[PaulHoule]

I didn't believe the stress numbers on my Garmin watch were very meaningful until I started taking Nebivolol (an atypical beta blocker) because there were so many gaps (even when I was sitting) that I didn't feel I could eyeball them or trust averages over time.

Taking that drug, however, it sees far fewer gaps and I show up in the blue "rest" zone most of the time.

I've been watching my heart rate a lot in the last month part because of health concerns and part because of a new stance I am practicing that has a physical component (e.g. adjusted gaits that are energy efficient) and a mental component, being an oceanic reservoir of calm with close mind-body-environment coupling 95% of the time but disconnecting that connection under peak stress -- like I am standing between two people who are screaming at each other and holding a barrier at my chest that I don't let my breathing cross and glance at my watch and my HR is 52 and it is not just the nebivolol talking because when I lose my shit it would be more like 70.

People taught me conventional Pranayama (diaphragmatic breathing) as a kid and it never helped me in "lose my shit" situations involving unstable environments and moral injury, with the intense practice I was doing recently it was clear to me that I was never going to do it better and I started researching emergency techniques for managing sympathetic overload and that one worked for me and now I feel like one of the people in [1] particularly when I show people my HRV web app [2] and demonstrate that I can turn my Mayer oscillation off

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanners_Live_in_Vain in the sense of ironclad autonomic control but with full sensory perception

[2] ... soon to be on Github

[benbarbersmith]

Which techniques did you try, and which worked for you?

[PaulHoule]

(1) Putting cold water on my wrists. Maybe it would have worked if I tried it longer, but it didn't.

(2) Walking forward as if pushing through something with a forward lean. I was in a small building and this was awkward and my body searched through the crouching and hip swinging gaits as I tried this, I thought it might have been better in a bigger space and might give it a try sometime.

(3) What did work was the 'chest barrier' which is holding the chest absolutely rigid and NOT paying attention to whatever my body is doing to breathe. Since I have been practicing diaphragmatic breathing heavily I find that my body does that automatically and it just doesn't expand through or past my chest.

This works amazingly well. When I tried it I got flash of a scene from Neon Genesis Evangelion where the robot is raging out of control and they pull the power cable on it and it tries smashing it's way into the control room while an observer stands his or her [1] ground at the window before the battery runs out.

I added a "pull the cable" visualization and definitely sense that brave observer appear in my head, although I also realized that in this mind-body interaction it is the mind that is to blame because it brought in some trouble that it thought about from elsewhere. Trying to control the body consciously is a disaster in this situation because disturbances from the mind are coupled efficiently into the body and disturbances from the body are coupled into the mind. So I focus on holding the chest and only on holding the chest.

[1] it happens twice