The Fastest Way to change your thinking isn't thinking

Written by Roz Tyburski -

People often come to Yoga - asana, meditation, breathwork. community, etc. because they want something to shift in their life. If you're reading this, you're probably at least curious about making a shift; creating something better, whether it be better health, better relationships, more abundance, personal growth, or something else.   You might have a really good sense of what that shift is, and you might not. This shift is what I want to start to talk about today. 

In my personal experience and in my work as a coach and a yoga teacher, I have found that a shift in life always starts with a shift in thinking. And thinking can be a very hard thing to shift. Below I'll share a little bit of the thought process that sits behind the programming of my classes, workshops, retreats, and life. If you're like me, these concepts might just blow your mind... And, change your life.

The Fastest Way to Change Your Thinking Isn't Thinking

“We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”  A quote often attributed to Albert Einstein, likely mistakenly so, but with an important message.  

Old habits and mindsets will only repeat old behaviors and mistakes.  If we want real change in our lives, we have to change our thinking. We have to align our thinking with the reality we want to create. People who tell you "all you have to do is focus on what you want and the universe will align to provide," have missed a few key pieces of information. I'll hit on some of that below.

You can’t create abundance from a place of scarcity.  

You can’t build success from a place of survival.

Your beliefs, your emotional patterns, your entire inner world shapes the way you perceive your outer world.  Your emotional state informs the way you perceive reality. It informs your decisions. It impacts the energy you put into your life and relationships. It even determines the opportunities that you see - or fail to see as you go through life.  That's why two people can experience the exact same thing and walk away with very different perceptions and realities of that thing. Changing this inner world will have a profound impact on your outer reality. 

The state of your nervous system impacts the thoughts you have. Your nervous system and your thoughts don’t just respond to your current reality, they actually create it. This might sound like woo-woo, (don't get me wrong, I'm all for a little woo-woo) but this is actually neuroscience. Let’s dig in:

There are two very important things going on in your brain and nervous system that will help explain.

1. Survival mode.  We don’t have access to creativity and novel ideas while in survival mode. 



As humans, we are programmed strongly for survival.  Anything that threatens that survival sends us into a sympathetic nervous system state. This happens in our bodies before our conscious minds know what’s going on.  That’s your nervous system at work.
 Doing what it's supposed to do. Heart rate quickens, breathing gets shallow and in the chest, digestion slows down or stops, the hair stands up on the back of your neck as your body prepares to run or defend.
Your brain needs to conserve energy, so it shuts off the very inefficient, energy hungry (and very creative) prefrontal cortex. 

The decisions you are left with are the ones that don’t require a lot of processing: The things you already know well, and the things that have worked to keep you alive in the past. And these decisions are guided heavily by emotion. Decisions made in survival mode are designed for immediate, short term, individual survival.  They are not designed for thriving, long term outcomes, or collective benefit. Decisions that support thriving, long term outcomes, and collective benefit require a very different state of mind, one that you don’t have access to in survival mode.


2. Selective input. Our thoughts determine the opportunities we see. 



Our brains take in an enormous amount of sensory information every second: approximately 1 billion bits/second. Our consciousness can only handle about 10 bits per second. (https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/thinking-slowly-the-paradoxical-slowness-of-human-behavior) 

This means that our sensory intake is about one hundred million times faster than our conscious ability to think. 

That is a lot of information that doesn’t make it through the consciousness filter. 

What determines which information makes it past the consciousness bouncer?

YOU do. 


Whatever you focus on the most, whatever you ruminate on, whatever state you are in most often, determines what is deemed important enough to make it upstairs to your consciousness. 

Everything else stays below the surface.

If your thoughts center around what you don’t have, what you don’t want, what you don’t like, and how imperfect you are - your brain will deem that information the important stuff and send up anything that supports, confirms, or accelerates these thoughts. 

Conversely, if your thoughts center around how fortunate you are, how grateful you are for what you have, what you like about your life and yourself, and where you want to see yourself (with the belief that you can get there) - your brain will deem that information to be the important stuff and send anything up that supports, confirms, or accelerates these thoughts. 



That's simple neuroscience.  Your current reality is the same in both circumstances. Your future reality, however, can change dramatically.  Either way you’ll see things that confirm what you believe to be true about yourself and others. In the second scenario you’ll see opportunities you would have missed in the first. You’ll also feel confident going after these opportunities because your capability has been confirmed by your new reality. Your future reality, and your life will change simply because your thoughts have changed.

But how do you change your thoughts when your current reality seems to fully support the negative view? 

Keep in mind, your current reality is the direct result of your previous thinking. Your current thinking will shape your future reality.  There is a bit of a lag.  

That’s the tricky part, it can be really hard to change your current thinking when your current reality does not seem to support this shift. You need 2 things: 1. The tools to help you shift from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic state, so you have access to more creative thought. And, 2. You need the tools to help you to start to believe your new ways of thinking.

Today, I’ll start with the shift in state.  The easiest and most useful tool we have to make this shift is our breath.

There are functions within your body that are completely autonomic - they’re controlled by your nervous system; you don’t have to think about them - e.g., heart rate, digestion, endocrine, lymphatic system, etc. Then there are functions in your body that are voluntary - you control completely, such as movement.  

Your breath sits between these two. 

Breath control can be completely autonomic, or it can be completely voluntary. Furthermore, the breath has two way communication with your nervous system. Nervous system activation informs your breathing. Your breathing also informs your nervous system activation.  In other words, a change in state can change your breath, and a change in your breath can change your state. Once you change your state, your nervous system will adjust all of the other autonomic systems in your body. ---> YOU have some control over your autonomic systems through the control of your breath. 🤯

When you feel yourself shifting to a sympathetic state - you feel nervous, anxious, angry, overly stressed, etc. the first step is to take control of your breathing. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t feel what you’re feeling.  But taking control and lowering the sympathetic activation will allow you to bring your whole brain back online, modulate your emotions, and make decisions from a more informed state of being. 

There are several breath practices you can use to change your state of being.  I’ll introduce a very simple one here.  

First, there are three things about your breath you should know:

1. Breathing through your nose is less activating than breathing through your mouth.

2. Your exhale is more calming to your nervous system, and your inhale is more activating. (But of course you can’t breathe without both of them.)

3. Slow breathing is more calming; fast breathing is more activating.

Here’s the technique:

• First shift to nose breathing.

• Then make your exhale last longer than your inhale.

• Finally, breathe deeply down into your belly, taking a pause between inhales and exhales.

• Put all three of these together for a few breaths, then notice if your state has started to change.

Continue to consciously breathe in this way for as long as you need to. That’s it.  Very simple.

But, there is a little bit of a problem with this plan.  

Remember how I mentioned above that when you shift into a parasympathetic state, your nervous system turns off your prefrontal cortex?  Well, if this information about the power of breathing is new, untested, and not well practiced you probably won’t remember to do it if you’re in a sympathetic state. That’s because all you have access to at that time is what you know well, and what has worked in the past.

So, the best thing you can do is to make this way of breathing well known, practiced. and tested.  That means practicing it on a regular basis, when you're not in a sympathetic state. With practice, this will become a well known activity; something that requires very little thought. Your body will also start to feel the effects and know that it works well to make you feel safe: tested.  Daily is best.  A few times a week is ok.  Once a week is better than not at all. Five minutes is good. Ten minutes is better. Twenty minutes might just change your life.  

Breathing is just one tool in your toolbox to change your state. Later on I'll talk about some others, and about simple tools to help you develop and believe new thought patterns.  Even better, when you come to a yoga class at Pittsboro Yoga, sign up for workshops, and events.  You'll experience all of this first hand. 

Roz Tyburski has been practicing and teaching yoga and meditation for more than 25 years. Raised in a household where yoga philosophy was part of everyday life, she has spent decades exploring the connection between breath, movement, and awareness.

Come experience a workshop with Roz:

Meet Your Intuition - Aug 9

Beyond Belief - Sep 6th