David Lewis and his colleague neuropsychologist Darren Bridger in the Human Performance Laboratory.
“I am sitting the consulting room attached to our laboratory at the University of Sussex with a business executive, whom I shall call Jason, and watching closely the three coloured lines moving across the computer screen before me.
One is blue and traces a rhythmic pattern of hills and valleys representing the slow, deep, rise and fall of his breathing. This information is being transmitted to the computer via two transducers that measure changes in the tension of broad, elastic straps passing around Jason’s chest and fastened behind his back.
The second line on my monitor is in red and shows variations in the level of Jason’s physiological arousal. Two small electrodes - each approximately a centimetre in diameter – are attached to his left palm and measure electrical resistance within his body.
David in the consulting room using biofeedback to demonstrate the relationship between stress and breathing.
As he relaxes more and more deeply this resistance significantly increases. Conversely the more anxious or agitated he becomes the less the resistance there is to the electric current.
While the red line on my monitor continues to rise, I know that Jason’s relaxation is deepening. If, however, it should start to drop steeply that would alert me to the fact he was becoming far more physically tense. The faster the line drops the more rapidly would his anxiety be increasing.
The squiggly green lines indicate electrical activity within Jason’s brain. This EEG signal (Electroencephalograph) is being monitored by a series of electrodes attached to his skull that are measuring his brain waves.
A volunteer has her brain waves recorded in the author’s laboratory at the University of Sussex.
Comprising signals only a few millionth of a volt in strength, they occur across a range of frequencies from very slow Delta waves of between 4 and 8 cycles (Hertz) per second up to much more rapid Beta and Gamma waves of 14 cycles per second and upwards.
EEG trace depicting normal brain activity
The blue line tells me that Jason’s rate of breathing has come down from around 18 breaths per minute to fewer than four. And from being light and shallow when he had entered the consulting room some ten minutes earlier, his breathing is now heavy and deep, with each inhalation drawing the air down into the lower lobes of his lungs and every exhalation expelling almost all the stale air within those lungs.
The red line is showing a state of almost complete physical relaxation. There is little or no unnecessary stress or tension in any of his more than six hundred muscles.
The lines of his EEG depict a brain in which the slowly moving Alpha waves, that are associated with a relaxed mental state, predominate.
Now I deliberately begin to increase his stress levels by asking him to imagine, as vividly as possible, an activity that I know always makes him highly anxious – speaking in public.
On my computer screen I observed three things happening almost – but not precisely – simultaneously.
First his rate of breathing slightly and subtly altered. The smoothly flowing hills and valleys of each inhalation and exhalation suddenly became steeper and closer until they more resembled a zigzag range of jagged mountain peaks. This clearly shows that it is becoming faster, shallower and more erratic.
Almost immediately after this, the thin red line monitoring Jason’s physical arousal plunges showing rapidly increasing anxiety.
Finally the output of Alpha waves yielded ground to faster Beta frequencies indicating growing mental agitation. Later when these line graphs have been transformed into brain maps, or topographs, illustrated below, the extent of these changes becomes even more apparent.
These two brain maps illustrate Jason’s brain first in a relaxed and then in an agitated state. The different colours indicate varying strengths of the electrical signals being recorded within the Beta Frequency band. White red, and yellow show areas of high power output while green and blues show areas of low power.
All this happened within less than three seconds after he started to imagine speaking in public.
Yet when I asked Jason how he was feeling, he replied that he was reasonably calm and perfectly capable of handing the impending challenge. Clearly his unconscious mind knew something of which his conscious brain was unaware.
Not until almost thirty seconds had passed, during which his breathing became even more rapid, erratic and shallow while his physical and mental arousal soared, did Jason report a sensation of rising tide of panic. He abruptly opened his eyes and blurted out:
“It’s no good. I’m sorry. I simply can’t deal with this ” he told me. “I can feel my heart racing, my mouth has gone dry and all I could think of was to escape from the situation.”
Let’s just recap on the sequence of events within his mind and body immediately prior to his overwhelming sensation of total panic.
First the pattern of his breathing changed, only slightly at first but still enough to trigger subtle changes in the chemical composition of his blood. By removing more carbon dioxide from his bloodstream the rapid breathing stimulated his nervous system so increasing physical arousal.
This occurred as the Fight or Flight response – a primitive and powerful survival mechanism - was triggered by a region of his brain called the limbic system.
Finally his brain waves altered from the relaxed but alert Alpha State to one dominated by the fast moving Beta frequencies associated with mental agitation.
Note, however, that all this happened below his level of conscious awareness. .
Even after body and brain had switched into a “prepare to panic” mode, the conscious part of Jason’s mind remained reasonably cool, calm and confident.
It was as if a householder was watching TV, blissfully ignorant of a fire gathering strength in his basement and about to burst through the floorboards beneath his feet!
The point to emphasise here is that Jason’s breathing was the first thing to change and that it was these changes that triggered the chain reaction that led to panic.
This is not, of course, the way we normally view the sequence of events during any form of powerful emotional upset. Whether starting to get anxious or angry, we regard our conscious awareness of that emotion as a trigger for the other changes – rapidly beating heart, dry mouth, churning stomach, unsteady breathing and so forth – that immediately follow.
In other words we usually consider the sequence of events to occur as follows:
1: An awareness of rising emotion. We think – “I’m getting scared” or “I’m beginning to feel annoyed.
2: We become aware of increased mental and physical arousal. We notice our hearts starting to beat faster, our muscles tightening, our mouth becoming dry and the air pumping in and out of our lungs more rapidly.
3: We stand and fight or turn and flee.
This seems such a common sense chain of events that we seldom think twice about it. Unfortunately it is entirely and misleadingly wrong. It is the change in breathing that normally starts the chain of events which, within seconds, can transform mind and body from normal running to full blown panic.
In Bo-Tau training you learn to understand this sequence of events and how these often small and subtle alteration to the rate and depth of each inhalation and exhalation can create physical and psychological barriers that can quickly and easily block the path to personal success and fulfilment.
