Hey guys. Welcome to Not Another Anxiety Show. I'm your host, Kelly Walker, and today

it will be just little old me here.

If you tuned into last episode, you'll remember that we talked about the fight or flight response.

So I thought it would be pretty fitting to share a quick and easy way to stimulate the opposing response,

the one we all want to feel more of, the relaxation response.

I call this technique I'm about to share the jaw drop. Pretty self-explanatory,

but we'll go through it briefly anyway. So take a moment to get comfy. Once you're comfy,

relax your jaw as much as you can. Imagine it dropping to the floor the way it would if someone said something really offensive

or shared some pretty exciting or surprising news with you.

Once your jaw is relaxed, take as deep a breath as you can in through your nose and pause for three counts.

Then exhale twice as long through your nose.

Feel free to repeat this technique, this trick, a few times.

So the point of this exercise is that it stimulates the vagus nerve, which carries information from the nervous system that extends all the way to our fingertips and toes, back to our brain.

Basically, the vagus nerve keeps the brain informed about what's going on in the body.

And dropping your jaw sends a signal via this vagus nerve to your brain to stimulate the

parasympathetic nervous system, aka this wonderful relaxation response.

Now, if you find that dropping your jaw mid-panic attack isn't particularly

helpful, don't be surprised. This technique is not aimed at stopping a strong response like panic,

but it does interrupt the chronic hormonal feedback loop that keeps us revved up on edge.

So the effects of a technique or trick like this are cumulative,

each time we are able to interrupt and counteract the stress response.

So that's our episode. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you're enjoying the show,

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