have you ever said or done anything that you later regretted Something In the Heat of the Moment have you ever yelled at a stranger what about in traffic well you may just have been the victim of an amydala hijack good news there's a better way you can train your brain through mindfulness to be less emotionally reactive in this video you will learn what in Mula hijacking is why it happens what to do about it Daniel Goldman author of emotional intelligence coined the term amigdala hijack to refer to an immediate and overwhelming emotional reaction disproportionate to the stimulus because it triggers a deeper emotional threat like the threat of your life many of you may know that the igula is part of the brain that is responsible for your emotional reaction what you may not know is that this little guy is a brain Bandit it goes and it steals the functioning of other areas your brain so a Meda comes up and shuts off the neocortex the area in the front that is responsible for logical thinking conscious thought and sensory perception so your logic is overridden with emotion that's when it hijacks that front part of your brain to understand why this happens let's back up several thousands of years ago it's a beautiful morning you're just getting up you're coming out of your cave you're going to pick some berries and you look over you see a rustling in the bushes and out peers the head of a sabertooth tiger there's saliva coming down from his Jaws he's thinking one thing he's looking at you and he's thinking breakfast and your igula thankfully has hijacked your neocortex because this is not a time for digestion or ovulation and with your neocortex hijacked you have two thoughts available to you do I eat it or does it eat me and you ran at least your ancestors did sadly there are no descendants of those who did not run you see we are the descendants of the people who had the amigdalas that knew how to get away from the saber-tooth tiger in today's world it's like there's a stressor and boom a Milla hijack the stressor may be an email a text message your boss a bill being late somebody in traffic so it's not that our life is in threat but it triggers that old part of our brain to come up as if we were about to be eaten by a tiger not only that it floods our entire system with adrenaline and cortisol and it could pump through our body for up to 4 hours that's right we can have an amigdala hijack Hangover 4 hours of those hormones pumping through us have you ever experienced that we're after a big emotional situation you still feel angry or rage confusion overwhelm upset fear that would be the igula hijack hangover luckily there are things we can do about this Thomas Jefferson said if you are angry count to 10 and if you're really angry count to 100 he had a good point it's very wise because when you count you are switching on the neocortex so the part of your brain that has been s shut off by the mdal hijacking gets put back on so if you start to count while you feel that intense emotion you can have some space from it another thing that you can do is take deep mindful breaths when you bring your attention over and over again to the breath each breath as you have it you bring yourself into the moment and you calm yourself down see the sympathetic nervous system is responsible for fight ORF flight and we have the parasympathetic nervous system that's the rest and digest so when we take those deep mindful breaths we are activating this parasympathetic nervous system with a net result is that we feel peaceful there are lots of information about the effectiveness of mindfulness not just in the moment but its long-term effects there's an 8-week course called mbsr that's been around for 25 years and in this mindfulness based stress reduction course they measure some of the people's brains before and after the8 weeks doing an MRI and it shows after that the area in the amydala is different so we're burning new neural Pathways by meditating and doing the mindfulness practice that there are structural differences in our brain as a result of the practice there been another study where in as little as 4 days of 20 minutes a day of mindfulness practice that is enough to see a significant difference on tests so I encourage you to start your own mindfulness practice today and begin burning those new neural Pathways so you don't have to yell at strangers and you don't have to get lost and stepped up in the emotions you can actually be present you can count or you can breathe creating some space from the actual ual stimulus working with your old brain but having new behavior for it if you come over to richer experiences.com and leave your email address I will send you a guided meditation have a great day