Virtual Reality and Your Brain

Your brain works like a virtual reality headset. The brain has 3 nervous system settings (known as sympathetic, ventral vagal, and dorsal vagal) and so there are 3 games you can play on your VR headset.

When you are stressed, the VR headset is playing catastrophic scenes of your business falling apart, your boss firing you, your marriage crashing. When you are down, your VR headset is playing scenes of hopelessness, how incapable you are, how empty and pointless everything is. When your nervous system is balanced, you see things more accurately and with a more grounded perspective. 

Yes, things ARE stressful. But the equanimity afforded by a balanced nervous system gives you a birds eye view of your life that reinforces your resilience. It may be that it gives you acess to your faith, or reminds you of your strengths or times in the past that you persevered through challenges. All of that resides in one place in the nervous system (ventral vagal).

If you were playing a VR game, and one of the scenes were upsetting or uncomfortable, would you fight with the scene and try to change it? Obviously not, that wouldn't work and is also unnecessary. You would switch the game to a different one that plays something you like.

If you want peace of mind, dont fight with the details playing on the screen of your mind. It is all coming from the VR headset that your nervous system is wearing. Change the game it is playing by switching to a different nervous system setting.

How do you change the game your nervous system is playing? One technique backed by hundreds of studies is coherent breathing. Put your hand on your heart. Breathe normally, just a bit slower and deeper than usual. On the in breath visualize your breath going into your heart, on the out breath visualize your breath coming out from your heart. Do this for 2 minutes (or more). This breath completely shifts your nervous system into balanced (ventral vagal) mode.

Another technique is to close your eyes and visualize yourself standing in a watch tower. On the ground below is your stressed out, angry, sad ... self. Just observe the stressed self from your watch tower above. What perspective can you see from your vantage point that your self below cant see? This shifts your nervous system to birds eye view, and that changes everything.