5: Quiet Your Body

[00:00] Stephanie: Season 3, episode 5. Today, we are continuing with our breakthrough engine one, Be Aware of Your Body. Hello, Father.

[00:09] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. I’m a little too aware of my body.

[00:12] Stephanie: I know. My poor father is sick, but you’re still with us. Thank you.

[00:18] Marcus: I’m still here. Thank you. Thank the Lord for medicine.

[00:21] Stephanie: Yes, I mean, that’s quite on topic. Well, hey, I’m glad you’re with us. Before we start into our topic, I have a slew of thank yous I want to give. The first being this episode comes out on Veterans Day in the United States, and we just want to say thank you to all of our veterans. We appreciate you.

[00:44] Marcus: Yes, absolutely. My Dad was a veteran, and he was in Patton’s army in World War II, which, you know, Battle of the Bulge and all that. So, we have appreciation for the sacrifices that are made.

[01:01] Stephanie: So thank you. And I also wanted to take a moment to thank all our Trailblazers. Trailblazers are the monthly supporters of Deeper Walk, and without you, we could not create free content like this. And so thank you for helping us as being able to give free content not only to America, but also to the whole world. Honestly, it’s really incredible.

And I also wanted to say thank you to people who review our podcast. Every now and then, I’ll be talking to somebody and introducing them to our podcast, and they will look it up and they’ll just be like, oh, my goodness, wow, this is actually really impressive. I wasn’t expecting to find, like, so many reviews on this, and they’re positive, and they’ll, like, read some to me. And I’m very encouraged when they do. I’m like, oh, people are saying that.

And so I just thought that I would take a moment to actually read one of the reviews. So here’s one example from a listener. This is from Carson, titled Great Spiritual Formation Resource: “What a lovely approach Marcus and Stephanie have to spiritual growth. I appreciate the blending of spiritual truth and brain science taught in bite-size, memorable episodes, very sticky concepts.”

And that was just like, short and sweet and very encouraging. And thank you, thank you for doing that. If you have not yet left a review on whatever platform you listen to, I would just encourage you, please, if you love this podcast, that would be a wonderful way to support it and encourage others to listen as well. So thank you.

[02:40] Marcus: Yeah, that was impressive.

[02:44] Stephanie: And now to the topic at hand. All right. Last episode, we talked about the reality of physical issues and how they can affect our bodies and our emotions, our quality of life. And in this episode, I’m hoping that we will get to your acrostic on best practices for quieting our body.

But before then, I wanted to just start with an anecdote of another way that we can see how much physical issues can drag us down or, when resolved, change your life.

[03:21] Marcus: Yeah. Well, so I know the story you’re talking about. So when I was in high school, I remember reading — we used to get Reader’s Digest — and I remember reading a particular article in there, and it was a story of a man who was just depressed.

He was kind of done with life, and honestly, he wanted to end his life, but he wanted to do it in a way that would make sure that his family got the insurance money when he died because he knew if you commit suicide, the insurance — they don’t pay out generally, at least they didn’t back then. And so he was thinking to himself, how can I pull this off, which is a pretty dark way to start the story.

He realized that he was just very obese, very overweight, and he thought, you know what, if I go run, I’ll probably have a heart attack and die, right? And then that’ll work. So he decided and sure enough, he got up and he went running, and he ran until he passed out and woke up later and realized that, you know, that didn’t work. He went home and tried again the next day and ran until he passed out and woke up. And he was like, man, I can’t even do this right.

He was discouraged. But then he did it again, and something happened a few days into this, and he began to realize that he was starting to look forward to the run, and he was looking forward to getting outside and the time that he was spending there. And his mindset began to shift. He eventually started dropping weight. He started getting in better shape.

And as he just felt better physically, his outlook on life started improving. And as his outlook on life started improving, his beliefs about life started changing. And then eventually running became kind of part of his identity, and he started making friends with other people who went running.

And before you know it, you know, his body was in better shape, his beliefs were in better shape. He had attachments, you know, joyful attachments around what he was doing, and his whole life turned around all because, you know, he actually did something about his body first. So I found this story kind of fascinating.

[05:47] Stephanie: Well, and it’s motivating in a way of like, okay, what can — his reasons for starting to run were not good — but there are things where it’s like, okay, what is one first step that I can take? And you never know where that one first step is going to open the door to.

[06:05] Marcus: Exactly. And sometimes, you know, that first step of just doing something to feel better physically really does make a big difference in our emotional state.

[06:13] Stephanie: I know I can feel overwhelmed sometimes with — I struggle a lot with tiredness, and I have a lot of different things that feed into that, and some of those things are in my control, and I need to be better at taking a step, at being like, okay, this thing I’m now going to focus on. But sometimes when I look at all of them, I think, oh, well, if I do something about this one thing, then, like, all these other things are still going to be there.

So, you know, what’s the point? And I think stories like that help me think, no, do the one thing and then do the next thing and then the next thing. And you just have to — I had a professor once say, “How do you eat a cow? One hamburger at a time.

[06:54] Marcus: Yeah, exactly.

[06:58] Stephanie: Anyway, so.

[07:01] Marcus: Yeah, we’ve all been there. And so it’s good. And what the story reminds us of is there are three engines that drive our emotions. It’s the body, it’s our beliefs, it’s our bonding. And just starting sometimes makes all the difference.

[07:16] Stephanie: Mm-hmm. So before we get into best practices for helping our bodies when they’re in stress, I wanted you to briefly note — we’re talking about quieting in this episode, like, how do you quiet your body? Now, there are also ways to quiet your mind. So could you differentiate quieting mind versus quieting body?

[07:33] Marcus: Yeah. So first of all, on quieting the body, let me just explain that every emotion that we have manifests physically. And so we see this even in the Bible where it talks about, you know, weak hands and limp arms and weak knees and that sort of thing.

There is a manifestation physically of every emotion that we feel. And so there are two emotions in particular that create high energy, and those are fear and anger. And so when we talk about quieting your body, we’re talking about the fact that when I feel fear and anger, I get adrenaline in my body. I get this rush, and it will literally get to the point where I can be shaking. There can be so much in my body, I’ve just got to quiet it.

And if I can’t quiet, you know, then what’s happened is the emotion has hijacked my body, and I want to take control of my body back from the emotions that hijacked it. So, when we’re talking about quieting our body, that’s what we mean.

Quieting our mind is about those racing thoughts or about — I can’t tell you how many times where I think to myself, I’m going to just close my eyes and practice some appreciation, and it takes me a full minute just to get through all the negative thoughts that pop up first. Because it’s like the harder I try to appreciate something, the more I think of all the things there are that are wrong sometimes. And there are times where you just get locked in and you can’t even think of positive things.

You’re just kind of locked in on all the negatives, and your mind goes from one problem to another or you start off trying to practice appreciation and again the problems hijack it. So mentally what happens is our negative emotions can hijack the positive that we’re actually trying to reinforce. In the same way that our bodies can get hijacked, our thinking can get hijacked. So, yeah, we need to plan for both.

[09:23] Stephanie: Mm-hmm. As you say, we’ll get into belief stuff in other episodes, but if you want to give people a little nugget here.

[09:31] Marcus: Let me give you three things you can do for when your brain is getting hijacked by the negative. One is distraction, and sometimes it’s helpful just to distract yourself from that train of thought. Because one of the things I learned is you can’t think your way out of a negative emotion.

Most of the time you just end up in this loop in your head, arguing and counterarguing and arguing and counterarguing. Sometimes you’ve just got to distract yourself out of it and do something to break that cycle and just go do something else or set your mind on something completely different.

The second thing that you can do is replace the thought. And that is literally like, okay, I’m not going to think about that anymore, I’m going to think about this other thing. Now what will happen is as you’re replacing the thought, sometimes you’re tempted to go back.

So you just keep kind of trying to replace that. If that doesn’t work, sometimes you may have a spiritual warfare issue too, where you’ve actually got to command anything that’s getting in the way to leave.

So there is distraction, there’s replacement, and then the third one would be meditation on truth and that is to have a list of things that you know are true that you go back to. Like last night, even as I was falling asleep, I was having trouble with this, and I just started quoting Bible passages that I had learned. I usually start with Psalm 23, and I’ll walk my way through that.

Then I’ll go to other passages, and so I’m distracting myself by thinking about something else. I’m replacing the thoughts, I’m meditating on something scriptural just to get my brain in a different place.

[11:01] Stephanie: Thank you. That’s good advice and hopeful. So sometimes our beliefs and what we’re thinking are affecting our emotions, and our emotions can affect our body. And sometimes it’s our body that is amplifying or causing  — like sometimes our body is causing the emotions because of what’s going on in it.

And sometimes our body is amplifying whatever it is. So now we want to unpack what you have called best practices for quieting our bodies. I think you debuted this acrostic in Building Bounce, in the book Building Bounce. But here we go. So B.E.S.T. is the acrostic B, E, S, T. And would you like to unpack it?

[11:42] Marcus: Yes, certainly. But before I do, let me just camp on something you said. And that is when it comes to the emotions of the body, it is a two-way street.

[11:49] Stephanie: Mm-hmm.

[11:49] Marcus: You said it. I just want to make sure that it didn’t slide by people. It’s like sometimes your body is causing the emotion, and sometimes your emotions are affecting your body. And so because of this, there are times when I need to do something about my body in order to quiet my emotions. And that’s why people do medication and things like that.

When we’re talking about best practices, we’re specifically looking at two emotions, and that’s fear and anger. And how do I quiet my body from when these emotions take over? And B.E.S.T. obviously is an acrostic. And this is, you know, On the Trail Podcast. So the B is for breathing, E is for exaggerating, S is for soothing, and T is for tense and release. So breathing, exaggerating, soothing, tense and release. So that’s the B.E.S.T. acrostic.

[12:38] Stephanie: It is the best acrostic.

[12:39] Marcus: It’s the best acrostic ever.

[12:41] Marcus: So where this comes from is the actual order in which you practice this to some extent is that breathing is the first and most primary thing that everybody teaches about quieting your body. And it’s because fear and anger both tend to make your breathing very rapid and shallow.

So being intentional about slowing down your breathing and breathing more deeply is a way, again, of taking control of your body back from the emotion that has hijacked it.

And so that’s what I kind of look at is, okay, my body has been hijacked by these emotions. I need to take control of my body back from these emotions. Deep breathing is the first and most commonly taught thing for people to do. So we specifically talk about this in terms of breathing in a box, or the way Stefanie Hinman teaches us for children. You want to take it from there?

[13:39] Stephanie: I love this one. So breathing.

[13:42] Marcus: I’ll get to breathing in a box in a minute. Why don’t you tell us Stephanie’s?

[13:43] Stephanie: And also, sometimes I’ve had people ask me before, “Are you the Stefanie of Building Bounce?” I am not. That is Stefanie Hinman, and I’m Stephanie Warner, and she spells her name with an “f”, and I spell my name with a “ph.” But I love Stephanie’s — she talks about smelling the soup, and so she will — oh, gosh, put me on the spot. No, no, no, I got it.

[14:11] Marcus: Got it.

[14:12] Stephanie: So, you know, imagine you have a bowl of soup, and just like for appreciation’s sake, it’s your favorite soup, and it’s really hot, and it smells good. And so you breathe in, you smell it, and you appreciate it. And now you’re gonna blow on it and cool it down, so you can have it. Now, you’re gonna take your spoon, and you’re gonna blow on it and smell it. And so you’re smelling the soup, and I like it because it’s soup, but also because it’s appreciation mixed with breathing. And so you’re, yeah.

[14:48] Marcus: So, it’s blow on the soup, right? And smell the soup. And the idea here is, again, what you’re doing is you’re filling your lungs, and then you are holding it, and then you are emptying your lungs by blowing out the air.

In the military, they call it breathing in a box. And so you inhale, fill your lungs, you hold it for at least a four count — sometimes it helps to actually exaggerate it. One more time. So I’ve inhaled, and  then I go (sound of breathing in) and then one more and then (sound of blowing out) blow it all out and empty your lungs. Wait for four count and do it again. So you’re breathing in a box by going around. And it’s the inhale, hold, exhale. And I found it interesting …

[15:33] Stephanie: So, you’re going around. Picture a square. So you’re inhaling — that’s one side of the square — you’re holding — that’s one side of the square — you’re exhaling — that’s one side of the square. And then you’re holding, and that’s a side of the square. And so that’s why it’s breathing in a box.

[15:45] Marcus:. Yeah and sometimes, just as you get to the top of that after you’ve inhaled, it helps to one last time go (breathe in) and then let it out. You actually exaggerate a little bit just before you do it, and that can help the intensity of that experience a little bit.

So there’s different things you can do, but the whole idea is fill those lungs, empty the lungs, take control of your breathing. That’s number one.

[16:08] Stephanie: And then breathing will remain important throughout. Now you get to exaggerate.

[16:14] Marcus: So the second tool, right, is the idea that if you tell somebody, just calm down. That doesn’t really work. So what I found is you’ve actually got to exaggerate the emotion slightly. What we mean by that is not like, hey, I’m already freaked out, why would I want to get more freaked out?

That’s not what we’re talking about. The point is that your body has physical reactions to these emotions. So what you want to do is intensify the experience your body is having by exaggerating it.

So, for example, anger. When we’re angry, one of the things that has always struck me as interesting is that the Hebrew word for anger is nose because when you get angry, your nostrils flare. So when we say exaggerate it, it’s just like flare your nostrils on purpose. Right? Or do a Hulk pose. Yeah, exactly. Do the Hulk pose.

[17:13] Stephanie: You had a friend, and he would go into the bathroom and grab a towel and just …

[17:17] Marcus: Yeah, right. So what you’re doing is you’re exaggerating it by exaggerating what your body does with that kind of emotion.

[17:26] Stephanie: Also, the caveat here is we recommend doing this in private, not like when you’re in the heat of a fight and now you gotta exaggerate your emotion. Like, this is helping yourself personally.

[17:35] Marcus: This is helping yourself personally, especially in quiet. So like the friend who did the towel twisting thing, he was in a bathroom before he was going to go into a meeting. And so by doing all that, what you’re doing is again, you’re taking control of your body by saying, I am going to be in control of this by exaggerating it.

And then once you exaggerate it, now you go to the next thing of soothing, and soothing has to do with I’m going to now rub the tension out of my body and I’m going to breathe. And so that combination of exaggerate and then soothe and breathing kind of is meant to take control of my body back.

[18:14] Stephanie: And soothing — like you’re talking about rubbing your arms. That’s your go-to for soothing.

[18:20] Marcus: My go-to for soothing is to start with your hands on top of your shoulders and just rubbing that tension right out. You can also work on your legs. You’re just rubbing the tension out, and the feeling is, okay, I am rubbing this emotion out of my body and the feeling of it out of my body. Now, there are other ways to soothe.

[18:37] Stephanie: I was gonna say. So soothing. The point of soothing is to change your body chemistry.

[18:41] Marcus: Yes. And so another way that you could do this, like people do it like splashing cold water on their face, you know, taking a cold shower. You can also do it in another way by sitting in front of a fire with a weighted blanket and having candles and, you know, creating an ambiance and an atmosphere that is soothing. There are things you can do that are just — taking a hot bath.

I mean, it can be a lot of different things. And sometimes splashing cold water on and then doing something. What you’re doing is you’re kind of shocking your body system and then calming it down and soothing it. So there’s an exaggerate, soothe element even to what we do with our body whether it’s splashing cold water on as the exaggerating or it’s …

[19:27] Stephanie: Just because there are separate letters in an acrostic doesn’t mean they don’t work together. We talked about anger, and do you want to address fear real quickly for exaggerating?

[19:38] Marcus: So fear in your body, if you think about it, it’s like my eyes get wide, I gasp, you know, and I tend to throw my hands up like, just like a baby. A baby involuntarily does this. It’s a startle reaction. And so doing that ourselves is a way of exaggerating the emotion. Make my eyes big, gasp, throw my hands up, you know, and then from there I want to soothe, rub the tension out of my arms, breathe, shake it out, right, to quote Taylor Swift.

[20:15] Stephanie: That’s shake it off.

[20:17] Marcus: Oh, is it? Okay. And then you have the — we’re trying again to just get control of my body back from these things. And you can repeat these processes as often as you need.

[20:29] Stephanie: All right, final one. We’re running short on time.

[20:31] Marcus: Yeah. Tense and release. Yeah. Tense and release is simply tensing up muscle groups. This is something you can do while you’re actually in a conversation. And you can do the breathing, and you don’t have to be in private for the breathing.

And you can tense like a fist and then shake out the tension and then make another fist and shake out the tension. Or you can tense one muscle group in a leg and then rub that out. But tensing muscle groups and releasing it. Again, the goal here is to take back control of your body.

[21:04] Stephanie: Very good. I will also just say the vast majority of our listeners are listeners on their audio podcasts. This one might be fun to come see our YouTube because you can watch Marcus Warner (sound of gasp). Also, Jim Wilder has a great YouTube for Shalom Your Body where he does it. Maybe I can link it in the description.

[21:27] Marcus: I think it’s just called Shalom Your Body.

[21:29] Stephanie: Yeah, just YouTube it — Shalom Your Body, Jim Wilder. All right, well, if you want to go deeper in this topic, chapter six in the book, Breakthrough, and then also throughout the book, Building Bounce would be where I would recommend from Deeper Walk resources that people can start.

Yeah, I think I’m going to just have us wrap up for today. Any final thoughts?

[21:56] Marcus: I’m just regretting that I quoted Taylor Swift. I think that  — I personally, honestly, I’ve done this so much. It’s like almost every day I do a little bit of this at some point during my day because life is full of emotions, and a deep breath, it can be as simple as a single deep breath. And it can be more intentional as you go.

And I found that this deals with symptoms. We may still have to deal with root issues for lasting relief. But it’s important to know what I can do to deal with the symptoms in the moment. That’s really what this is about.

[22:36] Stephanie: Yeah. Good word.

Thanks for joining us on the trail today. Did you like this episode? Would you like more people to see it? This is the part where I ask you to like, comment, subscribe, share with a friend.

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