Dr. Tiffany Wall | September 2025
4 way to short circuit your stress response
Everyone will experience stress, in some form or another, in their lives at differing levels. Whether it is a physical stress (ie. posture or repetitive motion), chemical stress (ie.inflammation), or emotional stress, it can cause your brain to go into sympathetic dominance. You’re always fluxing between sympathetic (fight or flight) and parasympathetic (rest and digest). Both avenues of your nervous system are important and good for you, however, long term sympathetic dominance (fight or flight) creates problems! You can be physiologically stuck there due to a stress of some kind or you can be trained into it. Our society GLORIFIES busy and striving for the next thing. Most of us have a hard time coming out of sympathetic dominance. I have listed 4 quick, easy, FREE ways to help break that cycle. Simple though they are, they are massively effective!
- Belly Breathing
Your stress response will cause you to use your shoulders/chest to breathe because you can take quicker breaths. This is effective when you need to get fast oxygen to your muscles to run or fight off an attacker. But if you’re not in need of those responses, utilize the type of breathing that fills your lungs entirely and allows your primary breathing muscle to do its job. The diaphragm muscle is a dome shaped muscle below your lungs. When you use it your abdomen will shift in response to the pressure change. Your belly does not actually fill with air, but if you picture air you breathe in to push your belly forward can help you use the muscle correctly.
If you are able to, lay down so your shoulders are trapped and you cannot chest breathe (stress breathing). Put your hands on your belly to tell your brain to utilize the abdominal pressure. Take 5-10 slow deep breaths. Not everyone can lay down on the floor at any given moment, so as long as you can breathe without using your shoulders, you can stand or sit and still breathe with your diaphragm, nice and slow.
Click here for a video demonstrating the belly breathing practices you can utilize!
- Relax Your Jaw and Shoulders
Ever feel like your shoulders are up by your ear lobes? Not sure why you’re clenching your teeth? This is a sign that your body is in that sympathetic dominance state. Two simple physical cues to your body would be to lower your shoulders down (or focus on pulling the shoulder blades straight towards your pants pockets) and relax the lower jaw (think separating your top and bottom teeth without opening your lips). You should almost feel a cascade of body tension releasing down your body when you do this.
- Talk to Yourself
Not in a crazy person way. Stress puts your body in survival mode. This is NOT to minimize your stress, but rarely is your stress life threatening (if it is, you should be in sympathetic dominant so feel free to stay there until you are out of the life threatening state). For most situations, however, you can simply remind yourself that YOU ARE NOT BEING CHASED BY A BEAR. It sounds so silly, but reminding your body that it is physically safe can help bring perspective enough to slow the brain down.
- Gratitude
The research on gratitude is really cool! If you can write a list of 5 things that you are genuinely grateful for, do it. Don’t have a pencil and paper or not in a space to write it down? Still make the list in your head and while you do it, feel it. Not the cheesy list either, but things you can actually say I am thankful that I have these things or people or whatever it is.
←Remember that these activities are meant to bring you into parasympathetic dominance for the time being. It will not make your stress go away. You may only be in parasympathetic for a minute and then right back into sympathetic mode. But you broke the pattern. I HIGHLY suggest finding ways to remind yourself (ie. alerts on your phone) so that it becomes a regular practice for yourself. TRAIN your brain to break the stress pattern. The more often you do it, the better!!
I also suggest getting adjusted regularly by your favorite chiropractor because it is a fantastic way to remove physical stresses and it helps your brain move into parasympathetic mode which most of us could use a little more in our lives. In a 2017 study, “movement, posture, emotions, learning, and memory centers of the brain all improved after the chiropractic adjustment…measurements also showed a decreased level of stress induced chemicals in the saliva.”