The Importance of Stasis

Stasis: a period or state of inactivity or equilibrium

Today I’m going to share with you the importance of getting yourself back to stasis, a state of equilibrium, where you are neither escalated nor de-escalated. You are neither triggered or depressed. You are at peace. 

And I’m going to share with you some techniques that can assist you with getting back to stasis. 

Let’s start by imagining the last time you felt really angry, or disappointed, or sad, or filled with anxiety. 

Now, while remembering what that felt like, I want to remind you of what’s happening when you are feeling those intense feelings. 

When you feel these emotions, your amygdala brain is sending messages to your physical body that you are in danger. And with that we get a rush of chemicals throughout our body that communicate, “hold on, I’m in danger” and flight, fight, or freeze kicks in.

Now think about how often your amygdala brain is sending those danger messages to your physical body. If you are like me, you’ve felt these feelings lots and lots of times, and in truth, the number of times you were really in danger is probably only a handful. Kinda shocking to think about, isn't it? 

And the truth is that these messages of danger and the amount of stress they put on our bodies ages us and makes our bodywork unnecessarily harder. And we don't want to age faster?

So what if we had a way to intercept our danger messages from the amygdala brain and get ourselves back to stasis? 

The good news is, we do. And here’s why that’s important: when we are in stasis our cells can rejuvenate, we breathe in a way that fully oxygenates our brain and our body, we are fully able to make decisions that are more rational and valuable. 

Now here’s the really interesting piece - you may not remember what stasis truly feels like. You may not know what this feeling of peace is like. 

The same was true for me. I once had a teacher ask me after an exercise, “how do you feel?” and I said, “oh, I feel sleepy.” And she said, “honey, that’s not sleepy, that’s peaceful, you just don't know what peaceful feels like.” Mind blown...take a moment to really imagine that. 

The same is probably true for you too. If you’ve experienced trauma (which we all have) you are likely used to being in a  hyper-vigilant state looking for danger all the time. And just like me, you no longer know what stasis feels like. 

To help you understand what stasis feels like, I want you to imagine a child being rocked by someone who feels safe and comforting. Imagine the moment the child fully relaxes and surrenders and feels totally safe - that feeling is stasis. 

So the question is, how do you get you back there? 

There are several techniques I teach and use personally to get to stasis that you can use too.  

With each of these, you will need to play with what works and doesn't work for you. Here are some techniques to get you started: 

1. Start by knowing and recognizing what your body does when you are escalated, triggered, or filled with anxiety. Everyone has a different physical response or ‘tell’ that goes along with these danger messages, some people have chills, some people have a queasy stomach, some people get a headache. Every body does something after being flooded with that panic, what is yours? 

2. Now that you can recognize your ‘tell’, I want you to acknowledge it. When it happens, you can acknowledge it by thinking, “ok body, ok amygdala brain, I recognize this message to fight, take flight, or freeze, let me check it out.” This is you using your frontal cortex to intercept your amygdala brain that says you are in danger. You let the amygdala brain know that you’ll take it from here. 

3. Next look around where you are to see if you’re safe. 99.9% of the time the answer to this is going to be “yes.” Most of the time when we feel these feelings, we aren’t actually being chased by a bear or in actual danger, we are at home, or work or someplace familiar, and need to acknowledge that we are safe. 

4. So as soon as you recognize that you are safe, I want you to take a deep breath in through your nose for 6 seconds and a deep breath out through your mouth for 12 seconds. The key here is making sure the out-breath is longer than the in-breath. Doing this at least 3 times is going to do a few things for you: it’s going to massage the vagus nerve that runs through your entire body, which then sends a message to your body that you can relax, and oxygenates your brain and now…

5. You can make a decision from this calmer place. Or decide that you don’t need to make a decision. And use curiosity to explore what just happened. Ask yourself ‘why did my body escalate?’ 

The key of all this is bringing yourself back to calm, back to stasis, back to equilibrium. I want you to find that space where you feel completely calm, like a baby being rocked by someone super safe. 

Beyond this recognizing, acknowledging, and breathing technique, most anything sensory and pleasant will assist you. 

Maybe it’s an essential oil or some incense or a flavor of something or rocking in a chai, or swinging on a swing. Something sensory can help bring you back to the here and now in a Loving, calming, soothing way. 

And as you use something sensory to bring you back to the here and now on purpose, you will retrain your nervous system to recognize these techniques as queues to feel calm and relaxed. 

So I want you to know what are some of these things that you can do to soothe yourself on purpose, try out some ideas, note what works for you. 

Because it’s important that we Love ourselves enough to spend as much time in stasis as we can...on purpose. We’ll live happier and longer when we do that. 

And of course, if you feel that you’d benefit from more guidance and teaching around this topic and more practical tools for truly Loving yourself more, I invite you to join me in Self-Love Masterclass to participate in creating a life that is delightful for you.