How to Quickly Get Emotionally Centered with the Mind-Body

Read Time: 4 Minutes

A big thanks to the People and well-being leaders in this community for their amazing focus on supporting their organizations that have brought this work to life.

It’s a collective effort to realize wellbeing in the workplace, promote mental and emotional health for performance, and end the culture of chronic stress and burnout. is the new performance 

Join us on August 16, 2023 at 12PM PT / 3PM ET for our next Workplace Wellbeing, Performance and Recovery Support for People Leaders on LinkedIn.

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Key Highlights:

• Using the Polyvagal Nervous System as a framework for emotional regulation
• Technique 1: Box Breathing
• Technique 2: HRV Heart Breathing
• Technique 3: Peripheral Vision

The theme for this week’s community support is emotional self-regulation with the mind-body connection.

The polyvagal theory is a good framework that helps us understand and categorize your stress and stress-free responses

Mimicking your spine from the back of your head down to your hips, imagine it like a ladder.

To emotionally regulate, our goal is to “move up” the 3-step ladder to the top step.

The lowest step is the gut.  This is where, under stress, we want to shut down, rest and digest.  Like a turtle hiding in its shell, or a dog or cat licking its wounds.

The middle step is the chest.  This is where, under stress, we get into fight or flight and take action towards safety.

Our goal is to get to the top step.

The top step is the connection of the spine to the brain, where we can access our higher social and creative functions.  We experience love, joy, expansion, and thrive.

Let’s get into some techniques to climb the ladder.

Two techniques will be based on the breath. When it comes to the consequence of stress, we either hold our breath or hyperventilate.  It’s inter-twined.

Our goal: regulate our breathing, and stress dissipates as a consequence.

Technique #1: Box Breathing

Like four sides to a box, or more precisely, a square you will be doing these four steps for 4 seconds each:

Inhale 

Hold

Exhale 

Hold

You can do that for four cycles, or 3-5 minutes until you feel calm and your mind gets back into your control.

Technique #2: HRV Heart Breathing

Similar to box breathing, the intervals will change a bit to get your breathing rate to about 6 breaths a minute.

Inhale 5 seconds, Hold 5 seconds

Exhale 6 seconds, Hold 6 seconds

Added to this is also a visualization to connect the mind-body.

Place your hand on your chest above your heart. 

Then focus your attention on your heart, in your mind’s eye.

As you do your inhale round, imagine the air going into your heart and filling it up.

As you do your exhale round, imagine the air leaving your heart out through the mouth.

Do this exercise for about 7-10 minutes, or until you feel calm and relaxed.

Technique #3: Eye Positioning - Peripheral Vision

And lastly, we can use some neuro-science with our third technique. Just like how our breathing is intertwined with stress and relaxation, so are our eyes.

When we go into a stress response, our eyes tend to focus and delete anything that doesn’t help us get to immediate safety.

The opposite is also true, when we are relaxed and creative, our eyes tend to go into peripheral vision, such as looking at the sky, and the broad horizon of an ocean beach.

These are the steps:

Step 1 - Put both of your hands stretched out directly in front of you 

Step 2 - Move your arms so that they are around 60 degrees from the center, at your sides.

Hold them there and begin to wiggle your fingers 

Step 3 - Now with a light gaze still staring directly in front of you, begin to notice the wiggling fingers at the peripheries/sides.

Step 4 - Hold this eye position for about 5 minutes.

Apply this gaze whether you’re in a small or big room, walking outside, or even with your eyes closed.

You’ll begin to feel a deep relaxation, and your mind, breath, and body will begin to sync up.

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