[00:00:00] Picture this, you get a text or you didn't get a text, or someone says something in the tone that lands wrong and within seconds, seconds, your entire body has a verdict. Your chest tightens, your thoughts start to move fast.
Something in you is already composing a response, already reaching for the phone already mid-sentence in an argument that hasn't happened yet. And the part of you that knows better. The part that has done the work, that has listened to this podcast, that knows about the nervous system, that part is standing in the corner saying, wait, wait, just just wait.
Today we're gonna give that part of you a tool. Welcome back to the regulator. Welcome back to your, okay.
Welcome back to the Raw Regulation on the Regulated Life. I'm [00:01:00] Erica, your guide for today. Yesterday, we worked with the check-in. The three questions that help you see the loop before you act from it. Today we're going one step further into what happens after you see it.
Because seeing the wave coming and actually letting it pass are two very different skills. Today's tool is the weight 90-seconds protocol, and the science behind it is one of the most practically useful things I've ever learned about the human body.
Dr. Jill Bolt, Taylor, a Harvard trained neuroscientist who famously studied her own stroke from the inside discovered something in her research that changed the way I understand emotional activation entirely a physiological emotion. The actual chemical surge in your body, the cortisol, the adrenaline, the physical sensation of being activated has a biological lifespan of approximately 90 seconds.
90 seconds. From the moment the chemical is triggered to the moment, [00:02:00] it begins to metabolize and clear your system, if you don't feed, it is about a minute and a half.
What keeps us in the loop far beyond those 90 seconds is not the chemistry itself, it's the story we attach to it. The narrative that picks up where the chemical surge begins. Of course, this is happening. This is what always happens. I knew this was coming. I have to do something about this right now.
That story re-triggers the chemical, which intensifies the story, which re-triggers the chemical. In, around, and around we go. The wait 90 seconds protocol is not about suppressing the feeling, suppression is not regulation.
Dr. James Pennebaker's. Decades of research on emotional suppression show clearly that pushing feelings down doesn't make them disappear. It makes them louder and more expensive over [00:03:00] time. This protocol is about metabolizing the feeling, letting it move through your body as it was designed to without feeding in a narrative to keep it alive.
90 seconds of not acting is not weakness. It's the most sophisticated thing your prefrontal cortex can do.
I'm gonna tell you exactly what this looks like in my actual life because I think the clinical version of this tool undersells how hard it actually is. There have been moments in my friendships and my closest relationships, in professional situations where I felt that activation hit and every single cell in my body was convinced I need to respond to this right now.
The urgency felt real. It felt righteous. It felt like if I didn't say something immediately, something would be lost or left unresolved or allowed to continue. And [00:04:00] sometimes that urgency was legitimate, but a lot of the time, if I'm honest, the urgency was the cortisol talking.
It was my nervous system running this familiar program telling me that motion was safety. That response was control. That staying still in that feeling for even a moment longer was somehow dangerous. 90 seconds felt like an eternity. And then the eternity passed, and I found that what I wanted to say had changed.
Not disappeared, but changed. The words that came after the wait were more honest, more regulated, more actually mine than the ones that would've come in the fire of the first moment. The wait is not passivity. The wait is how you reclaim authorship of your own responses.
Let's practice this together. I'm gonna guide you through a 90-second protocol right now so your body knows [00:05:00] what this feels like before you need it.
Settle in where you are.
If you can place one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly.
Bring to mind gently with some care, a recent moment of activation. Not the most intense one. You can think of a medium. One a moment when you felt the urge to pursue something, respond to something. Do something with the feeling that had arrived.
Let the memory be present without letting it take over. You are safe here. This is just practice.
Notice what's in your body right now. Tightness, heat, a quickening, [00:06:00] just name it. Internally, tightening in my chest, heat behind my eyes, tension in my jaw. Name it without judgment.
Now we breathe, in through the nose, four counts. 1, 2, 3, 4, out through the mouth, six counts. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
The exhale is longer. The exhale is everything. The extended exhale activates your vagus nerve, the primary pathway of your parasympathetic nervous [00:07:00] system, and signals your body to begin the downshift. Again, in four accounts.
Out six counts.
Stay with your hands on your chest and belly. Feel the rise and fall.
In four.
Out six.
Again, in
out,
keep breathing at this rhythm while I ask you, does this urgency feel different than it did 60 seconds ago?[00:08:00]
Not gone necessarily, but different. Slightly more spacious, slightly more workable.
One more breath in for four
out long and full
and gently release your hands and come back to the room.
Here's when they use this. The moment you feel the activation hit and the [00:09:00] urge to respond immediately arrives, that's your cue, not later, not after you've already acted, right then. Set a timer if you need to. 90 seconds. Breathe through it and here's what to do after. Once the 90 seconds have passed, check in with yourself.
Do you still wanna respond? You might, and that's okay. Regulated response is still response. But notice if what you wanna say has shifted. If the tone has softened, if the urgency has clarified into something more honest and less reactive, that shift is your nervous system finding solid ground. That is the work.
That's the wait 90 seconds protocol. Set your timer, breathe through the wave, reclaim your response.
Tomorrow we're bringing in something a little more physical, a [00:10:00] tool that interrupts the loop at the body level before your thoughts even have a chance to spiral. Don't miss it. The stop the spiral workshop is Wednesday, April 22nd, 60 minutes, $37.
The link is in the show notes and the free spiral reset audio is at mind-fusion.com/audio available to you right now. I'll see you tomorrow.
