Taming the High-Alert Mind: How to Unleash Your Inner Zen

Ever feel like life is just an endless string of stress and chaos, turning your brain into a whirlwind of worry?

What if we told you that there's a way to turn down that inner noise, and replace it with a symphony of serenity instead? This is the magic that understanding your brain wave states and embracing the relief that yoga and meditation can provide for you.

Life's troubles can often push our brain into a constant 'high-alert' mode, making us feel like we're always under attack. This is like our brain getting trapped in an adrenaline-fueled action movie, but without the cool special effects. Not only does this drain our energy and happiness, but it also physically alters our brain over time.

Your Secret Weapon Against Stress.

This is where the beauty of yoga and meditation come in.

Think of yoga as your personal trainer and meditation as your therapist combined into one.

It doesn't just help you get fit; it's like a tune-up for your mind and emotions too. With regular yoga practice and intentional mediation, you're not just calming your mind, you're actually re-wiring your brain to handle stress better and switch to calm mode more easily.

Taming the High-Alert Mind

We all get pushed into some form or degree of mental illness throughout our lives. The sudden shock of traumatic events can powerfully shift our thinking and our emotions and literally rewire neural patterns and change our genetic expression - in ways that may take years to fully heal.

• High-beta brain wave states are observed during times of stress, also accompanied by the fight-or-flight reflex.

• Beta brain waves are observed during normal, calm wakeful state.

• Alpha brain wave state is more calm than beta, and is paired with learning and memory retention.

Within each of these three states - we can access distinctly different ranges of emotions. In High-Beta, we are preparing for a confrontation with a predator... in this brain-state, we only have a limited range of emotional responses to choose from. We simply do not have access to higher emotions when we think we are in danger.

Brain wave states are measures of state-of-consciousness.

Miss-managed states-of-consciousness are, to varying degrees, states of mental illness.

In times of stress, we revert to habit.

If our habit has been paying attention to the trauma in our lives, then we are naturally pushing our brain into high-beta - all of our thoughts are focused on a confrontation with a predator.

Our brains are releasing chemicals and hormones that match our thoughts - preparing our body to fight, or run.

The body responds to these chemicals with muscle tension and limited digestion, as we prepare to run or fight!

Repeated, continual high-beta 'fight or flight' state leads our bodies to become addicted to the chemicals of stress.

Perhaps this is best understood by specialists who deal with post traumatic stress disorder.

How to Unleash Inner Zen and Extinguish Stress

First, I can't do it on my own.

I need a guide to help me extinguish my stress. I needed a guided meditation to direct my thinking in such a way as to calm my mind from High-Beta and away from the fighting against/blaming/justifying loop of thoughts caused by the trauma.

And I need this guided meditation several times a day. First thing in the morning and last thing as I was going to sleep. Meditation tracking technology may also help serve as a guide to assist you in building awareness.

After hundreds of Yoga Classes, I began to notice a shift. I still needed the guide, but I was starting to direct my own thinking, to pace out my own breathing and started to become a co-pilot of sorts, shadow-speaking the cues and commands of the yoga instructor within myself - as though I was guiding my own yoga session.

Over two years of yoga, writing and blogging, the following meditation sequence came to be my personal practice. I’ll reveal the sequence over the next posts.

Master the Rollercoaster of Life.

If I do not leave the yoga class FEELING happy, grateful, appreciative - then I have not progressed in my practice... I may have become more fit, I may have achieved some temporary relief - but if I'm still fighting in my mind, trying to solve my problems and just returning to my mental loop after the class, then I really have not achieved any modification of my mental illness.

After hundreds more Yoga Classes - I began to realize that I am not going to Yoga to get fit. Not to 'calm my mind'.

But actually, my purpose of yoga is to:

1. detox our physical body from the chemicals of stress,

2. focus on the sensing mind to quiet the thinking mind, and

3. while in this Alpha-Brainwave state, to retrain the emotional plexus of the body to a habitual frequency of gratitude, literally through 'practicing' happiness.

I realize that anger is just a way of holding onto the past in an attempt to keep some part of it.

Instead, it is time to entertain other healthier, happier 'truths' of the world.

In the end, yoga isn't just about twisting your body into pretzel shapes.

It's about detoxing your body from stress chemicals, soothing your busy mind, and training yourself to find happiness and gratitude amidst life's challenges.

It's about moving away from constantly being on guard, and towards truly enjoying the rollercoaster ride of life.

Next from my Yoga Book: Healing Toxic Emotions From Stress and Trauma