Protocol vs. Practice | Brian MacKenzie

Issue #2

If you read my last post, I went through the stress response and how I am no stranger to it. I also suggested a few tools I use during more “busy” times when I may feel a little more on edge; I’m sure you know what that feels like when our life-management resources get tapped out.

Today I want to focus on the response part of the stress response, and for a particular reason.

Day to day, I work with people, professional athletes, CEOs, and high-profile individuals to keep their cool and not flip their lids during times of very high stress. Of course, this is much easier said than done, as trying to change high-stress responses is an art requiring an entry point of less significant stressors. For example, I’ve watched folks at the top of the food chain yell profanities into the phone when a deal doesn’t go their way, and believe this is just how they respond to things like this. Imagine how this follows them into their everyday life, and it does.

I teach clients how to recognize this heightened response, then, through practice, we begin to change the answer; sometimes, by using the very same techniques I use myself, the most tangible of these is breath control.

A Protocol versus A Practice:

A breath protocol, as simple as breathing seems, impacts our entire being far more profound than you can imagine, only when adopted as a regular practice. Let me explain why this is so important:

Following a breathing protocol once or twice weekly will remind you to take a breath every so often. This is a great tool when faced with a challenging situation; when you feel the fire inside rising (aka about to flip your lid, or maybe you have already flipped your lid).

A practice, however, is specifically carved out time in your day when you get to be fully present… when we get to pay attention to the things that are so easily ignored; like how that person made us feel yesterday or why we reacted to our kid the way we did.

Our brains only learn through repetition. And if we mention neuroplasticity in any of this, it has to do with repeating an action to understand it truly. Practice brings a greater possibility of awareness, which is limitless. And as my friend Mickey Schuch, always says, “Awareness is the currency with which you buy time.”

Having a practice made me laugh this past week when I arrived an hour before my flight to the wrong airport.

It wasn’t until I got to security and scanned my boarding pass did the TSA help me realize I should have been over an hour south at another airport.

PAUSE… Now, if I were me from 5 years ago, I would have flipped the f*k out. You could bet I would have sworn a lot and thrown an adult tantrum (drama). Instead… I laughed. I even surprised myself.

The problem is in the eye of the perceiver.

This is the importance of having a practice. I wasn’t even bothered by this situation for the rest of the day due to the practices I have put into my life. I rescheduled my flight without skipping a beat and drove to the correct airport. This impacted my day further as well, as I now had to figure out dinner in a location that didn’t have many options, and my bedtime would be pushed back too. Anyone who knows me knows sleep is boundary number 1.

Flipping out has a host of other physiological consequences on the body. For example, it’s one of the reasons why stressed-out business folks can get diagnosed with autoimmune diseases like type 2 diabetes. Unfortunately, poor patterns of behavior transcend dis-ease in many of our cases.

Will there be a point in your day that you can laugh instead of losing your shit?

If you need the reminder or the push to start your practice:

Go HERE and use the Breath calculator on the SHI//FT website.
Follow the chart to Cadence or Apnea breathing, plug in the number, and come up with your own breathing protocol that you can start today.
Find a time in your day that is uninterrupted and spend 10 minutes simply following the pattern as see where this goes after a few weeks.

Only those ready to up-level will make the time for practice. And, I believe anyone is capable of this. I did. If you think you need it, you can schedule a one-on-one consult with me here, and I will help you figure this out.

Yours Truly,

– Brian

Travel Stress, Screens, and Balance | Brian MacKenzie

ISSUE #1

Being on the road teaching for the last few weeks has been a refreshing experience and a sobering reminder of what allostatic load means.

I’ve traveled for work for more than 15 years, and still, when I return home, I too often jump back into my routine far too quickly. As a result, it’s easy for me to forget the impacts travel and working abroad have on me.

And yet these actions of “getting back to it” are all part of a stress response – a presentation I’ve done probably a dozen times in the last few months.

The stress response (as Gabor Mate outlines in “When the Body says No”) is a 3 part process: it starts with the stimulus, then moves to the nervous system’s action, followed by a physiological response and resulting behavior(s). In its simplest form, a stress response is perceived as a threat or desire for safety.

However, in the complex process of being human or human being, the stress response in the case of my travel can be seen in how much time I spend in front of a screen when seated in a chair traveling across the country at 30,000ft, for 4 hours. Or the toughest one, getting to a vacation spot and not being able to relax. I’ve experienced both.

To be human is to accept the machinery that we are. The ‘being’ part is tricky because we are often caught up in pursuing things as ways to fit in or fit back into…, and the notion of getting back to my routine ASAP fits perfectly into this paradigm.

Stress has an interesting way of creeping into my process. Most of the time, I am acutely aware of the load I take on because it is a routine; it’s habitual. Add to it maneuvering an airport, sitting longer than regular periods on planes where it is tough to stay hydrated and remain nutritionally adequate. So I now have to be extra vigilant.

I bet you all know what I’m talking about when we bring up screen time, causing a stress response. Take Instagram, for example. When we see something we don’t like (stress), there is an emotion and hormone (reaction), and this is sometimes repeated 5, 10, 20, or 100 times a day. I know I’ve caught myself more times than I’d care to admit scrolling the infinite loop of social media… and becoming reactive to it!

I still fall off the ‘being’ part pretty hard.

Does it pay off when I am dialed in and acutely aware of these stressors? – YES, giving me a straightforward approach back to my daily routine.

Fortunately, I’ve got a few tools to help:
– I’ll take a short walk
– do a little yoga
– or simply backing down during training to a Gear 1, or easier Gear 2 (Breathing Gears)

If you can relate to this, I hope these tools can help show you the road to more awareness, just as they have helped me. I am not getting younger, so it seems to be required more often than a few years ago… And I love every part of the process.

Stay aware,

Brian

PS. If you have signed up for our Mentorship, we cover this in the group calls. If you haven’t and are interested in the next sign up date, you can click here to learn more and sign up to be the first to know.

 

Understanding the Past Pt. 2 | Brian Mackenzie

We have become hopelessly dependent on a system that removes us from true autonomy and education. This is not to suggest that advances in medicine and technology do not have their place, they do! Or that an education is not important. It is! There is plenty that our current systems have helped advance and cure that we should be grateful for and push for more advancement on. The problem couples when we can’t biologically meet the demand of the stimulus, work, or lifestyle for these “advancements” and we become dependent on them for the basic functions in life. Feet that don’t work like feet, teeth that need to be straightened in jaws that used to fit said teeth, immune systems that responded and didn’t overreact everytime a different piece of food or thing we came in contact with, sleep patterns that resembled sleep, metabolic function that worked like every other animals. 

Consider that education in the United States has increased tuition anywhere from 280-1000% in the last 100 years with zero guarantee to a job. We’ve convinced the lower class that in order to survive and thrive they need to somehow get to a college that they cant afford and leaves them further in debt than most will ever be in their lives. The irony being no class, no course, no education in any college can not be found on the internet for virtually zero cost. Meaning, if you really want to learn, you can start chipping away at any moment. But if we dont jump into the system, a system the intellectual deems as the only equalizer then we can’t play the game. Seth Godin did a TedX talk on “Stop Stealing Dreams” and asks the question, “What is education for?” Well worth the watch. Why do we have so many convinced they need to attend something that guarantees everything, but really nothing?

Our guarantees and promises are not new things, in reading of the American Frontier and Native American culture, the United States and its guarantees on convincing a culture of people to follow it’s ideas failed on just about every single delivery of those treaties, and agreements it made to these people. On almost every recorded marker not a single agreement that was signed was followed through on. It is not that we have never been well intended, we have. We just do not take responsibility for our sometimes implied, and oftentimes “promised land”. Our businesses are bailed out, our agricultural system is subsidized, and we promise those who strive for this American Dream that if they too get into the system, they too can have it all… A gun, with no ammo, and a checking account with more debt than cash. This simply implies we are highly opinionated, stick to those who support our current idea, and can not be criticized. This is an inability to critically think, and find our own creativity. That is how things evolve and become less fragile. 

When a natural disaster commences, not long after civil violence skyrockets. Never has an animal been so disconnected to itself when something it has no-control-over it gets angry at the system it bought into. The misdirection of understanding our own psychology is playing itself out in front of our very eyes, and we pretend as though we aren’t all “buying in”. So we blame the other political party, and those that don’t fit into our way of thinking. Instead of taking the time to listen and understand why someone would go in that direction, and what can we learn from that. Nothing more telling of this than the complete flip with the next candidate we elect. 

We’ve put major cities in floodplains and then acted like we had no idea a hurricane could make things difficult for cities like New Orleans, or Houston. And it’s perfectly fine if you disagree with me on looking back on Native American Culture, but look at this hard fact, no indigenous culture sets up permanently in floodplains. Nor did they or do they currently (those left in S. America) destroy the land they live on. They do what the specialized intellectual does not, they listen, they learned, they did not memorize. They listen not only to what the plants and animals are doing, but the land and weather, and most importantly they listen to their own biology. No advanced biology course needed. Can you imagine?!?!?! 

Sure many Native Cultures struggle with disease, and things western medicine can and does help with, but where did those diseases and viruses come from? They fought to an extreme death and delivered an even harsher death to those that tried to take their way of life from them. Until the eradication of the American Buffalo. We are an interesting lot that thinks in the short term, as today we begin to swing full circle with the damage we’ve inflicted on not only these cultures, animals, or this planet, but also to ourselves. 

No, we can’t just evacuate cities with millions of dependents in floodplains, but we sure can start to pay attention to what people before us were doing. We can also start to repair the damage of the past by helping bring back the rich history and knowledge these people had. Why they wanted to stay in the wild.  Why they spoke so little, but with intent. Why their teeth were straight, and clean. Why they hunted, slept, and mostly breathed through their noses. Why they remained in moccasins instead of boots. How did they know when storm’s were approaching, and why weren’t they afraid of being so exposed. How did they handle being exposed to the sun and not get skin cancer? These are statements that imply we look for others – mostly a medical system –  to provide relief because we lack the ability to understand a past in which people of that past tried to destroy because they did not want to understand those who were here before them. 

Every answer we need is in understanding. The problem is we simply seek relief and avoid the painful past. When we come to terms with the difficult nature of our past, we can then talk about it, and start to recognize those who came before us and what they learned. I am sure once that begins, that many will then want to understand why we hide this so well.