by Dana James
Rhythmic breath activates a part of the brain called the periaqueductal gray (PAG) area, which has the brain’s richest concentration of opioid receptors. By regulating your breath with deep rhythmic breathing, quick breaths, or holding your breath, you alter how the neuropeptides communicate with the PAG. You can direct your breath to be calming or stimulating, or to reduce fear, depression, anxiety, irritation, and sadness.
Richard Brown, MD, a psychiatrist and assistant professor at Columbia University, performed a study in which participants learned a thirty-minute yogic breath series called Sudarshan Kriya for five days. Sudarshan Kriya is one of the kundalini kriyas, a special type of meditation where music, breath, movement, and meditation are all combined. In the experiment, the Sudarshan Kriya produced a significant reduction in anxiety in patients, including those who had failed to achieve results with cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), the gold standard in anxiety treatment.5
Similarly, Helen Lavretsky, MD, a psychiatrist and professor at UCLA, conducted an eight-week study in which she compared the effects of a daily twelve-minute kundalini breath series called Kirtan Kriya with listening to relaxing music on the mental and cognitive state of people caring for a family member with dementia. More than 60 percent of the study participants in the Kirtan Kriya group saw a 50 percent reduction in depression. This reduction in their depression was more than twice that of the group that listened to relaxing music.6 Kirtan Kriya is included in the Femme Fatale’s kundalini kriyas (but it is suitable for all archetypes).
If you have an overactive mind, kundalini kriyas can help you more easily slip into a relaxed meditative state. Kundalini is now my preferred meditation practice as I find the results more instantaneous due to the incorporation of the breath. When women come into my practice, I start them on two simple yogic breath techniques derived from kundalini yoga—O-mouth breath and breath of fire—depending on what I believe they need. I use O-mouth breath as part of a kundalini exercise called “Fists of Anger.” When I guided my client Simone through the three-minute Fists of Anger exercise, she was able to forgive the children who had traumatized her with racially motivated taunts as a child and even threatened to kill her because her skin was a different color. As tears rolled down her face she said, “They were just stupid kids. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t my fault.” Fists of Anger is incredibly healing and is included in both the Wonder Woman and the Nurturer’s kundalini series, though any archetype can use it. Guru Jagat, kundalini teacher and author of Invincible Living, and I have created a three-part kundalini series for each of the archetypes. You will find instructions on how to perform each kriya in Appendix B, as well as instructional videos at danajames.com.
Conscious breathing instantly moves the body away from the “fight-flight-freeze” response. Try it now. Inhale deeply through your nose for a count of five, hold the breath for a count of five, then breathe out through your nose for a count of five. I suspect you felt slightly calmer after just one conscious breath. Imagine what three minutes can do!
I apply these two release techniques differently. For releasing the core memories I use EFT, as it is so effective in creating a sense of safety around the stored memory. Conscious breath is excellent for releasing the smaller memories and helping to maintain the reduced emotional charge of the core memories. There are certainly other release techniques, but I know these two work quickly and are supported by the medical literature.
The practice of Recognizing, Reinterpreting, and Releasing your memories can be applied as often as you need. Once you resolve the core memories, you can use these tools to address any future stressors associated with those memories that arise.
CHAPTER 19
Rewire Your Brain
Now that you have tools to cope with the hidden drivers of your decision-making process, you are well on your way toward healing yourself of self-sabotaging behaviors. You can see into your blind spots as you become much more self-aware and conscious of your actions.
But habits—the conditioned responses that Pavlov discovered with his drooling dog—also influence your behaviors. Fortunately, habits are less imprinted than your core memories, and many of them are just a coping mechanism for dealing with those memories. For instance, if you use eating as an activity to escape disappointment, frustration, or uncertainty, you’ll find it easier to stop now that you’ve reinterpreted and released your core memories.
Because habit formation is a conscious process (i.e., you’re aware of what you are doing), breaking habits is much easier than reprogramming your subconscious. You don’t need to mine the mind for answers; you simply need to do something different from what you did yesterday. Once Pavlov stopped giving food to the dogs when he rang the bell, over time they stopped stop salivating at the sound. Their brains learned the bell was no longer associated with food and their conditioned response reversed. If a dog’s brain can be deprogrammed, so can yours. Rewiring your brain to form new habits is the fifth R.
WHAT IS A HABIT?
Habits are created when you associate two things—a stimulus and a response—with each other and then repeat that response whenever you’re presented with the stimulus. An example could be coming home from work (stimulus) and pouring yourself a glass of wine (response). Or walking past your coworker’s desk (stimulus) and grabbing a handful of M&M’s from her shared jar (response). The more you repeat the behavior, the more cemented the habit becomes because your brain remembers the association. Through repetition, you strengthen the synaptic connection, creating larger and stronger neural networks, just like muscles that are trained repeatedly at the gym.
The stronger the neural network, the more instinctual it is for you to do something. While this process is incredibly helpful for many day-to-day activities, like riding a bike, driving a car, remembering the route to work, and using your phone, it can also create less beneficial habits—like mindlessly eating M&M’s, drinking wine automatically at the end of every day, and even a binge-purge response.
When you want to break a habit, your brain needs to create new synaptic connections and a new neural pathway. The brain doesn’t want to have to create new brain cells if it doesn’t have to. It also doesn’t understand why you want to change your habitual patterns. If you’ve been eating cookies every night for the past two years, and one night you decide that you’ve had enough, your mind will try to outsmart you so you keep eating cookies. The brain doesn’t judge which habits are good for you and which aren’t; it simply follows the neural networks that have been created because that’s what it’s trained itself to do.
That means when you try to break a nonsupportive habit, you might hear voices that give you permission to stay stuck in it. CBT calls these voices “distorted thought patterns.” If you’re a nighttime eater looking to break that habit, the voices might sound like this:
It’s only a bite.
I can start my diet tomorrow.
I’m hungry.
I won’t be able to sleep unless I eat.
I’m not that fat so it’s okay for me to have a treat tonight.
It’s better than pizza.
I’m never going to lose the weight so I may as well feel good now.
It’s not fair. Why can’t I eat whatever I want?
Screw it!
I deserve it!
If you try to argue with or ignore these voices, they’ll get louder. Instead, acknowledge them for what they are—a way for your brain to avoid having to create new brain cells—and shut down the conversation. If these thoughts enter your head, tell yourself, “I hear you, but you’re not a commandment from God. You’re a voice that makes me lose my integrity to myself and that makes me feel guilty afterward for not sticking to my word.” With an adamant no, you end the conversation.
You may fear that unless you eat the food, the voice won’t
go away. I promise you it will. Only when you can’t make up your mind will the voice continue to torment you. A firm decision—yes or no—will stop the voice. “Yes” depletes your integrity. “No” reclaims it. Sit with the discomfort that emerges when you say no. It passes. Just like other habits you’ve broken, you can break that nighttime cookie habit, too.
A QUICK WAY TO BREAK A HABIT
For those times when your “No” isn’t as rock solid as it needs to be, I want you to have a quick and dirty trick to stop the habit in its tracks. It’s not the ultimate solution, but it’s effective. Try associating the habit with something grotesque. When you do so, your desire for it quickly diminishes and you will start rewiring your brain so you no longer crave it.
Choose a habit that you want to break—perhaps it’s mindlessly eating those M&M’s on your coworker’s desk—and imagine that all of the candy has been slobbered on by the sniffly guy in accounting who is always sick. Eeww! If you want to stop pillaging the bread basket at a restaurant, imagine weevils crawling out of the bread and into your mouth. (It’s like a horror film!) That nightly glass of wine is a lot less appealing when you imagine someone with athlete’s foot stomping on the grapes! Yes, it’s disgusting, but that’s the point. And it doesn’t need to be true; it just needs to stop you. The imagination is a powerful thing; use it to your advantage.
WHY ARE HABITS SO HARD TO BREAK?
When you feel like you can’t break a habit, it’s because you’re getting a payoff from that habit. For Emily the payoff from her Friday-night pizza fest was connection. Emily feared that if she didn’t eat the pizza, she’d lose her friends. Emily was able to break this habit when she realized she didn’t need to eat pizza to achieve this connection and that the payoff of declining the pizza—sticking to her diet, keeping the weight off, and feeling more confident of her willpower—was bigger than the one she got from succumbing to temptation. Only when the benefit of stopping the habit exceeds the payoff does the habit lose its compulsion.
The payoff of your habits is not always obvious. Let’s look at the Nurturer. She desperately wants to lose weight. Her wardrobe runs the gamut from size 2 to size 10, and the thought of going up another size is humiliating. Her doctor has warned her that she’s prediabetic and she needs to vigilantly watch her sugar intake. There’s a tremendous upside to skipping that morning muffin with her coffee, but she’s also getting a payoff. She’s got way too much to think about in the morning—kids to organize, dog to feed, clothes that don’t fit, the commute—it’s chaos. She can’t possibly fit in another thing, like making a smoothie for herself for breakfast. Picking up a muffin is easy. Besides, her four-year-old hates the noise of the blender. The muffin is something she looks forward to, and the thought of skipping it feels like deprivation. She hates feeling deprived. She hates dieting, too. Scarfing down that muffin feels like a kind of rebellion. Given all of the odds stacked against it, is the smoothie going to win out? My bet is on the muffin.
Or what about Wonder Woman? She’d like to give up her nightly glass of red wine because it’s interfering with her sleep, making her less focused, and she’s put on ten pounds in the past year. To the outside observer, those facts should be enough motivation to cut back on the wine. But what if she’s using the wine to wind down from the day and without it she’s worried she’ll snap at her two-year-old or not be able to relax because otherwise she can’t stop thinking about the mountain of work waiting for her at the office the next day? Wonder Woman is getting a lot of hidden benefits from her habit besides a fruity bouquet.
But the wine and the muffin aren’t actually the issue. They’re decoys that distract from the real issues these women are facing. If they want to break these habits, they need to look at the reasons they formed in the first place and figure out a new habit that provides the same payoff without all the guilt and shame. For the Nurturer, this may mean giving herself some “me” time before she opens the door to the morning chaos. For Wonder Woman, this may mean leaving the office earlier and not responding to emails after seven p.m. These aren’t easy tasks when these women value themselves on being there for others or making sure that no work falls through the cracks. But once the memories that forged your archetype’s dominance have been reinterpreted and released, you’ll find it much easier to break these habits because the precarious foundation upon which your archetype derives her self-worth has been dismantled. Remember, it’s not knowledge that breaks a pattern; it’s the experience of actually changing the habit that does.
FIND A REPLACEMENT HABIT
Doing nothing at the time you normally engage in your habit can feel like purgatory. You’ll have all this free time to think about your habit, whether it’s eating cookies or stalking an ex on social media, and you’ll often crack because the space is so unfamiliar and uncomfortable to you. Instead, find something that brings you pleasure. Far too many women live a life devoid of pleasure, often because it’s perceived as a luxury. It’s not. It’s a core component of being human and feeling alive. When you create a habit that is truly pleasurable, the new payoff is a life full of richness and joy.
In the next chapter, we’ll explore this more, but for now, think about the payoff you are getting from your habit and what alternative behavior might result in the same benefit. For instance, the Wonder Woman is clutching her nightly glass of wine because it gives her permission to switch off. Once she’s had half a glass of wine, she can’t go back to her emails under the haze of alcohol. What could she do instead? First, she can remind herself that she has permission to relax because she needs to recharge. She doesn’t need a glass of wine to give her an excuse. She can then make herself a cup of Wonder Woman tea and curl up next to her husband on the sofa while they talk and connect. If she’s single, she can slip into a silk robe, sip her tea, and read an engrossing book for an hour instead.
EXERCISE
When you identify a habit that you’d like to break, ask yourself these questions:
What’s the hidden payoff you are currently getting from this habit?
What’s the benefit of not engaging in the habit? Use emotions to describe this since emotions drive our behavior (e.g., to feel alive, more confident, proud).
What’s a new pleasurable habit that you could cultivate instead?
When will you replace the old habit with the new habit?
What will thwart this effort, and why? How can you change this?
The more consciously you consider the habits you want to break, the more consistently you’ll be able to Rewire your brain to form new habits. The result is not just an end to unproductive behaviors but the beginning of becoming a more empowered woman who has integrity to herself.
Visit http://bit.ly/2KOhWKq for a printable version of this worksheet.
CHAPTER 20
Revive Your Sense of Self
The first five Rs helped you shed the out-of-balance behaviors of your archetype, but in order to reach your crown, you need to incorporate the best qualities of all the other archetypes into your life. Tapping into your inner Nurturer, Wonder Woman, Femme Fatale, and Ethereal will help you reconnect with your true feminine self. If you’re a Nurturer who has always envied the Ethereal’s free spiritedness, or if you’re a Wonder Woman who wants to connect with her sensual Femme Fatale, or if you simply want to expand your life to become more enriching and fulfilling, the sixth R—Revive—will help you do all of this and more.
I call this step Revive because you already have the qualities of each archetype within you but because of your childhood imprints, cultural beliefs, and protective behaviors, you haven’t always cultivated these positive attributes. Now it’s time to Revive them.
YOUR FULFILLMENT LIST
The first step toward reviving yourself and reconnecting with the other archetypes is to create opportunities for pleasure in your life. By engaging in activities that feel enjoyable, you autom
atically bring out your feminine energies to reconnect with your hidden archetypes. Pleasure isn’t something you need to earn; rather, it’s critical to keeping you vitalized and engaged in life. Without it, you’ll dry up and become brittle and resentful.
Engaging in activities that feel pleasurable enables you to live a more fulfilling life. Fulfillment stems from connection—with others, yourself, the earth, and to a purpose beyond yourself. When you are truly fulfilled, you are not worried about the expectations of the outside world. You are free to enjoy life.
Start thinking about the activities that you enjoy. This may be something as simple as sipping a cup of organic coffee first thing in the morning, or taking a walk in the park on a sunny spring afternoon. Or it can be something more extravagant like a two-week trip to Bali to commune with nature and your spiritual self. Assume money isn’t a constraint. You’ll find that many of life’s most fulfilling things don’t cost much money.