Back to Andy Galpin

5 Tools for Reducing Chronic Stress in Your Body | Dr. Andy Galpin & Jill Miller

Andy GalpinJuly 24, 20268m

Topics3

Chronic Stress and Connective Tissue Changes0:00 The Five Ps Framework1:00 Five-Minute Implementation7:32

In a Nutshell

Chronic stress thickens connective tissue, leading to pain; the five Ps—Perspective, Place, Position, Pace of Breath, Palpation—provide a reliable 5-minute recipe to activate the parasympathetic system and counteract this. Reclining on the ground with pelvis elevated (Position) plus slow breathing and self-massage (Palpation) in a quiet, safe spot (Place) while holding an open mindset (Perspective) reliably shifts physiology. Five minutes of daily slow, deep breathing is the evidence-backed minimum to reduce anxiety and restore vagal tone.

AI-Generated Notes

These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.

Exposing yourself to stresses is very important for adaptation and for health. But the chronic soaking in a stress response will change the nature of your connective tissue and you will have tissue thickening and this can lead to pain problems. Exposing oneself to parasympathetic practices as a way to offset and refill your cup is a really great way to consciously balance our life because there is never not going to be enormous amounts of stress showing up in our life.

Having this as a respite that's within you like this is your own internal medicine chest. In Body by Breath, the five Ps of the parasympathetic nervous system are presented as a self-produced recipe that will change state guaranteed every time.

Perspective

The first P is perspective. This is the mindset piece. There is a top-down appreciation that you are willing to create conscious change or conscious awareness. The top-down is a host for the experience. If you just go into rolling willy-nilly, it will do something. But if you're really trying to improve your parasympathetic tolerance, you want to be there to receive the information that your body is going to start to share with you.

One of the things that happens when you turn on your off switch is quite frequently in the off switch, your emotions arise. And those emotions can be pretty unpleasant and intolerable. But it's very important because that's what's in the way of for many of us of communication of growth of relational safety all those things.

An example of perspective used when releasing the book was "all of me is welcome here." Releasing a book means the entire brain, everything felt, thought, and perceived is in that book and it's really scary to consider what if this word is wrong, what if the theory is incorrect, what if something is misappropriated. Something more simple that anybody can do is "I embody my body." That allows you to be a student of this internal process. Parasympathetic dominant state is not a loud state. It's very quiet. So you really have to put yourself into a state of deep listening and sensing in order to have it manifest.

Place

The second P is place. Ideally, for true quietude, for true parasympathetic arousal, you need to have a place where you feel safe and that could be indoors or outdoors, but it should be relatively quiet. Ideally, for the relaxation response to occur, it should be on the darker side. Not in the presence of bright lights, not in the presence of a lot of noise like clanging, kettle bells, and things being slammed here and there.

When working with teachers, parameters are set up where students are able to establish place so that students feel like they can let their guard down. You can do this stuff in a gym. You can also do it in a war zone. People work in refugee camps doing this type of work. It's just about setting up parameters of like here's our space to let go to be able to be vulnerable.

Position

Sign in to read the full notes

Get access to AI-generated notes, topic timestamps, and more.