Bridging Physiology & Psychology: A Theory of Joy
Our first thought about exercise usually has to do with the physical body such as losing weight or gaining muscle or being a better athlete. If you regularly work out, you might have noticed that it seems to be beneficial to your mental health. But we don’t commonly think of exercise in terms of the conditions of our emotional health. This “theory of joy” is about bridging the gap between physiology and psychology so that you can experience the most joy, health and strength in life and it has a lot to do with something as simple as your breath.
The fact is, a body that is tense with anxiety or oppressed by depression is not in a state that is able to achieve the physical outcomes we usually want from exercise. It is much harder to lose weight and to gain muscle when we are in a constant state of survival. You may have experienced this as stubborn body fat or training plateaus and found yourself constantly seeking out a new program, new exercise or new coach.
The problem, in fact, might have nothing to do with what you are doing but how you are doing it. It might sound like a naïve, simple thing to say, but your experience of joy and hope in life truly matters to your health and there’s a lot of science to back that up.
Your vagus nerve is a system of nerve pathways that go from your brainstem down through your spinal column and out into your various organs. In part, it is responsible for the conscious information that you use your head to tell your body, such as that you want to take a step forward or use your hands to pick something up in front of you. But this pathway also works in the opposite direction. In fact, most of the information that flows along this highway of nerves is subconscious information from your body back to your brain. On one hand, that can mean that a subtle dysfunction of your liver or inflammation of your intestines may impact the way that you process the decisions you make about your relationships, such as who you will spend time with today or what you’ll have a conversation about. You might think that you were in total control of every decision that you make, but both our psychology and our biology say differently… that it is actually our subconscious, the things that we don’t even realize that we know, that steer our daily decisions.
So then the question is, what else is our body telling our brain and how can we start to better understand the things that we don’t know about the way we make decisions?
Your fascia is the innervated connective tissue between all of your muscles, organs, tissues, ligaments and body parts. We can break down your body into a concept of biceps versus triceps, quadriceps versus hamstrings, ab muscles versus back muscles, etc., however, the reality is that it is all one thing. The facia is that one thing that connects it all together.
Research has shown that the fascia acts as a second brain, in some ways, to those memories that we don’t consciously store. That means that everything that your body has experienced from childbirth, to stubbing your toe at five years old, to breaking your arm in middle school, to the dead arm you get from hitting your funny bone last week… Your body has kept the score. Sometimes that’s as obvious as scar tissue buildup, such that would be evident after a surgery, and sometimes it feels like a tight muscle, chronic pain or a change of posture.
The thing is, the fascia is impacted by more than just physical experiences. Think about what you feel when you have experienced heartbreak from receiving bad news. Think about what you feel when you’ve been lied to or think about the sensation when you feel angry versus sad. Some of you have had really difficult or traumatic experiences either from your childhood or even recently and if you would dare to put yourself back in those shoes, you probably remember a particular feeling. Maybe it makes you feel sick to your stomach, even, or you feel a lump in your throat. These aren’t just tricks of the imagination, it is a fascial responding to an emotional experience. Fear, anger, grief, shame, even pride… these all shape our bodies.
So back the vagus nerve…
This is a sort of information that lies dormant in our subconscious even when we’re not consciously thinking about it and it does end up impacting the thousands of small decisions that we make per day. So when you start to notice patterns in your life, such as the same type of people keep showing up with the same types of problems, you keep getting stuck in the same bad habits, you keep struggling with your weight or you never seem to get any stronger or faster… It might be evidence that there is a subconscious pattern of thought that keeps putting you back in the same position and you don’t even realize it.
These things might be causing you anxiety, depression or frustration, you might be feeling stuck in life or like you’re the victim of something, or you might be blaming your coach, and it could actually be something within your power to reframe your experience of joy. That’s when things start to change. Life, fitness, learning.… All of it is made better by a shift in perspective.
But how can we possibly begin to understand what we don’t know? I can feel like an invisible monster hiding in the closet that we have no idea how to fight. But the issue isn’t that we need to fight the monster, the issue is just that we need to turn the light on, and that’s what this “theory” is about - how to illuminate the unknown aspects of your heart, mind, and body so that you can live a healthier and more joyful life.
The vagus nerve is part of a system called your autonomic nervous system. In brief, the autonomic nervous system is the system of automatic processes in our body such as breathing rate, heart rate, body temperature, blood pressure, digestion, etc. It’s the things about our body that work whether we think about it or not. In fact we tend to only think about these things once something about it is broken or feels off.
The vagus nerve is responsible for what is called the parasympathetic part of this system - this is a state of feeling at rest. It’s typically the state of your nervous system when you sing, make art, read, pray or socialize with good friends. On the other hand, the other component of your nervous system is the sympathetic state - this is a state of action or panic, of aggression, boldness, or fear. This is the components of the nervous system that are heightened when you’re in a car accident, feel your safety threatened, or get a bad grade on your test. It’s also the part of your nervous system that is active to apply for a new job, start a business, or prep yourself for a tough work out.
Activation of the parasympathetic nervous system is associated with releases of dopamine, serotonin, and GABA - these are the hormones that are associated with a sensation of pleasure or happiness. These are some of the hormones that are responsible for addiction to sugar and drugs and it’s also, chemically speaking, why we feel bonded to the people that we love. On the other hand, activation of the sympathetic nervous system is associated with higher levels of cortisol, adrenaline and neuro-epinephrine. This is when you’ll notice your senses on high alert, your body temperature elevated, your eyes constricted and a sense of growth or excitement. An overdose in these hormones can also be responsible for chronic anxiety, mania and reactive or impulsive behaviors.
Neither states of your nervous system are good or bad, it’s just a matter of learning how to manage the balance between these two states and recognize when we get stuck in cycles. We need both aspects to grow both inside and outside of the gym. This “theory of joy” is about learning how to evaluate yourself based on the reactions you observe that you make about life circumstances as well as points of observation that you can make when you work out. The reality is that the way that we do one thing is, most of the time, how we do everything. It can be very easy to hide our thoughts and feelings about a thing in most areas of our life, but doing really hard things such as physical exercise can be a very revealing and vulnerable way to understand your true underlying motivations and beliefs about yourself and others.
For many of you, both life and exercise feel like a constant battle between aggression and survival. Sometimes you feel on top of the world and like you could accomplish anything and so you very confidently tackle the challenges in front of you and take on a lot of responsibilities at once. Then usually this is followed by a pitfall of panic or anxiety and for a while you might even spiral into a depression, or at least just a slump of your mood. In the gym, you wrestle back-and-forth between the same patterns. Or maybe for others of you you never feel any of this and you do generally feel pretty calm and secure, but maybe you’ve noticed that nothing really gets done.
Whichever of those categories are perspectives seem to mirror your perspective on life and in fitness, if it feels like you’ve been doing that same pattern for a long time, I’m going to guess you’re probably pretty tired of it. You’re probably either totally exhausted or totally bored. And neither of those are joyful ways of living, and neither of those allow us to grow or learn either.
Your favorite teachers, coaches, mentors and even friends are probably those that balance the right amount of challenge to you that doesn’t totally drain you, but doesn’t make you fall asleep, either. In the same way, exercise needs to be the right amount of intensity and volume so that your body is adequately challenged without getting beat down or unable to recover.
One of the most evident ways to be able to recognize the state of our nervous system is in the way that we breathe. Our breath is impacted by literally everything that we do and experience.
Although it is not always a black and white distinction, slow, nasal, belly breathing is associated with a parasympathetic state and fast, mouth, chest and shoulder breathing is associated with a sympathetic state. If you notice that you tend to breathe in and out of your mouth regularly throughout the day or if most of your workout is spent breathing this way as well, it can be indicative of high levels of physiological stress present in the body, usually marked by inflammation. This means that your blood pH level is more acidic, and this can lead to all sorts of long-term health problems if you are chronically in that state.
To help improve your sleep, decrease joint pain, reduce your experience of anxiety, even improve the health of your teeth, it can be truly as simple as paying attention to slowing down your breathing and breathing in and out for your nose. Breathing in such a way to activate your diaphragm, the primary muscle for breathing, positively influences the anti-stress components of the vagus nerve by stimulating nerve endings in the bottom portion of the lungs. On the other hand, regularly breathing into your upper chest and through your mouth activates receptors in the top portion of your lungs to trigger the sympathetic nervous system. In certain circumstances and for short, intense efforts, this can be a really useful tool, such as if you were about to squats a new personal record or need to quickly wake yourself up in the morning as you are headed late to class. But the problem ends up being, especially in a more modern culture of today, that most people are perpetually in a chronic state of physiological and or psychological stress and their bodies, health and energy show for it.
If you’ve had any realization so far, I hope that it’s that there is no strict sense of rules for how to approach exercise and the same thing about life. There isn’t a set program that is going to apply to every single person. In fact for every unique person, the best way to have a joyful, hopeful and fulfilling life, is going to be different than the next. The common factor of it all is being able to recognize the state of your condition right now as you are and the relationships that are going to help you get to a better place. That includes relationships with your friends, family and God, your relationship with exercise and food, as well as your relationship with yourself, your core beliefs and the world around you as you relate to it. Growth of the mind and growth of the body simply can’t take place in a state of fear, but they flourish in an environment of joy.
I think very often that people associate joy with the idea of happiness. How I mean to describe “joy” isn’t just doing the things that make you comfortable and happy. In fact I encourage you to do very hard things and things that make you, in fact, very uncomfortable. What I’m challenging you to do is to be able to pursue those things without them overtaking you with anxiety or dumping you into a pit of depression or even getting stuck in a state of always feeling like you have to do something or you were obligated to do it, but that in every circumstance you can find joy, that you can find a reason to celebrate and that you can find a glimmer of hope.
Working out isn’t easy, school is easy, work isn’t easy and life is not easy, either. Even, sometimes, loving the people we care most about isn’t easy either. Despite that, what you can do is prepare yourself to be strong enough to endure those things. The very thing that gave you life and the very thing that defines you as a living being today is your breath. Sometimes all it takes is a reminder and conscious thought to remember that to be able to shift your life in a new direction.
