We are all familiar with the fight or flight response.  We may also have heard that, when we can neither escape nor conquer, we might freeze in our tracks, hoping for the worst to pass us by.  But have we heard that there might be a better way?

We inherit the conditioned reflex from our earliest ancestors.  The mechanism arises in the "reptilian brain." When we react, stimulus and reaction are nearly simultaneous.  We sense a threat, and the alarm is triggered.  Adrenaline and its related biochemicals flood the system.  Heart rate and blood pressure spike, we sweat, our pupils dilate, our muscles tense, and our digestion shuts down.

Some threats are, indeed, best handled that way.  However, many of the challenges that arise in our contemporary human lives are not.  Those challenges call for calm, for rational evaluation, and creative solutions.  In order to activate the tools we need in less urgent circumstances, we need to learn how to respond instead of react when something goes wrong.  And to do that, we need to create a gap in time and in mind between stimulus and response.

Formal meditation training is uniquely designed to help us with the process. Beginning with the breathing, meditation focuses on that everyday rhythm: inhale, exhale. When a breath is released, the calming potential of the nervous system is engaged.  (We may, therefore want to pay closer attention as we breathe out.)  Other common instructions for mindfulness training attend to internal awareness of the body, to external sensations such as sound and touch, or to the coming and going of thoughts.

These techniques for mental training come in handy when we want to respond, not  react, to a stressful event. Attentive breathing interrupts the flow of alarm signals and activates the power of calm.  Accepting the present circumstance on its own terms diverts energy from unhelpful denial or catastrophic fears of the future, making it available for taking the best steps now. The practice of mindfulness creates a space between stressful stimulus and skillful response.

I have had an opportunity to practice this preaching myself for the last few days.  One minute I was hiking happily down the trail. The next, I was flat on my face in the rocks, flooded with alarm hormones, in pain and afraid of all the things that might be wrong.  Today I am practicing signatures with the other hand, and re-learning daily activities (including typing) that normally call for two wrists.  I am weighing the implications for summer plans, aiming to be more flexible than I feel. 

 I am grateful for all the things that did not break and still work. I am grateful for the friend who helped me create space for rational action during that first hour when denial had the upper hand.  Going to urgent care for a splint stabilized the break until I could see a specialist the next day.  I am grateful to be reading Full Catastrophe Living and practicing mindfulness meditation.  It really does make a difference