minutes, although that thought.
Speaker A:You can do this in 10 or 15 seconds.
Speaker A:Do you have 10 or 15 seconds to add a good moment to your day?
Speaker A:I think you do.
Speaker A:I think you do.
Speaker A:And in fact, if you can do this five or six times a day, what you're doing is you're training this neurology to stop when it feels good and notice it.
Speaker A:And your brain will then get the message that we're not doing business as usual, we're not doing the default mode network.
Speaker A:We're going to feel good when we can, and we're going to let that be a part of our world that adds beautiful moments to your world, to your day.
Speaker A:So you could, you could add 5, 10, 20, 25 of these moments to your day easily.
Speaker A:And as a result, your experience of the day has these beautiful moments added to it that you didn't have before, and they've been there all along, just didn't notice.
Speaker A:And that's the message.
Speaker A:Once you've done this well enough for a while, what happens is you learn to have this capacity to pause on purpose when you notice an experience.
Speaker A:And so while we're at first beginning with these lovely moments, these beautiful moments, it can also happen whenever you have a bad one, somebody comes in and says something mean to you.
Speaker A:Similarly to how you can say, oh, I just love the way that dog is playing with the kid and let yourself feel that you can say, oh, I don't like the way what I just heard feels I can feel how my body is responding, how my emotions are contracting.
Speaker A:I can feel my self organizing around retorting and reacting back defensively or angrily.
Speaker A:And you notice that's what wants to happen.
Speaker A:Your system is organized around that boom.
Speaker A:Or maybe your system organizes another way.
Speaker A:You want to back up, you want to shut down, you want to go non verbal.
Speaker A:All good.
Speaker A:It's just noticing.
Speaker A:Noticing what is so for you.
Speaker A:And then now that you've noticed that, make a choice.
Speaker A:Now you're at choice.
Speaker A:Oh, my God.
Speaker A:We're talking about the holy grail here.
Speaker A:You get to choose what to do instead of being directed into it by just the unconscious flow of events.
Speaker A:What is that going to do for your personal life and your professional career?
Speaker A:If whenever you hit these moments and you're under stress, you have resilience, spaciousness to consider how it impacts you and respond from a set of choices.
Speaker A:Now what choices do you have?
Speaker A:That's a whole nother discussion because now we're talking about mindful communication skills.
Speaker A:And if you're interested in that, go to the mindfulcoach.com I have a whole series on mindful communication that goes deep.
Speaker A:And this is.
Speaker A:I'm just giving this particular lesson out there.
Speaker A:This is actually one of the procedures, one of the techniques that I prescribe all of my training for coaches and my clients.
Speaker A:I give this to everybody and I'm giving it to you.
Speaker A:Please do this.
Speaker A:It will change your world.
Speaker A:It will.
Speaker A:In ways that are difficult to describe.
Speaker A:We're talking about neuroplasticity here.
Speaker A:Combining it with mindfulness training, combining it with, you know, many other techniques, like using the language.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:Like, oh, I'm having this experience, naming your experience.
Speaker A:There's a lot that goes into the way this is put together.
Speaker A:And if you do that and it helps you get back to me, let me know.
Speaker A:I'd love to hear about it.
Speaker A:Brett@the mindfulcoach.com and so limbic system feelings how it feels to you, letting yourself be present with these good experiences, deepen them, and then choose to hang out for just 5, 10, 15 seconds with what does this feel like?
Speaker A:Taking a breath, letting it inform your senses, letting yourself have that moment and then moving on to your next thing, doing that several times a day, adding those moments to your life, and you'll begin to notice if you do that changes, those changes will be very positive.
Speaker A:So that's it for me today.
Speaker A:Blessings to you and stay present.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:The Mindful Coach podcast is a service of the Mindful Coach Association.
