*Intuition *Spirituality *Exercise - The Limbic System
Above is a picture of our bunny, commonly referred to as Bun Bun. He is also known as arsehole, bad rabbit and OMG what have you done now! Now there is a point to this background information that specifically relates to the Limbic System, but you will have to bear with me for a minute. This tiny furball lives in our dining room, barricaded in that area, away from the lounge room, by a child proof gate. Even though he has free rain of the dining room and balcony, he still causes havoc whenever possible. Examples are, peeling the paint off the wall within a week of it being painted. Chewing a protruding wall corner of gyprock off right down to something metal in the wall. Chewing all the skirting boards. Ripping the stuffing out of two small chairs in dining room. Ripping the stuffing out of 8 chairs of the outdoor setting (costing $450 to have re-upholstered). Eating so many electrical cords we have lost count. These things, although they appear terrible, are not his best effort. His supreme destructobunny act was the demolition of our $4,500 lounge when we didn’t realise he was in the lounge area (hence his restricted access upon purchasing a new leather lounge).
….and yet…surprisingly…he doesn’t eat his own sofa??
I suppose we could put him in a cage outside but, even though he is lovingly called an arsehole, he is part of the family so he stays in.
Recently he has worked out how to open the child proof gate if it is not closed properly. This is quite common as it is a major thoroughfare. My son Timmy never takes responsibility for letting the rabbit escape. A common exchange is:
Mum: “Timmy you didn’t shut the gate and the rabbit is out.”
Tim: “No, I did shut the gate”
Mum: “I suppose the rabbit pole vaulted out then”
Generally any escape attempts are thwarted fairly quickly and we catch him downstairs (usually with minimal destruction). It has become a little easier to catch him of late as he usually tries to get under the bed in the spare room. Unfortunately for him, he has recently fattened up so, despite his best efforts, his bum doesn’t fit under said bed making it easier to extract him.
In the previous paragraph I did say that his escape attempts get resolved quickly, that was until a few days ago. It was 6am in the morning. I had my headphones on and was meditating upon waking. Jason had risen and headed upstairs. I was in the sweet meditative zone where everything is bliss. That was until Jason came charging in saying “Well we better expect to have holes all over the lounge”. I quickly came out of the Zen state… it disappeared very rapidly to be honest. I then jumped out of bed and felt my chest tighten. Either Jason or I had not shut the gate properly the night before and the rabbit had free rain of the entire house. We located the rabbit and barricaded him again. I then went over the new lounge with a fine tooth comb. While doing so I felt quite sick.
We were very lucky and he only ate a few cords. There was no damage to the lounge.
This is where you say “well she could breathe a big sigh of relief”. You would think so wouldn’t you. This was not the case. My whole day was spent on edge. Feeling tightness in my chest and being irritable. Even in the evening I couldn’t calm myself down. I went to bed early but didn’t sleep well. I woke up at 3am, still in an agitated state. While lying there I asked the Universe for guidance and felt the response “this is the Limbic System overactive”.
Until about two weeks ago I had never heard the term “the Limbic System”. I watched something on Netflix where a guy mentioned it. I then saw something come up on Facebook shortly after. Hmmm, twice in a row. I sent myself a message with the word “Limbic” so I would remember to look it up. A few days later I was doing Reiki with Kate Leuenberger I had not mentioned anything about the Limbic System coming up twice. After the session, Kate, who is very intuitive, told me she had made a note about something that spirit was bringing up. Guess what, there was The Limbic System again!
Then finally, I ran into a lady named Ingrid at the markets who I had met once at cancer rehab a few weeks earlier. Ingrid asked me how I was going. I had told her at rehab about what I was doing - creating my own radical remission. Ingrid was on board and believes in Universal energy as well. While standing there at the markets I mentioned that my intuition / synchronicities were going nuts and that The Limbic System was somehow important. Ingrid looked at me and smiled, she then said “I used to give talks on The Limbic System”.
I needed no further prompting from the Universe. I needed to make time to look more deeply into this subject.
Now, I am not a scientist, so, if you are an expert and if I don’t get this all 100% correct please forgive me. This is just my understanding of it in layman’s terms.
The Limbic System is contained in the centre of the brain and contains various parts e.g. amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus and thalamus. Now, I don’t really care what each of these bits do, so I’ll just refer to the Limbic System as a whole.
The Limbic System is where the fight or flight system is contained in the brain. This is important as, if you are walking in the jungle and run into a tiger, your body needs to quickly ascertain if you can attack and kill the tiger or if your best choice is to run away from it. Your Limbic System stores information about things that could harm you. It is like a library at the centre of your brain. You watch a nature documentary when you are 10 and see a tiger chasing and eating a wild pig. Your Limbic System stores that information in case you ever happen to run into one. The Limbic System is important, however the amount of threats we run into these days that could harm us would appear to have greatly diminished. The likelihood of me ever running into a tiger is fairly slim! The thing is, it appears that the Limbic System, in these modern times, is kind of storing all sorts of crap in it as DANGER you are UNDER THREAT! Examples:
a) Client is cranky at me this morning - brain: “It must be me; I have done something wrong; I need to find out what I have done or I will lose my job causing me to not be able to pay my bills and be cast out on the street eating food from rubbish bins like a bin chicken”. Another possible reality, he could have had a fight with his wife.
b) Partner is out with friends and won’t answer his phone - brain: “he is cheating on me with some whore. What a bastard! If we break up there will be no money and I will be cast out on the street eating food from rubbish bins like a bin chicken”. Another possible reality, he can’t hear his phone because it is on silent.
My research was making so much sense to me. This is my life! The centre of my brain was in a constant state of fight or flight. As I was experiencing things in life, my anxiety was getting bigger and bigger. The amount of potential threats being added to my filing system was getting out of control to the point where even small things were being added e.g. bunny issues. Also a lot of potential threats relating to work and compliance requirements of being a bookkeeper. A lot of potential threats came from my research into “what is the best diet for humans?” Point to note, if you do too much Googling on food you will find something dangerous about every single food that exists on the planet. Trust me, you don’t want too much of that stuff in your Limbic System!
Also modern life is tough! We think all our technology and social structure of putting families in their own individual boxes is a good idea. We segregate and isolate ourselves in homes with our immediate family. Often we have limited support structure and all the burden of our family and work rests on one or two parents, rather than village groups that humans were designed to live in. So does the Limbic System have no choice but to continue add threats as we know that it is all up to us? We are constantly living in fight or flight Limbic overload and, in the end, if we don’t address the problem, varying degrees of body collapse are inevitable. I am the perfect example. Anxiety, Cancer & Scleroderma.
I knew a few years ago that my brain had a tendency to overreact. I joked with a friend that my mind would be able to have any little situation project forward a possible outcome of me ending up in gaol (or as per above, eating from rubbish bins like a bin chicken). I was very good at it! I laughed about it at the time but did not understand how absolutely devastating it could be. I now know!
So what is the answer? I don’t think going to live in a hippy commune is on the cards, although I hear there is something like that near Byron Bay. I don’t see work changing or the day to day stresses. How am I therefore supposed to calm my Limbic System down?
Now I am no expert yet, but a nights worth of research has given me some really good places to start:
Zoryna O’Donnell wrote an article “You can’t think your way out of PTSD. Try calming your limbic system instead”. In it she listed 6 suggestions:
Listening to Music
Playing a Musical Instrument
Meditation
Practising Mindfulness
Practising Yoga
Physical Exercise
That was a good start. My mind then looked at the Yoga line. I had tried Yoga but right now my intuition has been telling me Qigong is a good option for me. I wondered if there were any articles about Qigong and the Limbic System. A search came up with The Nerous System and Qi Cultivation by Roger Jahnke O.M.D. This is a MUST READ. Everything was falling into place. Qigong is proven to help with calming the Limbic System. Everything needs to be in balance ie Yin and Yang. Rest and Action. Parasympathetic and Sympathetic Nervous System. Right Brain and Left Brain. I have been heavily one sided on the “action” side, causing major imbalance.
OK so I can sign up for some Qigong classes.
I was not finished yet though, the article also pointed to something very strange about nasal passages. There has been research done which suggests that Single Nostril Breathing could be a possible therapy when you are too heavily stuck in a sympathetic (action) nervous system.
The research indicates:
If your right nasal passage is more open than the left, you are in a right nasal left brain dominance state which is the sympathetic (action) nervous system state.
If your left nasal passage is more open than the right, you are in a left nasal right brain dominance state which is the parasympathetic (rest) nervous system state.
So what do I do? I test it! Guess what, no prizes for guessing that my right nostil is the open one, meaning I’m in the action state… all the time!
So far I have found two types of beneficial breathing techniques associated with nostrils.
Single Nostril Breathing and Alternate Nostril Breathing Technique.
Left Nostril Breathing helps calm anxiety and reduces blood pressure. Right Nostril Breathing gets you energised and ready for action. Alternate Nostril Breathing is a form of meditation that creates balance.
And guess what! I then find out that Alternate Nostril Breathing has been proven to improve lung function. Very synchronistic that this is the place I finished!
I now have my new list:
Listening to Music
Playing a Musical Instrument
Meditation
Practising Mindfulness
Practising Qigong now (possibly Yoga later)
Physical Exercise
Left Nostril Breathing Practice
Alternate Nostril Breathing Practice
Just before I sign off. There is one more thing, and it’s pretty damn good. Your Limbic System can’t tell the difference between truth and lie, so only tell yourself positive stuff. Try to avoid even jokingly saying negative stuff about yourself (something for me to consider). The guru Marissa Peer's interview is a must.
I’m now off to go for a walk wearing headphones with my finger stuck firmly up my right nostril and my other arm waving around chasing some positive Qi all the while i’ll alternate between playing the recorder (obviously with no hands - I can do the math) and chanting about me being a healthy person that looks like a supermodel!
Update 25th October
I had shared this unpublished page with a client a few weeks ago. As I was getting off the phone with him on Friday he stated, in kind of like a “may the force be with you” way:
“May your left nostril always be open”
Funny bugger :)