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+
+Chapter 1:
+Chapter 2:
+Chapter 3:
+Chapter 4:
+Chapter 5:
+Chapter 6:
+Chapter 7:
+Chapter 8:
+Chapter 9:
+
+Optimal Quality of Life Training ....................c:ccecceereeeeereeees
+Persistent Adaptation to Chronic Stress ...............::cccseeees
+Breathe Deeply, Smoothly, Slowly, and on Long Intervals...
+
+Hold a Steady, Upward Gaze with Wide Eyes ..................008
+
+Recognizing Muscular Tension and Dormant Muscle...........
+Release Tense Muscle with Compression and Massage.......
+Thinking Peacefullly ................cccccscccssseccssecsseesssseesseeesssaeessaees
+Reprogramming Facial Tension ................ccscccssscssseessteesseees
+
+Compressing Facial Muscles for Composure and Well-being..
+
+Chapter 10: Perfecting Your Smille.................c:ccccccccsscecsseeesseeeesseeesseeeenes
+
+Chapter 11:
+Chapter 12:
+Chapter 13:
+
+Breathing Less, Nasally, and without Pharyngeal Tension...
+Release Vocal Tension ..............:ccecceceeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeteeeeneeeae
+
+Reprogram Your Posture for PoWEFC .............::cccscceeseeeereees
+
+Chapter 14: Anti-rigidity Therapy: Bring Dormant Muscle to Fatigue....
+
+Chapter 15:
+
+Combine Anti-rigidity with your Exercise Routine..............
+
+Chapter 16: Anti-rigidity Exercises for the Neck and Shoulders.............
+
+Chapter 17: Anti-rigidity Exercises for the Lower Back..................
+Chapter 18: Use Proper Posture and Anti-rigidity While Walking....
+Chapter 19:
+Chapter 20: Healthy Eating Patterns ..............:cccccscccssseecssseesseeessees
+Chapter 21:
+Chapter 22:
+Chapter 23:
+
+Stop Sexually Submissive Behavior ................:ccccccecee
+
+Chronic Stress, the Amygdala, and Cortisol ...............
+Listen to Your Heart and Gut ...............c:ccccccccccceeeseseeeeeeeeseeee
+
+Serotonin, Optimism, and Cooperation ................cc:ccee
+
+Chapter 24: Rise Above Status Conflict .................:ccscccssceessseeesseeeseeeenee
+
+Chapter 25:
+
+Happiness Is Playfulness & Composed Kindness ................
+
+
+
+Chapter 26: Conclusions 
+
+401
+PROGRAM PEACE Self- Care Exercises to Reprogram Your Mind and Body
+
+Indeed, human infertility and sexual dysfunction are both known by medical researchers to be
+highly exacerbated by the stress hormone cortisol.
+
+Chronically elevated cortisol levels can cause loss of libido and impotence in men mostly by
+inhibiting the production of testosterone. In women, it can cause severe fertility problems and
+result in an abnormal menstrual cycle. This antagonism between the cortisol and testosterone
+hormonal axes is thought to be adaptive because in emergency situations engaging in behaviors
+that are encouraged by testosterone, such as mating, competition, and dominance is
+unnecessary and possibly counterproductive.
+
+If you put a mouse in a cage with a more dominant mouse, its testosterone and fertility will
+decline significantly. Similarly, if you spend time believing that you are inferior or inadequate,
+your virility will drop. We must avoid sexual bullying and stop ourselves from thinking sexually
+self-subordinating thoughts. Fortunately, the effects of cortisol on testosterone in both men
+and women are reversed when the stress goes back down.
+
+You don’t want your body to assume you are a pathetic monkey trying to sneak copulations
+in hiding. So, you need to send it the right messages. You want to develop a mindset of sexual
+dominance and disinhibition affirming that you can achieve arousal at any time, have sex
+anywhere, and be in your sexual comfort zone under any social conditions...as long as it is
+ethical and legal, of course. This starts with slowing everything else down and making your
+sexual response a priority. Just as subordination causes us to ignore our shallow breathing and
+protracted neck, it also causes us to ignore both the tension and the pleasure in our genitals.
+The best way to counteract this is to learn to “listen” to your genitals.
+
+Sexual Exercise #19.1: Listen to the Sensations Coming from Your Genitals
+
+Your genitals are continuously sending you sensory signals about their current state of
+arousal. Most of us ignore this steady influx of cues, leaving us out of tune with our sexuality.
+Sexual suppression and submission have turned our erogenous zones into blind spots. Feeling
+good down there is not a sin, not a luxury, and not something you have to earn. It is your
+basic right as a mammal and an integral part of dealing with stress. If you want to cultivate
+your sexual response, you must pay attention to any and all pleasurable sensations coming
+from in between your legs.
+
+Close your eyes, and spend five minutes meditating on this area. Focus on it completely like
+you are watching a movie. At first, you may not sense much, but with time and patience,
+you will begin to notice faint instances of erogenous squirming and pulsating. Indulge them.
+Learn to revel in them. Doing this will help prove to your body that you are a lusty beast
+unencumbered by sexual trauma. With time, practice, and the use of the other exercises in
+this chapter, infrequent tingles and quivers will turn into a steady stream of not-so-subtle
+heaving and throbbing. Monitor your breath while you do this and imagine breathing
+“straight into your genitals.” This will help you develop the laser focus necessary to become
+reacquainted with the full extent of your aphrodisia.
+
+402
+Chapter 19: Stop Sexually Submissive Behavior
+
+One of the best ways to improve your awareness of sexual sensations is to stop bracing the
+muscles involved. This is simply because, if they are constantly strained, they cannot respond
+actively to sexual stimuli. There is no throbbing in dormant muscle.
+
+Stop Bracing the Muscles Surrounding Your Genitals
+
+Hip or pelvic tension can be a conscious or unconscious attempt to downplay the potency of
+the genital region and is yet another form of submissive body language. Over time the
+formation of dormant muscle leads to withered libido, lessened enjoyment of sex, and sexual
+dysfunction. There are other sources of pelvic bracing. Falling on the bottom, bruising the
+tailbone, long hours sitting at a desk or a bicycle seat, and all types of physical trauma can lead
+to tension the area.
+
+Pelvic bracing is linked to medical disorders. Vaginismus is the involuntary contraction of
+muscles that surround the vagina. The tight muscles make penetration and intercourse painful
+for women with this disorder. Bracing may also make it harder for some women to orgasm.
+
+For a woman to climax, the muscles of her pelvic floor cannot be taut. They must relax during
+sexual stimulation so that they can contract rhythmically during orgasm. Many researchers
+believe that various sexual disorders such as male impotence, latency to female orgasm, and
+vulvodynia (chronic vulvar pain) can be due to excessive bracing of muscles adjacent to the
+sexual organs.? This seems even more likely when you consider that common preceding events
+for these disorders include sexual assault, rape, domestic abuse, sexual humiliation, chronic
+pain, and generalized anxiety.
+
+It is well known that the blood vessels surrounding the external genitalia constrict during
+sympathetic stimulation and dilate upon parasympathetic stimulation. This means that blood
+flow to the penis, clitoris, and vulva is impeded by stress and accentuated by relaxation. In fact,
+the pelvic floor is one of the most reactive groups of muscles during startle. When it contracts it
+results in a retraction of the clitoris for women and the penis for men. Relaxation of the
+anococcygeal area is thought to be key in improving the sexual arousal response. As a matter of
+fact, engorgement of the penis, clitoris, and labia results from the relaxation of smooth muscle.
+In other words, blood doesn’t flow until these unconsciously regulated muscles loosen up.
+
+Sexual Activity #19.1: Brace and Debrace Your Pelvic Muscles
+
+How do stress and intimidation affect the bracing of the muscles around your genitals? Most
+people could not answer this because they have little to no awareness of this common
+reaction. Let’s try bracing them to see how it feels. Tighten the muscles in your lower back.
+Tilt your hips to one side and brace them. Squeeze your legs together. Tighten your urinary
+sphincter as if you were trying to stop yourself from peeing. Now contract all these muscles,
+and anything else local you can find, at 90% of their maximum strength. After 10 seconds,
+let go entirely and register what it feels like to let the bracing here subside. Repeat this
+contraction and relaxation four more times.
+
+We signal sexual submission by straining sex-related muscles in the abdomen and pelvis.
+These muscles lose their healthy tone after sexual trauma or feelings of sexual inferiority.
+Thankfully, like all muscles, you can rehabilitate them. Most people have an untapped reservoir
+
+403
+PROGRAM PEACE Self- Care Exercises to Reprogram Your Mind and Body
+
+of muscle in the groin that has atrophied. The next two sections will show you how to exercise
+and strengthen it. | believe proper tone in these muscles allows the genitals increased vascular
+blood flow (vasocongestion), increases the prominence of arousal, and heightens the
+accompanying sensations.
+
+Exercise Your Urine Retentive Muscles
+
+You have numerous muscles situated between your sitz bones, pubic bone, and coccyx. These
+muscles support the pelvic organs, contract during orgasm, aid in childbirth and ejaculation,
+and provide core stability.
+
+Abdominal
+Muscle
+Rectum
+
+Coccyx Pubic Bone
+
+Bladder
+Urethra
+Anus
+
+Pelvic Floor Vagina
+
+Muscles
+
+Illustration 19.1: A. Side view of female reproductive anatomy. Note the location of the pelvic floor muscles
+stretching from the pubic bone to the tail bone (coccyx); B. Frontal view of the pelvic floor musculature which is
+similar in women and men. Several pelvic muscles are depicted including the ischiocavernosus, bulbospongiosus,
+coccygeus, pubococcygeus, the urogenital diaphragm and others.
+
+In the 1960s, Dr. Arnold Kegel taught people how to strengthen the perineum (the area
+between the anus and the genitals). He knew that these muscles are often injured in women
+during childbirth, and he instructed women how to contract them, reinstating their strength,
+in an exercise that came to be known as “Kegels.” Doctors have prescribed Kegels for many
+reasons, including treating urinary incontinence,’ ameliorating erectile dysfunction,> and
+controlling premature ejaculation.® Kegels are taught by having the patient repeatedly interrupt
+their urinary flow. Dr. Kegel recommended urinating a spoonful at a time. Try this in the
+activity below.
+
+Sexual Activity #19.2: Contracting the Urinary Sphincter
+
+The next time you find yourself peeing, stop urinating midstream. Once you can stop the flow
+completely, you have found the right muscles. Try urinating for only a second at a time until
+you have voided your bladder. Focus on tightening only the pelvic floor muscles, keeping the
+abdomen, thighs, anus, and buttocks relaxed. This will allow you to isolate the contraction.
+Doing this several times will help you identify the muscles and gain conscious control of
+them. At that point, you should do this exercise without urinating and from any position
+
+you want.
+
+404
+
+Chapter 19: Stop Sexually Submissive Behavior
+
+Most of us learned to brace the Kegel muscles intensely as young children when
+“holding it” for long periods to avoid the embarrassing experience of urinating in public.
+Can you remember an incident in which this muscle was likely traumatized by being braced
+heavily during the traumatic scenario of trying desperately to find a bathroom as a child?
+Not only do the muscles surrounding the genitals seize up in these scenarios, but distressed
+breathing predominates, making the strain worse. Most people have a strong tendency to hold
+their breath when performing Kegels,’ and of course, this defeats the purpose. Therefore
+| recommend pairing Kegels with paced breathing.
+
+Sexual Exercise #19.2: Diaphragmatic Kegels
+
+Perform hard Kegel contractions as if you were interrupting the stream of urine. Do this while
+paced breathing. This will build your capacity to activate the pelvic floor muscles without
+holding your breath. Hold a forceful contraction during a 10-second passive exhalation and
+then relax for a few breaths. Do this 10 times in a row. You might also try performing rapid
+Kegels (i.e., one to three per second) for a minute.
+
+These muscles contract involuntarily during arousal and orgasm. So, loosening them up and
+developing their responsivity may enliven your sex life. Also, after developing the muscular
+strength that comes from pelvic floor exercises, men can perform a Kegel at orgasm to
+withhold ejaculation effectively allowing them to experience multiple orgasms. | also believe
+that strengthening and unbracing these muscles can facilitate female ejaculation and
+squirting.
+
+The next section will provide you with an exercise that will dilate these areas rather than
+constrict them. In a previous chapter, we learned how important it is to perform forward bends
+after backward bends to neutralize the spine. | believe that performing Kegels without
+exercising the antagonist muscles leads to similar imbalances. For example, there is evidence
+that performing Kegels can lead to incomplete emptying of the bladder, and this is a risk factor
+for urinary tract infection and other maladies. As you might have guessed, the counterpose for
+a Kegel is complete bladder emptying.
+
+Exercise the Muscles that Expel Urine
+Interestingly, the Kegel contraction is braced involuntarily during social competition.
+Kegels result in a retraction of the clitoris, penis, and testicles, potentially making them less
+conspicuous to a competitor. | believe that, in this, they are submissive and intended to hide
+the genitalia. It is like the sea slug withdrawing its gill or the snail withdrawing its eyestalk.
+Male monkeys and apes are frequently observed hiding their erections from other males,
+especially from males above them in the hierarchy. They don’t want to be attacked for being
+aroused. This is why | think genital retraction due to chronic Kegel contraction is an innate
+defense mechanism protecting subordinates from sexually dominant individuals. It is yet
+another display equivalent to a collapsed posture. | believe that losing tone and developing
+partial contraction in the pelvic region is a self-handicapping mechanism that assumes
+advertising one’s level of sexual arousal is dangerous.
+
+405
+PROGRAM PEACE Self- Care Exercises to Reprogram Your Mind and Body
+
+If you have balanced tone in your pelvic muscles, your flaccid penis or clitoris will increase
+and decrease in size with your arousal level. If you have strain or poor tone, the flaccid organ
+may remain at its smallest possible size until full arousal is reached. Most people are aware that
+the penis and clitoris shrink in size when exposed to cold. In fact, penile length decreases by up
+to 50% in the defensive response to low temperature. | believe men with a history of chronic
+intimidation and sexual subordination are more likely to exhibit this kind of shrinkage when
+flaccid. This likely corresponds to the “grower” vs. “shower” dichotomy referenced in popular
+culture. The growers may be men with a more extensive history of being sexually intimidated.
+This may be reversible by performing the opposite of the Kegel.
+
+It is easy for both women and men to pinpoint the muscles that expel urine. They speed up
+the stream. These muscles include the lower abdominal muscles and the bladder detrusor
+muscle. They aid in the expulsion of urine by increasing the pressure applied to the bladder
+wall. The stream of urine will cease when the bladder has been voided, but the muscles
+themselves can still be contracted. If you continue to squeeze the expulsive muscles very firmly
+after you finish urinating, you will realize you can flex these muscles through their full range.
+
+Most people never use this full range, creating a missing corner of dormant muscle.
+
+Thus, it is also a reservoir that you can tap into and rehab. Think of the exercise as an
+“antikegel.” As we have seen in previous chapters, sometimes the only way to free muscles
+from partial contraction is through hard, full contractions.
+
+Sexual Exercise #19.3: Contract the Expulsive Muscles
+
+The next time you urinate, try to expel the urine more forcefully than usual. Steadily increase
+the force as you empty your bladder. As it nears empty, do not let up. Instead, squeeze the
+related muscles hard even after the stream stops. Notice the posture that your lower back
+and lower abdomen have taken on, and remember the feeling of contracting this muscle so
+that you can do it later. After you have emptied your bladder, continue to squeeze the
+muscle at 70 to 90% maximum force for an additional 10 seconds. It may ache tenderly,
+
+but performing this exercise each time you urinate will make this aching disappear within a
+matter of days.
+
+Start practicing it away from the toilet as well. You should feel comfortable performing the
+Kegel and “antiKegel” contractions in the presence of others. There is no reason to brace or
+self-limit your pelvic range just because other people are around. To really stimulate these
+erogenous areas and all the tissues and blood vessels involved, you can also try gently
+performing Kegels and antiKegels while you have an erection, whether clitoral or penile.
+Together, these exercises will help put an end to neurotic pelvic flinching and straining.
+
+Urine Expulsion as a Posture and Mindset
+
+You want to incorporate proper tone in these urine-expelling muscles into your daily standing,
+walking, and sitting postures. The muscles involved include the lower abdominals, so imagine
+being able to take a small punch to the lowest segment of your abs at any time. This means you
+need to practice walking around with your lower abs engaged as if you were peeing. | want to
+
+406
+Chapter 19: Stop Sexually Submissive Behavior
+
+encourage you to walk, jog, exercise, and socialize as if you are dribbling urine everywhere
+you go.
+
+“Listen” intently to the sensations involved. It should feel pleasurable. Imagine spurting
+rainbows and gushing warm velvet from your urethra onto everything in front of you.
+Experience everything orgasmically. This should be happening as you look at yourself in the
+mirror, as you walk around the block, and as you squeeze in that last repetition while
+exercising. Imagine that your genitals are permanently everted rather than inverted. As you
+strengthen the retentive and expulsive muscles, muscle memory will develop, and they
+will come to hold balanced tone automatically. | believe this is highly beneficial for
+psychosexual health.
+
+| suppressed these muscles during my lifetime through acquiescent, self-handicapping
+behavior. | have always been averse to dirty jokes and overt sex play, which may have led to
+less sexualized perineal posture growing up. | believe that | unconsciously allowed my Kegel
+muscles to strain and my expulsive muscles to atrophy because | was sexually repressive, and
+anal-retentive. Again, the expulsive urinary and anal sphincter muscles work antagonistically
+with the retentive muscles, meaning that expulsive qualities may be especially weak in
+“retentive” people. If you think that you may be anal-retentive, you are probably also urinary
+retentive. While we are talking about poop, please ask yourself whether combining distressed
+breathing while straining on the toilet seat during defecation may have traumatized your anal
+muscles. If so, you might consider using paced breathing while defecating, when constipated,
+and while contracting the anal retentive and expulsive muscles.
+
+Strengthening the muscles involved in expelling urine will make your behavior more
+assertive. Activity and tone in this area are associated with approach and the seizing of
+opportunities that are both sexual and non-sexual in nature. It is difficult to maintain a
+dominant, self-assured demeanor if the tone in the expulsive muscles is low. You have probably
+noticed that worry or sudden fear makes your retentive muscles tense and the expulsive ones
+limp. Similarly, encountering something sharp or experiencing fear of heights does this as well.
+For example, peering over the ledge from the Sth floor of a parking structure can make your
+whole pelvis seize up. This happens immediately and involuntarily during startle and fright.
+Your pelvic floor recoils from threat.
+
+When you take an ego blow or get upset or flustered, the muscles that expel urine similarly
+drop out of flexion. If your machismo is questioned, but you have the gumption to reassert
+yourself, you might notice the activity waiver and come back. Activity here “shrivels up” when
+people get their “balls busted.” For many depressed and anxious people, these muscles drop
+out of tonicity during social encounters. For sexually assertive people, the expulsive
+musculature develops a stronger tone when around others they find attractive. For sexually
+withdrawn people, the tone may actually decrease in these situations. Losing tone and
+accumulating strain in these muscles leads to emasculation and/or defeminization.
+
+When | first started to engage the muscles that expel urine, | would become afraid of
+upsetting the bully introduced in Chapter 2. | realized that | was afraid to engage the muscles
+even when he was not around. When | tried, thoughts, visuals, and a feeling of being in the
+bully’s presence would intrude into my mind unconsciously. It took me some time to realize
+that | was bracing these muscles in a restricted range out of fear of “offending” the bully.
+
+This bully was muscular, highly charismatic, a felon, and a murderer. On one occasion, | had
+
+407
+PROGRAM PEACE Self- Care Exercises to Reprogram Your Mind and Body
+
+seen him continue to make fun of and laugh at someone even after that person pulled a gun on
+him. As many bullies do, he would frequently tell sexually explicit stories describing his sexual
+prowess in attempts to intimidate other men. This is one of the fundamental forms that sexual
+toxicity takes.
+
+The man had acquired “pseudopsychopathy,” meaning he had developed criminal,
+antisocial, and hypersexual personality traits after severe brain trauma. He was catastrophically
+disinhibited after being fully ejected headfirst through the windshields of two cars he stole on
+separate occasions. | was subverting my sexuality in an attempt to appease this man. Simply
+becoming explicitly aware of this subversion was enough to end it. After bringing peace to this
+context, | realized that there were additional contexts that caused me to brace my genital
+musculature. What contexts of intimidation sting you in the genitals and keep you stuck ina
+partially contracted Kegel? Don’t let anyone keep you in a retentive state in which the genitals
+are retracted or keep you from contracting your expulsive muscles. Rather than being held taut
+in a restricted range, these muscles should fluctuate naturally between the two extremes of
+retention and expulsion as you go about your day.
+
+Once you become comfortable fully contracting the muscles that withhold and expel urine,
+you should notice them quiver involuntarily more frequently. Toning the muscles and stretching
+them out of partial contraction will increase the range of motion of your orgasms. You may also
+notice that you experience increased blood flow and heightened turgidity in your genitals. This
+suggests to me that formal physical therapy centered around exercising these muscles could
+treat both diminished sex drive and erectile dysfunction. However, most medical experts on the
+topic assume that these muscles operate autonomously and needn’t be exercised.
+
+This medical opinion is at odds with Ayurvedic medicine and tantric Hinduism, which
+recognize the base of the spine as a chakra. It is called muladhara, the root chakra, and
+kundalini yoga emphasizes that it must be used and meditated upon. Additionally, some
+Japanese Zen meditation practices emphasize the lower abdominal area (dantian or tanden) as
+a focal point for meditation. | believe the exercises in this chapter can guide you to exert
+control over and rehabilitate these foci.
+
+At one point, | realized | lacked the coordination to contract my urinary expulsive muscles
+and gluteus muscles simultaneously. When | tried, | held my breath. Many people have this
+functional dissociation. When these are dissociated, you are limited to either doing one or the
+other. However, it is easy to fix. Proper core stability demands that you be able to contract
+these muscles together actively. Everyone should teach their body to activate both the urinary
+and fecal expulsive muscles while simultaneously contracting their buttocks.
+
+Sexual Activity #19.4: Pairing Expulsive Tone with Gluteal Tone
+Stand with optimal posture, as described in Chapter 13. With your feet parallel and the top
+of your hips rolled backward, contract the gluteus muscles. Now contract either your urinary
+or fecal expulsive muscles as if you were trying to pee or defecate. Now try all three together.
+Spend time in this zone varying these contractions to different degrees while engaging in
+calm, paced breathing.
+
+408
+Chapter 19: Stop Sexually Submissive Behavior
+
+As with many other examples in the Program Peace system, if holding two dominant
+displays simultaneously is uncomfortable or difficult, they likely inhibit each other. However,
+if you can calmly practice them together, you disinhibit them and increase the probability they
+will arise together on their own.
+
+Walk Confidently as if Your Genitals Were on Display
+
+In Chapter 2, we discussed how submissive animals minimize the appearance of physical assets
+like horns, claws, and muscles. This includes the genitals. Your everyday posture and
+mannerisms reveal cues to others as to how comfortable you are naked. Body language evolved
+during our history as unclothed apes, so even clothed, we often act as if we were naked. Most
+people conceal their genitals during times of insecurity with their hands, legs, chairs, or tables.
+When a dominant person makes a power play, it is quite common for other people of the same
+sex to place their hands in front of their sex organs. The only time you should conceal or protect
+the genitals is to block a physical blow to the groin.
+
+Most people walk in a way that hides or apologizes for their genitalia. Walking like this
+involves hunching or crouching of the lower back. Remember the lumbar lordosis and anterior
+pelvic tilt discussed in previous chapters? We actually use these to withdraw our private parts
+from view. They obscure the genitals like a dog hiding its tail between its legs. You should do
+the exact opposite. This means walking around with the back and hips open as if presenting the
+genitalia. To do this, flex your buttocks. That’s right, gluteal contraction puts your genitals on
+display by pressing your hips forward, and rolling the top of your pelvis back, as discussed in
+Chapter 17. It is an entirely different style of standing and walking that comes across as much
+more sexually self-assured.
+
+If you can imagine being comfortably naked in social situations, you will project higher
+confidence. The more time you spend naked, the more comfortable it will become, which is
+why | strongly recommend sleeping naked when possible. If you have never slept naked, you
+may lose some sleep the first night because of how uncomfortable you feel. But you will relax
+into it within a week. | also recommend spending time alone in your room in the buff as
+described next.
+
+Sexual Activity #19.5: Spend an Hour in Your Room Naked
+Make sure no one can see into your room, and you won’t be disturbed. Lock the door.
+Completely disrobe. Place towels underneath you if uncomfortable sitting on the floor naked.
+Spend a full hour reading, watching TV, meditating, whatever you want, completely naked. It
+can help to have a mirror in front of you. Use optimal posture. Once you become
+comfortable, try talking on the phone. How do you hold your body when completely nude?
+Do you tend to cover up or hide your genitalia? Is your posture retentive or expulsive? Notice
+these tendencies change as you become comfortable. Experiment with pushing your pelvis
+out, contracting your glutes, and spreading your legs in different ways. If performed with
+paced breathing, this activity will transform your relationship with your birthday suit.
+
+409
+PROGRAM PEACE Self- Care Exercises to Reprogram Your Mind and Body
+
+Masturbation Trauma
+
+Most of us were petitioned by our parents at a very young age to stop touching our genitals in
+the company of others. We learned to feel bad for stimulating the area, resulting in a subtle
+form of trauma. | recommend briefly touching yourself in a sexual/affectionate way at least five
+times a day. This can be a graze, stroke, or reassuring grope. Some people already do this
+regularly. To others, it is very foreign. You can do it alone or discretely in public. Even a second
+of self-comforting can help decrease bracing of the pelvic floor.
+
+| used to worry that frequent masturbation could cause specific forms of cancer until | used
+pubmed.com to look at the actual medical studies. It does not. There are no diseases linked to
+masturbation. So, give yourself carte blanche to be completely self-indulgent. However, there
+are a few important caveats to keep in mind. Masturbating to pornography may desensitize you
+to real people, potentially leading to sexual dysfunction. Also, masturbating with a lubricant can
+make it difficult for men to sustain an erection with a condom. Also, consider masturbating
+while standing up to avoid losing the ability to remain aroused while standing. Definitely
+consider masturbating while paced breathing. For some people, it takes time and work merely
+to reach arousal while paced breathing. But the process will steel and gird your sexuality.
+
+Studies have shown that placing tiny vibrators near or on the genitals of mice can increase
+sexual response, interest, and the production of sex hormones. Studies like these suggest that
+the external use of vibrators may convince the mammalian body that it resides in some kind of
+maximally optimal sexual environment and may in turn elicit an optimal sexual response from it
+(involving changes in gene expression). Keep in mind though that masturbating to orgasm with
+some sex toys may make it difficult to sustain arousal during regular intercourse.
+
+The fascia and muscles nestled in the pelvis control the responsivity of sexual arousal.
+Massage and myofascial release are probably beneficial for these muscles; however, there is no
+existing rubric to help people do this safely and effectively. Moreover, excessive pressure could
+damage your sexual organs or drastically change the tone of the muscles that regulate blood
+flow to them. For these reasons, | will not describe a protocol for genital massage here. If you
+decide to use compressive massage on the areas between your legs, | recommend using only
+very light pressure. That being said, you should also find that groin stretching and anti-rigidity
+can be helpful in conditioning these muscles.
+
+Sexual Expressivity
+
+The anti-rigidity exercises for the lumbar spine from Chapter 17 will help free up your hips and
+lower back, making your sexual expressivity more sensual and enjoyable. Try to incorporate
+previously dormant muscles into intercourse and use them to explore new movement patterns.
+Use the next two activities to enhance the coordination of the muscles and joints involved.
+
+Sexual Activity #19.6: Bump Your Pubis Against the Wall
+
+Find some privacy and turn on some sexy music. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart
+and your toes touching a wall. Press your pubic bone into the wall to the beat of the music.
+You can bump against it like a bouncing basketball or smear yourself into it with each thrust.
+Contract your buttocks firmly as you advance. Vary the curvature of your lower back, the
+distance between your feet, and the placement of each blow against the wall.
+
+410
+Chapter 19: Stop Sexually Submissive Behavior
+
+After a few sessions, you will develop the coordination to turn it into a dance. You can move
+each advance from left to right or from top to bottom. Doing this against a door jamb can
+give you the leg room you need to bend your knees and drop lower. You can also try this
+exercise by bumping your butt against the wall instead of your pubis. Bang everything from
+your pubic bone to your hips, your sacrum to your sitz bones into the brick, wood, or plaster.
+Focus on rhythm, timing, and bravado.
+
+Good sex should provide a massage to the pubic bone, and the muscles that surround it,
+for both partners. The friction between your pubic hair and your partner’s should make
+rhythmic crackling sounds. Pubic-bone-on-pubic-bone massage increases arousal and is one of
+the best ways to stimulate the clitoris. Just like the muscles in our lower backs, muscles that
+surround the pubic bone can take the form of tense cords that form tense cords. Teaching
+yourself to massage them during the act of sex, along with those of the other person, can be
+very sexually empowering.
+
+Sexual Activity #19.7: Hump Your Pillows to Music
+Put on some music or a music video. Stack pillows on your bed to support your pelvis in
+different sexual positions. You can straddle these pillows, kneel, squat, or lie on top of them.
+You can also fold a pillow over a couple of times to 
+Chapter 25: Finding Happiness Through Playfulness & Composed Kindness
+
+It can be freeing to be mellow and passive and to support the leadership of others.
+
+Allow other people to take over and yourself to relax when they do. Relish the relief from being
+in charge. Do so while exuding balanced, non-confrontational energy. Perpetual assertion takes
+its toll. It involves intense face time, eye contact, talking, decision making, and an overtaxing of
+existing bracing patterns. It leads to social fatigue and is why high-pressure executives and CEOs
+can age so rapidly. We should be handing over the pack leader role constantly, passing it
+around from person to person, sharing the stage, the crown, and the accompanying burdens.
+
+Often, in real life, we are forced to play an inferior role. At our workplace, we must submit
+to higher-ups to keep our jobs and advance our careers. There are many reasons you should
+treat your boss as the dominant individual. What’s more, it may be best for you, your boss, and
+the business to allow them to act superior in some ways. That said, don’t hurt yourself just to
+let the boss be the boss. Acquiesce appropriately to your employer, law enforcement, judges,
+and other authority figures without diminishing your posture, shortening your breath, or
+surrendering your pride. This will allow you to maintain a healthy serotonin level regardless of
+your place on the corporate ladder.
+
+Just because you don’t try to stop someone from acting dominant doesn’t mean they are
+dominating you. They are only dominating you if you are inhibiting yourself or avoiding
+confrontation with them out of fear. They can never dominate you as long as you stay
+composed. Take sovereignty from needless one-upmanship.
+
+Keep in mind that everyone has essential observations and keen insights to impart.
+
+All humans are our fellows and our equals. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Every man | meet is
+in some way my superior.” So, let every man and woman be your superior at times, especially
+when they have something to teach you. When you see someone do better than you at
+something you value, don’t feel envious or threatened. Instead, feel eager to learn. This is ego
+stability and emotional strength.
+
+When threatened by an intruder, a dominant gorilla will let out a tremendous roar, charge,
+and knock down the newcomer with an immense hand swipe. However, outside of defending
+themselves and their group members, dominant gorillas do not generally overtly assert their
+rank.* Even though gorillas are immense powerhouses, animal behaviorists often describe them
+as shy because, most of the time, they don’t feel like they have anything to prove. It is not that
+they are shy; it is that we are arrogant, pompous, and flagrantly adversarial.
+
+The only way to transcend the dominance hierarchy is to be content when you temporarily
+find yourself in a subordinate position; to be comfortable when others perceive you as
+subordinate without trying to change their mind. You don’t want to be a doormat, but neither
+do you want to be consumed by resisting looking like a doormat. Only doormats worry about
+being doormats.
+
+Our unconscious mind values prestige over happiness. The two are often at odds. You can
+change this by intentionally pursuing happiness over prestige.
+
+Optimism, Excitement, and Feeling Good
+
+It pays to be happy. Optimists live longer, have stronger immune systems, recover from injury
+more quickly, and have increased mental and physical health. Happiness and positive emotions
+are linked to higher earnings, better appraisal at work, relationships of higher quality, and
+increased likability.2 Happy people are perceived as more intelligent, competent, and physically
+
+517
+PROGRAM PEACE Self- Care Exercises to Reprogram Your Mind and Body
+
+attractive. Optimists cope more effectively with stress, are generally healthier, and are less
+likely to become depressed.? When optimists have coronary bypass surgery, they heal more
+quickly than pessimists.4 Positive thinking results in a cardiovascular system that is less reactive
+to stress.° But how do we become happy in the first place?
+
+Optimists attribute the cause of adverse events to external, specific, and transient factors.
+In other words, they see a tragedy as a one-off fluke. Pessimists, on the other hand, attribute
+failures to their own internal, global, and permanent shortcomings. They see themselves as
+useless and assume the world is out to get them. If this is you, stop it. Regain your optimism by
+recognizing that you have the potential to fix anything and everything that has ever been wrong
+with your life. Recognize that the “future you” will be skilled and competent enough to solve
+any problems that arise.
+
+We are constantly making expressions to ourselves as we go about our days alone.
+Whatever these expressions are, they constitute our true selves. For most people, it’s wincing.
+If that’s you, make the gestures and facial expressions of happiness when you are by yourself.
+The smiling and the postural alterations from previous chapters will help with this. If solitary
+happiness is not practiced regularly, attempts at appearing happy among others will be fake.
+Remember how excited you could become as a child? You had no reservations about expressing
+exuberance and enthusiasm. Nothing is stopping you from feeling zestfully happy right now
+aside from the force of habit.
+
+| have spent much of this book describing how we use our bodily energy to traumatize our
+tissues. This might make you assume that our life force is destructive. It is not. You must
+redirect that same life force away from anxiety and tension toward happiness and joy. The
+more you do this, the less energy there is to sustain stress. Doing so actively reprograms how
+your body routes energy, setting you up for hardwired happiness. Accordingly, all the exercises
+in this book should be done with joy and optimistic expectations. This will make them much
+more powerful.
+
+Be a lifeless corpse when it comes to tension, ego, and pessimism. When it comes to
+playfulness, however, that’s when you want to be alive and spend your chi-like energy on
+positive social displays. Let’s start with laughter.
+
+Laughter in Other Animals
+
+Many mammals laugh. For example, most rodents emit long ultrasonic vocalizations during
+rough and tumble play. The sounds rats and mice make have been described as chirping and
+occur in the 50-kHz range (inaudible to humans). When chirping, they actively seek being
+tickled and played with. They chirp when wrestling, chasing, or searching for one another.
+They chirp during courting and before copulation. Researchers have interpreted rat chirping as
+an expectation of something rewarding and it appears to elicit friendly social approach in other
+members of their species.® It also nullifies anxiety. If you tickle a rat after a fearful situation,
+
+it will neutralize the negative emotions and vastly decrease any fear-related learning going on
+in its brain.
+
+Dogs can pant using heavy, forced exhalations in a way that suggests a form of modified
+laughter. They use it during play. Dogs exposed to a recorded “dog-laugh” exhibit significantly
+reduced stress behaviors, increased tail wagging, the display of the canine “play-face,” as well
+as prosocial behavior such as approaching and licking another dog’s lips.’
+
+518
+Chapter 25: Finding Happiness Through Playfulness & Composed Kindness
+
+Chimps, gorillas, and orangutans all exhibit laughter-like vocalizations in response to
+physical play, including friendly contact like chasing, wrestling, and tickling.® It is a shallow pant,
+conveying nonaggression that is highly reminiscent of suppressed laughter in humans. Their
+laughter shows the same sonographic pattern as that of human babies. They also use similar
+facial expressions while laughing and are ticklish in the same areas that humans are. Ape
+laughter consists of a series of exhalations and inhalations (like panting). On the other hand,
+human laughter consists of a series of exhalations with no intervening inhalations.?
+
+Mice, dogs, apes, and humans make their breath shallow to create rapport. Insistence on
+breathing at long intervals caused me to stop doing this. | was so focused on diaphragmatic
+breathing that | refused to breathe shallowly even when joking with friends. This is like refusing
+to make anything other than an expressionless face. Think of shallow breathing during fun,
+jovial play as a form of healthy panting that serves as a temporary micro-break or counterpose
+to diaphragmatic breathing. Refusing to pant is refusing to play.
+
+Rehabilitating Your Laughter Will Make It Much More Pleasurable
+
+Gelotology is the study of laughter and the positive effects it can have on the body. Proponents
+advocate the induction of laughter on therapeutic grounds.’° Laughter yoga (hasya yoga) and
+laughter meditation also use voluntary laughter for therapeutic purposes. Studies have shown
+that it alleviates both stress and pain.‘ These practices assume that voluntary or forced
+laughter provides some of the same benefits as spontaneous laughter. Voluntary laughter is
+often done in groups and may turn into real laughter. Participants are instructed to facilitate
+laughing by using “childlike playfulness” and eye contact. These practices are great, but | think
+they do not get down to the issue’s crux. From what | have seen, people who engage in this
+practice are mostly laughing superficially. To reap the benefits, we must isolate and strengthen
+the core laughing reflex.
+
+The muscles involved in laughing have been traumatized by life stress. As an infant, your
+laugh was primordial and bona fide. Years of anxious laughter and worrying that your laugh is
+too aggressive have damaged your instinctual laughing pattern. As you might expect, people
+who are depressed or anxious have the least convincing laughs. Extremely dominant people
+laugh loudly, without hesitating, at whatever they like. Most people, however, stifle their
+laughter in the same way they stifle their posture and breathing. This explains why most adults’
+laughter is eccentric and deviated from the innate laughter pattern.
+
+A baby’s laughter is vivacious and natural. To relearn to laugh genuinely, it is helpful to
+watch infants and toddlers laughing. Take the time to search for videos of “babies laughing”
+on the internet and mimic them. You will see that infants don’t stifle their laughter. They don’t
+worry about their laugh being too forceful or about offending someone. Neither should we.
+Your laugh should shake you to your core and be intensely pleasurable.
+
+A hearty and progressive emptying of the lungs applies a significant load to the diaphragm
+and the muscles of the chest wall, triggering the endorphin system.” This is why social laughter
+is correlated with an elevated pain threshold.*? However, most adult laughs hardly activate
+the pleasure system at all. After years of stifling laughter, we have forgotten how to laugh in
+a way that produces this response. For many people, the diaphragm’s role in laughter has
+been weakened so much that laughter no longer recruits endorphins and is draining rather
+than energizing.
+
+519
+PROGRAM PEACE Self- Care Exercises to Reprogram Your Mind and Body
+
+Fake or nervous laughter comes from the throat and often results in increased tension
+there. During natural laughter, the diaphragm does most of the work. By training yourself
+to laugh through deep contractions of the diaphragm and abdominals, you can rebuild an
+authentic laugh. These muscles should reach exhaustion and start to fail during a good laugh.
+If your diaphragm and abdominals begin to burn like they did when you were a child, you know
+that you are doing it right. The next exercise will show you exactly how to retrain your
+diaphragm to fully participate in the act of laughing.
+
+Happiness Exercise #25.1: Diaphragmatic Laughing
+
+Practice laughing while exhaling completely. This involves an uninterrupted emptying of the
+lungs. Inhale completely only after you laugh/exhale completely. Your exhale should consist
+of a long series of laughing sounds punctuated by vocal (glottal) closure (“haha” equals two
+glottal closures). The brief closing of the vocal tract (glottis) against the exhalation allows
+pressure to build and makes the laugh sound like a series of rapid-fire punches. They should
+roll out somewhat like the Rs when you roll your tongue. Practice this as an exercise and
+attempt to make the laughter last for at least five seconds, but shoot for 10 to 20 seconds.
+Laugh all the way to the bottom of your range of exhalation. Use the principles of anti-
+rigidity. Try the following variations:
+
+1) Focus on and coordinate the laughs (glottal closures) so that they proceed at a
+smooth and steady rate.
+
+2) Notice inadvertent irregularities in timing, as well as the tendency to gulp,
+choke, or falter, and iron these out. It’s okay if it sounds mechanical and
+robotic at first while you are relearning the basics.
+
+3) Cause the punctuated exhalations to roll out as fast as possible while
+maintaining a fixed rhythm. After you gain coordination in speeding them up,
+try slowing them down.
+
+4) Do this using your voice at various pitches but focus most on using a deep
+voice to create a deep laugh.
+
+5) Explore your preferred ways of laughing, varying resonance, inflection, and
+timing. Modulate each in as many ways as possible.
+
+6) Employ different melodies and model other people’s laughs. Spend time
+listening to and imitating actor Mark Hamill’s maniacal Joker laugh.
+
+7) Try laughing while exhaling completely until it turns into a wheeze and you
+feel you don’t have a cubic centimeter of air left in your lungs. Ensure that the
+laughing pattern remains coordinated even at the bottom of your exhalation.
+This will greatly strengthen the muscles involved.
+
+8) Don’t raise your shoulders when you laugh and focus on keeping them pushed
+toward the floor. Maintain the tenets of optimal posture. Don’t allow your
+spine to curve into a forward “C” shape. You might try lying on your stomach
+while you laugh to ensure that your spine is straight.
+
+9) Do this with a thoroughly relaxed face or while you massage your face so that
+you can laugh heartily without intense facial constriction. Induce paroxysms of
+
+520
+Chapter 25: Finding Happiness Through Playfulness & Composed Kindness
+
+laughter without raising the eyebrows, squinting, sneering, or tensing any
+other muscles.
+
+10) The pressure to keep exhaling should be forceful and have a life of its own. It
+should feel like a boa constrictor is wrapped around your chest, squeezing you
+hard and only giving you a short period to inhale every few seconds.
+
+11) Laugh authoritatively, compellingly, boldly, forcefully, mightily. Work on
+making it contagious.
+
+Because the muscles are strained, stagnant, and uncoordinated, your laugh may sound like
+that of an insane villain at first. But, with practice, it will become friendly and ebullient. It is
+important to do this exercise loudly, gleefully, and unhesitatingly, so make sure that you are not
+worried about others hearing you. Do it in a closet or, better yet, in the car.
+
+It will be uncomfortable at first. The muscles you engage may be so weak that they feel
+susceptible to damage. Mine certainly were. If so, take it easy the first few days and build up to
+doing it vigorously. Use laughter to work out the cramp in your diaphragm. This exercise is a
+powerful complement to diaphragmatic breathing exercises and will help you reach muscles
+that you otherwise could not. To this end, try it while lying on your stomach, from a forward
+fold, or from happy baby pose with your belly pushed out.
+
+At first, the laughing exercise should make you feel weary. After only one week, you will be
+able to push harder and be more adept at coordinating the pulses of laughter. After a few
+weeks, you will be good at it and find yourself laughing more often. This exercise transformed
+my laugh from a flimsy, perfunctory, courtesy laugh into something enjoyable. Now | laugh
+spontaneously, heartily, resolutely, and much more frequently. | find laughing tremendously
+gratifying, and things that were barely amusing to me before are now hilarious.
+
+| believe that laughing evolved to help humans let off steam. It may have allowed instances
+of camaraderie and social bonding to influence an individual’s life strategy to place less value
+on the adaptive aspects of trauma. In other words, the more conducive your environment is to
+laughing, the more your body assumes that your environment is a good one and that it is safe
+to be optimistic. A real laugh was probably designed by evolution to help us attain a full-range,
+hard contraction of the diaphragm. As with pant-hooting (Exercise 11.6), this contraction
+relieves the diaphragm of the partial contraction caused by stress and shallow breathing.
+
+The more you rehabilitate your laugh, the more you increase your diaphragm’s potential
+for providing you with endorphins. Remember that endorphins are most reliably produced by
+grooming, singing, laughing, and play.!4 These are addressed in Chapter 6, Chapter 12, this
+section, and the next section, respectively,
+
+Some people with relatively calm nasopharynxes can clear their nasopharynx in the same
+way others clear their throats. It is like snorting, except it involves breathing out rather than
+breathing in. Some people call it a nose laugh. | see it as a dominance signal conveying that the
+person’s nasopharynx is not tense. When my nasopharynx was tense, | was incapable of
+doing it. Once you have compressed your nasopharynx using the exercises in Chapter 11,
+you can build the coordination to perform this empowering laugh.
+
+Some people use this signal to laugh at something they find inferior, like rolling the eyes.
+Please don’t use it derisively or to ridicule people. Instead, use it as a heartfelt laugh to
+
+521
+PROGRAM PEACE Self- Care Exercises to Reprogram Your Mind and Body
+
+communicate that you are enjoying absurdity. People usually find it exciting, and it makes them
+want to laugh along with you.
+
+Happiness Exercise #25.2: Laugh through the Nasopharynx
+
+Use a brief (0.5 to 3 seconds) but powerful exhalation to force air out through your
+nasopharynx with the mouth closed. This snort is similar to a scoff or chortle. It sometimes
+arises when you try to withhold laughter. First practice doing it in small, short bursts to
+develop the proper coordination so that you can build up to doing it in a prolonged way.
+With practice, you will be able to hold convincing, three-second nose laughs. It is a convivial
+way to express amusement that improves quickly with practice.
+
+Be Playful
+
+“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing” — George Bernard Shaw
+(1856-1950)
+
+Play, like laughter, is a form of medicine, but certain conditions must be met for it to be
+genuine. All stressors (anger, fear, pain, hunger, and separation) reduce play. Animals must be
+well fed, comfortable, and healthy for play to take place. When these conditions are met, rats
+and mice chase and pounce, wrestle, pin, nip, poke, and knock each other over. This is the kind
+of play that generates high-frequency laughter-like chirps at 50 kHz. Physical rough-and-tumble
+play is the most fun of all. At one point, | thought all aggressive acts were unpleasant, but
+judging from play in other mammals, feigned aggression can be joyous.
+
+It is important to note that when mammals play, rapid role reversal is a defining element.
+In other words, they know it is friendly when everyone gets a chance to be on top. Knowledge
+of this should influence us to pass being dominant back and forth with our friends. The rat that
+ends up on top more often during pins becomes dominant. The continuation of play
+necessitates a willingness on the part of the winner to self-handicap. Dominant rats that go
+easy on others always have playmates, but those that bully are ignored when they try to solicit
+play. Play helps animals determine who to avoid and with whom they can develop cooperative
+relationships. They learn to dominate but also accept defeat without being “defeated.”
+
+Dominant animals would rather play, but aggressive animals would rather fight. Rats
+involved in a fight bite each other and box. This can lead to injury. They stand on their hind legs
+and strike each other with their front paws. When they do this, the 50-kHz “laughter” turns into
+22-kHz “complaints.” This is similar to chimpanzees among whom play is accompanied by
+wrestling, panting, and a play face, whereas fighting involves boxing, tearing, scratching, biting,
+and barking.
+
+522
+Chapter 25: Finding Happiness Through Playfulness & Composed Kindness
+
+Ilustration 25.1: Animals playing.
+
+Rather than being based around wrestling, human play focuses on verbal interchange and
+banter. Repartee involves provocation, rejoinders, biting commentary, and, if friendly, laughter.
+As in other mammals, this form of verbal jousting can engender friendship, respect, and
+cooperation. It can be made more fun with the use of bombastic quarreling, absurd
+braggadocio, frivolous histrionics, grandiose pretentiousness, and ostentatious balderdash.
+When you do it, be spunky, employ exuberance, and enjoy it. You don’t have to act excitable to
+be sparkling and bubbly; you just need to be playful. Usually, if you manage to entertain
+yourself, others will be entertained as well.
+
+Remember to be like the mice during play and allow others their opportunity to be on top,
+lest you risk losing playmates. This includes giving others equal chance to talk and refraining
+from dominating conversations. A dog initiates play by crouching. A monkey initiates it by
+exposing its rear end. Both of these actions involve self-diminishment and vulnerability.
+Showing others that you don’t take yourself too seriously or exposing a vulnerability can make
+them want to play with you. After experimenting with this for years now, | have concluded that
+you can be as vulnerable and nice as you can, and as long as you are playful, it won’t be
+mistaken for weakness.
+
+Play ranks among the most beneficial neuroplastic interventions. Placing rodents into
+enriched environments where they can socialize, wrestle, and play with others results in
+heavier brains and higher levels of dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin. Studies have found
+that rats deprived of play are more fearful and aggressive toward other rats. Encouraging
+playfulness in animals is one of the few behavioral interventions known to reverse anxiety and
+depressive symptoms.*> This is probably because it allows them to shift from the threat
+response to the challenge response.
+
+Social play involves creativity and requires that we learn to approach others in diverting
+and lively ways. Imagination and fantasy can also facilitate play. My favorite way to play with
+people is to make up imaginary scenarios: “What would you do if...?” | am animated,
+shameless, and immature when doing this. My scenarios include helicopters, ninjas, dinosaurs,
+and hats with pinwheels on top of them. When other people do this, recognize it as play,
+participate, and egg them on by laughing with them. Whenever someone uses an analogy or
+poetic license to describe a situation, help them flesh it out until you have created a whimsical,
+comical cartoon world. Feel at home with wordplay, punning, nonsense, and silliness.
+
+
+Use Sensory Deprivation to Unmask Neurotic Activity
+
+Most of us are afraid that fixing our gaze on anything will make us look too calm. We keep our
+eyes busy to make others feel comfortable. Take a minute now and observe yourself looking
+around. You should be able to sense pressure to keep glancing neurotically. This comes froma
+form of anxiety in the eye motor centers that act below the level of conscious awareness. The
+restlessness makes it difficult for you to maintain eye contact and to fixate on anything if other
+people are watching you. The best way to retrain this nervous habit is to become more
+comfortable anchoring your gaze without worrying about how you may appear to others while
+doing it.
+
+Eye Exercise #4.13: Sustained Gaze
+
+Spend two minutes staring at a single point. Notice any impulses to glance away and gently
+override them. You might try to keep your eyes fixated on a single feature of the wall or
+ceiling, or you might try to keep your gaze limited to a circumscribed region of space like a
+light fixture. If you’re having trouble, cut out a picture of a face from a magazine and tape it
+to your wall or ceiling to gaze at contentedly. Allow yourself to feel free to space out like a
+child absorbed in a daydream. Don’t be concerned about looking dazed or stupefied and
+don’t worry if this level of ocular relaxation causes your eyes to cross for a few moments.
+
+Sensory deprivation can help uncover baseline neurotic tendencies. Let’s start with sight.
+Tracking your ocular behavior in complete darkness will make it clear how much of your eye
+movement is high-strung and unnecessary. The best way to do this is to wait until nighttime,
+turn off all the lights in your home, and lie down on the floor of a closet or bathroom. Do
+whatever you can to make this area completely dark. You may need to put up curtains or drape
+some towels over the cracks. Being in pitch blackness makes it easier to feel absolutely certain
+that no one can see your face, expressions, or eye movements. Think back to the way your
+submissive signaling diminished when you took that walk around the block while pretending to
+be invisible. Complete darkness allows you an even greater degree of invisibility and anonymity.
+No one and nothing can be offended by how relaxed you appear because you truly are invisible.
+Take the opportunity to relax fully and open your eyes very wide without compunction.
+
+In absolute darkness, | feel like a slimy, gelatinous sea slug that has been removed from all
+danger. | can feel the squinting contraction release in the same way that the sea slug we
+discussed in Chapter 2 releases its gill. The complete vacancy of visual stimulus will desensitize
+you and provide your eyes with the experience they need to grow wide. This phenomenon is
+
+117
+PROGRAM PEACE Self- Care Exercises to Reprogram Your Mind and Body
+
+also a bit like eyestalk extension in snails. When you touch a snail, its eyestalks retract. The eyes
+invert within the eyestalks and travel down toward the head. This action blinds the snail but is
+an essential defensive reflex meant to protect the eyes. After several seconds, when the snail
+starts to feel safe again, the eyes slowly evert, the eyestalks reach full length, and the eyes pop
+out at the top. Use the exercises above to develop fearless, wide eyes and fully extend your
+“eayestalks.”
+
+In absolute darkness, you will also be able to see phosphenes, which are colored shapes
+that are produced by your visual system. These may take the form of dots, stars, lines, static,
+circles, or various other shapes.’ This visual activity will be accentuated if you lightly rub your
+eyes. The phosphenes represent a type of background noise that is usually not noticeable yet
+always ongoing. When the lights are on, phosphene activity is put to work, helping you make
+perceptual distinctions. When the lights are off, that activity hits a stumbling block, amounting
+to a low-level form of hallucination.
+
+| believe these phosphenes can play a role in driving anxious thought. Notice when they
+flash abruptly, and calm your reaction to this. You may notice that they flare when you look
+straight, keeping you from maintaining a fixed gaze. You may also notice that they burst in the
+corner of your eye. When they flash like this in the periphery of your vision, | believe they may
+be reminding you to scan for potential threats that are to the side of you or behind you. When |
+first started doing this, the phosphene activity appeared sinister and frightening. | even saw
+flashes of scenes from horror movies. This all contributed strongly to the feeling of being unsafe
+in the dark.
+
+This may have also been the case for my cat Niko. He cried like a kitten in the dark closet
+the first few times, but now he will join me of his own volition. Notice your reactions and try to
+bring peace to your conscious and unconscious responses to the phosphene activity by pairing
+the experience with diaphragmatic breathing. After doing Exercise 4.14 twice for five minutes, |
+never again saw any frightful apparitions. | strongly recommend that you use this technique to
+free the background activity of your visual system from unnecessary negativity.
+
+Eye Exercise #4.14: Vision in Complete Darkness
+
+Lie down on the floor in a pitch-black room. Keep your eyes as wide as possible and observe
+your eye movements. Practice looking in different directions and sustaining your gaze at
+different points with the eyes wide and eyebrows relaxed. You will notice your eyes dart
+around in the dark. They will display an intense, agitated tendency to move quickly on their
+own without any conscious deliberation. Simply observing this and practicing sustained
+gazing in utter blackness will allow you to reduce the intensity. Nonjudgmentally monitor the
+visual activity (colored phosphenes), the eye movement activity, and the feelings that come
+from being in utter darkness. Use this method to dismantle your fear of the dark.
+
+| recommend buying noise-reducing earmuffs to use in your dark closet. With the earmuffs
+on, you will be able to hear the background activity of your auditory system just as darkness
+reveals the background activity of your visual system. For most of us, background auditory
+function takes the form of a ringing or buzzing in the ears, which is known as tinnitus.22 When |
+first heard the hissing sound, amplified by the earmuffs, it was very upsetting. | abhorred it.
+
+118
+Chapter 4: Hold a Steady, Upward Gaze with Wide Eyes
+
+Many people feel this way, which is unfortunate because some degree of tinnitus is always
+there, whether we are conscious of it or not. | found that the practice of breathing
+diaphragmatically and listening to my tinnitus gradually reduced its volume and made it far less
+emotionally disquieting. Paced, diaphragmatic breathing will quickly help you come to peace
+with being alone, in complete darkness, with nothing but the background noise of your own
+visual and auditory systems. This will make it so that their default settings do not haunt you
+during everyday life.
+
+Conclusion
+The final exercise puts several of the routines from this chapter together into a single routine
+that you can perform while watching television.
+
+Eye Exercise #4.15: Watching TV Upside Down
+
+Lie on the floor, on your back, with your head near the TV and your feet away from it. Watch
+a movie or television program upside down so that you are looking straight up at the screen.
+Your eyebrows should be visible but out of focus, just below the bottom of the TV’s border.
+Do not allow your brow to raise. Keep your eyes wide and your face relaxed. Try to maintain
+constant eye contact with the characters on the television. Place your breath metronome
+next to the TV so that it can guide you in paced diaphragmatic breathing. Remain this way for
+the duration of a TV show or movie.
+
+Afterward, look in a mirror. You should notice that your eyes look fuller, happier, and calmer.
+Watching inverted video is also a challenge for your brain’s visual systems and may build
+cognitive and perceptual skills.
+
+Some of these exercises may seem strange, forced, and almost comical. Remember,
+though, that when you perform them, you are coactivating behavioral subroutines not
+ordinarily coactivated together because of social constraints. By pairing these with
+diaphragmatic breathing, you reeducate your nervous system to treat them as safe, making
+that combination of subroutines possible. The more you do it, the more probable it is to arise
+spontaneously in the future and, eventually, become a fixed part of your personality. You will
+rarely have the opportunity to make prolonged eye contact, looking up with wide eyes,
+breathing diaphragmatically in the course of everyday life. To build optimal behaviors into our
+repertoire, we must create artificially ideal worlds in which to practice.
+
+The next chapter widens our focus. Behaviors like squinting, looking down, and glancing
+away all have muscular components to them. Chapter 5 discusses repetitive muscular strain in
+detail and considers the panoply of negative effects on us. This will set the context for the rest
+of the book, which will guide you to overcome it.
+
+119
+PROGRAM PEACE Self- Care Exercises to Reprogram Your Mind and Body
+
+Chapter 4: Bullet Points
+
+e Squinting, eyebrow raising, looking down, and gaze aversion are forms of trauma that
+fracture our composure but can easily be rehabilitated.
+
+e Widening your eyes, relaxing your brow, looking up, and practicing a fixed gaze have
+many benefits and will literally change your perspective on life.
+
+e Squinting is defensive and intended to protect the eyeballs. On a fundamental level it is
+a sign of defensiveness or submission. Deliberately widening the eyes can end excessive
+squinting and is especially easy to do when breathing long, deep breaths.
+
+e Raised eyebrows are analogous to the action of moving the ears backward in other
+mammals. This action is performed by an animal being chased so that it can hear its
+attacker behind it. It is submissive and so should not be strained for long periods.
+
+e Eyebrows lowered is analogous to ears forward, which is the posture for an animal
+chasing another. This should not be strained, either. However, becoming comfortable
+lowering your eyebrows into a full frown will increase your nonverbal dominance. The
+same goes for glaring and the side-eye.
+
+e Looking down is submissive and doing it habitually weakens the muscles that allow us to
+look up. Looking upward above the horizon more often strengthens your ocular muscles
+and conditions your nervous system to stop casting your gaze toward the floor.
+
+e Social trauma has caused us to become afraid of fixing our gaze on anything, especially
+another’s eyes.
+
+e Making prolonged eye contact with yourself in a mirror or simply gazing calmly at points
+in space will train your unconscious visual control systems to be comfortable
+maintaining a fixed gaze.
+
+e After making eye contact, look at or near the eye line rather than below it.
+e Looking at characters on the TV straight in their eyes will strengthen your ability to look
+real people in the eyes.
+
+e Speaking to someone on the telephone while making sustained, wide-eyed eye contact
+with yourself in a mirror will strengthen your face-to-face rapport with others.
+
+e Spending time in complete darkness while engaging in paced breathing will help you
+make your visual system’s default activity less chaotic and frightening. Using sound-
+reducing earmuffs can do the same for your default auditory activity.
+
+e Watching TV upside down can reinforce looking up and eye-widening
+
+120
+Chapter 4: Hold a Steady, Upward Gaze with Wide Eyes
+
+Chapter 4: Endnotes
+
+1. Pease, B., & Pease, A. (2004). The definitive book of body language. Bantam Books.
+2. Lutz, T. (2001). Crying: The natural and cultural history of tears. Norton.
+
+3. Hasson, O. (2009). Emotional tears as biological signals. Evolutionary Psychology, 7(3),
+363-370.
+
+4. Even, C., Schréder, C. M., Friedman, S., & Rouillon, F. (2008). Efficacy of light therapy in
+nonseasonal depression: A systematic review. Journal of Affective Disorders, 108(1-2), 11-23.
+
+5. Keating, C. F. (1985). Human dominance signals: The primate in us. In S. L. Ellyson & J. F.
+Dovidio (Eds.), Power, dominance, and nonverbal behavior (pp. 89-108). Springer-Verlag.
+
+6. Keating, C. F., & Keating, E. G. (1982). Visual scan patterns of rhesus monkeys viewing
+faces. Perception, 11(2), 211-219.
+
+7. Keating, 1985, Human dominance signals.
+8. Chevalier-Skolnikoff, S. (2006). Facial expression of emotion in nonhuman primates.
+In P. Ekman (Ed.), Darwin and facial expression: A century of research in review (pp. 11-90).
+
+Malor Books.
+
+9. Trichas, S., & Schyns, B. (2012). The face of leadership: Perceiving leaders from facial
+expression. The Leadership Quarterly, 23(3), 545-566.
+
+10. Carney, D. R., Hall, J. A. A., & LeBeau, L. S. (2005). Beliefs about the nonverbal expression of
+social power. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 29, 105-123.
+
+11. Tubbs, S. (2009). Human communication: Principles and contexts (12th ed.). McGraw-Hill.
+
+12. Hermann, H. R. (2017). Dominance and aggression in humans and other animals: The great
+game of life. Academic Press.
+
+13. Sapolsky, R. M. (2005). The influence of social hierarchy on primate health. Science,
+308(5722), 648-652.
+
+14. Gomez, J. C. (1996). Ostensive behavior in great apes: The role of eye contact. In A. E.
+Russon, K. A. Bard, & S. T. Parker (Eds.), Reaching into thought: The minds of the great apes
+(pp. 331-151). Cambridge University Press.
+
+121
+PROGRAM PEACE Self- Care Exercises to Reprogram Your Mind and Body
+
+15. Cruz, W. (2001). Differences in nonverbal communication styles between cultures:
+The Latino-Anglo perspective. Leadership and Management in Engineering, 1(4), 51-54.
+
+16. Sadri, H. A., & Flammia, M. (2011). Intercultural communication: A new approach to
+international relations and global challenges. Continuum International Publishing Group.
+
+17. Knapp, M. L., & Hall, J. (2010). Nonverbal communication in human interaction (7th ed.).
+Cengage Learning.
+
+18. Knapp & Hall, 2010, Nonverbal communication in human interaction.
+
+19. Hogan, K., & Stubbs, R. (2003). Can’t get through. 8 barriers to communication.
+Pelican Publishing Company.
+
+20. Farroni, T., Csibra, G., Simion, F. & Johnson, M.H. (2002). Eye contact detection in humans
+from birth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(14), 9602-9605.
+
+21. Lohaus, A., Keller, H., & Voelker, S. (2001). Relationships between eye contact, maternal
+sensitivity, and infant crying. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 25(6), 542-548.
+
+22. Van Edwards, V. (2017). Captivate: The science of succeeding with people.
+Penguin Random House.
+
+23. Chance, M. R. A. (1967). Attention structures as the basis of primate rank orders.
+Man, 2(4), 503-518.
+
+24. Dovidio, J. F., Ellyson, S. L., Keating, C. F., Heltman, K., & Brown, C. E. (1988). The
+relationship of social power to visual displays of dominance between men and women.
+Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 54(2), 233-242.
+
+25. Dovido at al., 1988, The relationship of social power to visual displays of dominance.
+
+26. Nagasawa, M., Mitsui, S., En, S., Ohtani, N., Ohta, M., Sakuma, Y., Onaka, T., Mogi, K.,
+
+& Kikusui, T. (2015). Oxytocin-gaze positive loop and the coevolution of human-dog bonds.
+Science, 348(6232), 333-336.
+
+27. Tehovnik, E. J., Slocum, W. M., Carvey, C. E., & Schiller, P. H. (2005). Phosphene induction
+and the generation of saccadic eye movements by striate cortex. Journal of Neurophysiology,
+
+93(1), 1-19.
+
+28. Baguley, D., McFerran, D., & Hall, D. (2013). Tinnitus. The Lancet, 382(9904), 1600-1607.
+
+122
+Chapter 5: Recognize Muscular Tension
+and Dormancy
+
+“You translate everything, whether physical or mental or spiritual, into muscular tension.”
+— F. M. Alexander (1869-1955)
+
+“Suppose you’re interacting with an abusive boss. Without realizing it, you hold some part of your body still in order
+to manage your behavior during the confrontation. Tension in your jaw, throat, or shoulders keeps you from lashing
+out and losing your job. Tension in your hips or feet keeps you from storming out of the room. Similar tensions may
+arise when you deal with a relative’s expectations of you or during a disagreement with a friend.”
+
+— Mary Bond (b. 1942)
+
+This chapter discusses a form of trauma that transforms muscles on a cellular scale: repetitive
+strain. The first half of the chapter introduces the concepts of bracing and persistent muscular
+tension and explains how to recognize them in your own body. The second half dives into the
+social and emotional aspects of muscle tension, laying out the relationships between long-term
+strain, pain, breathing, and submissiveness. Exercises are offered throughout to aid you in
+recovering from your bodily tension.
+
+Recognizing Excessive Muscular Tone
+
+It can be difficult to recognize the physical sensations of muscular strain. We become so
+accustomed to the pain and discomfort that they become effectively imperceptible, the same
+way we stop noticing unpleasant smells. It often takes a significant shift for us to notice how
+our bodies really feel. This happened to me after | strained my shoulder skateboarding. After
+the accident, a doctor prescribed me a dozen pills of meloxicam, a nonsteroidal anti-
+inflammatory drug (NSAID) with analgesic effects. After my first dose, | spent a few hours trying
+to analyze the effects of the drug. My muscles felt looser, and this quickly put me to sleep.
+
+| woke up in the middle of the night to feel my hamstrings burning intensely, but they had
+not been stretched or exercised recently in any unusual way. It took me a few minutes to
+realize that this pain was their normal baseline condition. The strain had simply been unmasked
+by the NSAID drug. | had become utterly accustomed to the fact that this tension went to bed
+with me every night. | quickly realized that the problem was widespread. My hamstrings were
+chronically strained from overzealous exercise, but so were my hips, lower back, shoulders, and
+neck. That night, as | focused on gradually relaxing these body parts, | began to realize just how
+much | had been clenching them in a bizarre, contorted way.
+
+This experience made me think of a lesson that my mother taught me. In my twenties, |
+developed a condition called plantar fasciitis that causes pain in the soles of the feet. She
+shared the method that she used to cure her plantar fasciitis, saying something along these
+lines: “Jared, it’s a medical disorder, but it comes from tension. You must be curling your feet
+into ‘fists’ at night. Right now, you are unconscious of this tendency, but it is possible to create
+awareness. Each evening before you go to bed, focus on the sensations in your feet and tell
+yourself that you plan to let the tension release and remain released as you sleep. Don’t allow
+your feet to remain clenched all night.” | had painful plantar fasciitis for a full year, yet after two
+nights of following her instructions, meditating closely on the sensations of tension, the pain in
+
+123
+PROGRAM PEACE Self- Care Exercises to Reprogram Your Mind and Body
+
+my feet was gone. Right there, lying in bed, | saw the connection and realized that this same
+lesson applied not only to my heels, but to my hamstrings, my heartache, my headache,
+and my whole body.
+
+Tone, Hypertonia, and Hypotonia
+
+Muscle tone, also referred to as residual muscle tension or tonus, is a continuous and passive
+partial contraction found in all skeletal muscles. It is often conceptualized as the muscles’
+resistance to passive stretching during a resting state. Muscles receive continuous innervation
+from the nervous system ensuring that, even in rest, they remain in a semi-active default state.
+Thus, there is no complete rest in living muscle tissue.
+
+Both extensor and flexor muscles are constantly kept activated, which helps us maintain
+muscle readiness. For instance, your bicep (a flexor) and triceps (an extensor) are both always
+in a state of partial contraction. They complement and support each other, no matter how
+much you try to relax them. Muscles on opposite sides of a joint contract in unison to stabilize
+the joint. This kind of antagonism occurs all over the body. It is beneficial and necessary.
+
+Muscle tone is normal, but it can become too intense under certain conditions and begin to
+cause harm. Excessive tone is referred to as persistent muscle tension, muscle spasticity, or
+hypertonia. Hypertonic muscles can be found in crucial places throughout our bodies and are
+sources of chronic pain, stiffness, and premature frailty for every adult on the planet.
+
+The cause of excessive muscular tone and the accompanying pain we experience is
+multifactorial. Hypertonia can be exacerbated by bad habits, wear and tear, genetic risk factors,
+and injuries such as car accidents and falls. However, most of the preventable muscular pain
+that we suffer is derived from a low-energy injury to the tissues known as repetitive strain. A
+repetitive strain injury is caused by repetitious tasks or by sustained awkward positions. Almost
+any job, profession, or chore you can imagine involves monotonous contractions through which
+muscles are subject to continuous or near-continuous strain. While repetitive strain may occur
+intermittently, its effects build up over years, resulting in chronic conditions.
+
+Longstanding instances of muscular tension develop pathways in the nervous system that
+reinforce and perpetuate them. Simultaneously, an array of cellular changes takes place within
+muscle cells themselves, forcing them to contract permanently, forfeiting strength and
+flexibility. By becoming accustomed to such burdens, we force ourselves to carry them
+unknowingly. This is how we come to feel the weight of the world on our shoulders. We are all
+hauling an invisible, intangible load, forcing dozens of muscles throughout our body to push and
+pull against absolutely nothing.
+
+Refrain from Muscular Bracing
+
+Excessive tension in any posture is called muscular bracing, and it is pervasive. We brace
+muscles all over our bodies every day. Squinting and the raising and lowering of the brow
+discussed in Chapter 4 are also forms of bracing. Mostly, we brace as a reflexive response to
+things that make us worried or uncomfortable. Due to the false sense of security it can afford,
+some researchers have termed it “muscular armoring.” Bracing is intended to prepare us to
+quickly initiate offensive or defensive movements as when we protect the neck by keeping the
+shoulders raised. Small amounts of temporary bracing are healthy and can be helpful during
+rough and tumble play, contact sports, falls, or collisions. Unnecessary bracing, however,
+
+124
+Chapter 5: Recognize Muscular Tension Dormancy
+
+keeps the body “on guard” and rigid. Thus, when you need to move, you are forced to
+overcome your own resistance, forfeiting grace and coordination.
+
+Keeping our muscles tense makes us feel in control but is a dysfunctional coping tactic.
+People generalize bracing from physical challenges to intellectual and social ones. This is why
+some experts refer to instances of bracing as “neurotic holding patterns.” For instance, we
+tense during social encounters, especially confrontational ones. People tense their bodies
+during standardized tests, social gatherings, and public speaking. This hinders their
+performance by interfering with productive efforts and by causing discomfort and autonomic
+stress. As we will discuss in Chapter 22, the sensation of fear in your gut and the sensation of
+having your heart in your throat are also manifestations of chronic bracing.
+
+Imagine that you are standing alone in a strange, dark parking lot with nothing nearby to
+grab ahold of. You hear someone yell, “Brace yourself!” What pose do you strike? Whatever
+pose you imagined is likely one that you commonly adopt during stress and startle. The muscles
+responsible for this pose are the ones you brace most often, and so they are likely currently in
+the process of becoming locked up. Explore this a little further using the first unbracing
+activity below.
+
+Relaxation Activity #5.1: Making a Claw
+
+Tense all the muscles in your hand, making it into a stiff claw. Curl your fingers so that all
+fifteen knuckles are partially bent. Keeping your hand in that formation, see whether you can
+tense it even further. Keep it tight as you open and close it five times.
+
+Now, use your imagination. Try to feel what would happen to your hand if you were forced to
+hold it like this for a week straight. It would become immobile, inflamed, and excruciating.
+Consider how often you tense your hand in daily life. Has it already taken a toll? Going
+forward, work on undoing that tension. Try to notice the claw whenever it materializes and
+allow it to revert to a soft, lithe hand.
+
+You also want your hands to be strong, so contracting their muscles firmly is necessary. The
+important thing is that you allow them to relax deeply after you stop using them. Make a
+very firm claw and then let it relax five times in a row. How you respond to the discomfort
+involved in the effort makes all the difference. Don’t allow the discomfort from the
+contraction to influence you to keep bracing. Rather, plunge into the deeper level of
+relaxation that is available after you have brought the muscles to fatigue.
+
+There are cyclical relationships between stress, bracing, and arthritis.1 Some specialists
+refer to forms of bracing as “prearthritic postures.” Joints can only be braced for so many years
+before they become inflamed and degenerative. My mother has osteoarthritis in her hands.
+Some of her knuckles are larger and more deformed than others. She firmly believes that the
+most affected knuckles are those that she braced more during stress over decades. An extreme
+example is the “raised-arm babas” of India. These are men who, for spiritual reasons, have
+decided to always raise one arm in the air. Over the years, their shoulders become stiff as a
+
+125
+
+PROGRAM PEACE Self- Care Exercises to Reprogram Your Mind and Body
+
+board and completely useless. As you look over the table below, think about which bracing
+patterns you use.
+
+Internal Facial Postural
+Tightening the Jaw Squinting the Eyes Raising the Shoulders
+Constricting the Throat Raising the Eyebrows Bracing the Lower Back
+Sucking the Tongue Straining the Smile Hunching the Neck
+Constricting the Nasopharynx | Straining the Sneer Neglecting the Glutes and Abs
+Straining the Vocal Folds Pursing the Lips Bracing the Shoulder Blades
+Shallow Breathing Tightening the Cheeks Clenching the Hands and Feet
+Abdominal Tensing Drawing Down the Corners of | Tilting the Pelvis to One Side
+the Mouth
+
+Table 5.1: Common Forms of Bracing that Compromise Muscle and Cause Pain
+
+Bracing belongs to a more general category known as dysponesis, or the misdirected use of
+energy in the musculoskeletal system, of which unnecessary tensing of the muscles is just one
+example.’ This wasting of energy is destructive. For example, dentists and orthodontists make
+particular note of jaw clenching, teeth grinding, and tongue tension because those movements
+push the teeth out of their optimal alignment. In Chapter 13, we will discuss how bracing the
+back pushes the spine out of alignment. Muscular bracing is a factor in almost all joint disorders
+and is responsible for carpal tunnel, temporomandibular joint disorder, tennis elbow, and
+countless others. | believe that most chronic injuries, despite the fancy and distracting terms
+used by physicians, start with tension caused by bracing.
+
+One way a mammal remembers that it just glimpsed a predator is by crouching down and
+becoming very tense. We often use muscular tension to keep something in mind. When | need
+to remember something, or when there is an urgent need to do something that cannot be done
+right away, | become tenser. The specific part of my body necessary to carry out the task is
+often where the tension manifests. For instance, | will try to remind myself to write down a
+thought by tensing my fingers as if | were gripping a pencil. Recognize when this happens to you
+and try not to use tension as a mnemonic aid.
+
+We tend to be negligent of excessive increases in muscle tension even when we are
+performing simple tasks. We tighten muscles that are not involved in what we are doing and
+then keep those muscles tight even after we finish. If the action is built into your job or daily
+routine, you can start by improving the ergonomics of your workspace or taking more regular
+breaks. You can also teach yourself to selectively calm muscles that you are not actively using
+for the task at hand. The key is to constantly and creatively alter your body posture so that
+unused muscles are engaged and overused muscles are given a break.
+
+126
+Chapter 5: Recognize Muscular Tension Dormancy
+
+Relaxation Activity #5.2: Monitor Your Bracing During Teeth Brushing
+The next time you brush your teeth, notice the movements in your hand, arm, shoulder,
+neck, face, and torso. Are you tensing muscles or expending energy that you don’t need to?
+For instance, you might be gripping the toothbrush too tightly, flexing heavily at the elbow or
+shoulder, locking your jaw, or craning your neck to one side. Do you alter your posture and
+vary the repetitive motions to give your muscles breaks? Use this activity as an example that
+you can extend to all your daily chores and rituals. Generalize this experience to as many
+other activities as possible, including writing with a pen, typing with a keyboard, or holding a
+phone, tablet, book, remote controller, or steering wheel.
+
+Microbreaks Allow Muscles the Short Rests They Need
+
+Not all muscle tension is bad. After all, there is no way to exercise without tensing your
+muscles. But bracing is very different from healthy exercise because it does not include tiny rest
+periods called “microbreaks.” Sometimes, all our muscles need is a few seconds, or even just a
+few fractions of a second, without being held taut. When the electrical activity of muscle is
+tracked with electrodes, these moments of downtime show up as “electromyographic gaps” —
+brief intervals during which the muscles slacken and relax. They are essential.
+
+For example, every step you take involves significant exertion as you push off against the
+ground. However, as one leg takes over, the other is given a break during the time it takes to swing
+it forward again. That respite allows the muscles to “regenerate” and prepare for the next step. If
+you didn’t have this microbreak after every step, walking more than a few hundred meters would
+be difficult. In much the same way, all the muscles in your body require microbreaks.
+
+Without momentarily reverting to a relaxed baseline tone, muscles cannot replenish and
+unwanted processes ensue. You have probably noticed the difference between fatigue caused
+by sustained bracing (hyperfatigue) and fatigue caused by exercise that contains microbreaks.
+The former aches and is unpleasant while the latter is both soothing and exhilarating. Indeed,
+the most important factor in building healthy muscle is to allow it to relax. The more relaxed
+your muscles are at rest, the more quickly they recover from exercise. This is why relaxed
+muscle responds dramatically to training, whereas tense muscle responds sluggishly. Whenever
+you are not using a muscle, allow it to go limp. It almost seems slothful, but it’s not; it’s the way
+you should live your life.
+
+Intermittent breaks and rests can help you disrupt long periods of unnecessary rigidity.
+Naps can work wonders in this regard. During sleep, and especially during REM sleep, changes
+occur in brain signaling that cause vastly reduced muscle tone, known as atonia. This is one
+reason why short (10- to 20-minute) naps can be so invigorating. Short naps can also restore
+alertness, mental performance, and learning ability.2 As you nap, you are even giving your heart
+a brief rest, which may be why naps have been associated with reduced coronary mortality.4
+Just remember that naps of 30 minutes or more often lead to sleep inertia, impaired alertness,
+and tiredness. When you feel depleted, after the gym, after an upsetting episode, or whenever
+you start to feel stiff and sore, set your phone’s timer for 20 minutes and allow yourself a
+recuperative power nap. Even if you don’t fall asleep, just giving yourself a few minutes to lay
+down during the day provides a reprieve that can be highly beneficial in the long term.
+
+127
+PROGRAM PEACE Self- Care Exercises to Reprogram Your Mind and Body
+
+Why don’t we allow ourselves the microbreaks that our bodies call for? Often, it is due to
+social pressures. Propriety and intimidation related to the status hierarchy cause us to brace,
+then feel guilty about relaxing. Chronic submissive signaling disallows you from claiming the
+microbreaks that your muscles need. When at a dinner date or in a board room, we don’t give
+our neurotic holding patterns a single second of downtime. Well-composed people give various
+muscles involved in social displays microbreaks. In fact, we can conceptualize composure as skill
+in microbreaking. Of course, even our breathing muscles require microbreaks.
+
+Unbrace Your Exhalation with the Passive Exhale
+
+Diaphragmatic bracing is the central feature of distressed breathing and a core symptom of
+trauma. Remember Activity 5.1, in which you held your hand like a claw and kept it tight as you
+opened and closed it? This is exactly what you are doing with your diaphragm when stressed.
+This kind of bracing could be an excellent exercise for the diaphragm if it only lasted for 30
+seconds at a time, but we tend to do it for hours or days at a time. Continuously over-tensing
+the diaphragm and other respiratory muscles reduces their strength and range of motion,
+resulting in rapid shallow breathing.
+
+The inbreath requires muscular contraction, but the outbreath does not. It is not necessary
+to do any muscular work during exhalation. The positive pressure of air in your lungs is enough
+to create the force. This effortless return of the diaphragm to its resting position is called elastic
+recoil. The air naturally wants to be pressed out of your lungs as it would from a deflating
+balloon. Unfortunately, most of us keep our breathing muscles tense during exhalation, and this
+ensnares us in a state of fight or flight. Stopping this requires awareness and practice. To
+perform a passive exhalation, all you need to do is let your breathing go limp while you are
+exhaling. After a minute or two of practicing this, you should actually be able to feel the
+diaphragm simmer down.
+
+Relaxation Exercise #5.1: Unbracing the Diaphragm While Exhaling
+Perform paced breathing for five minutes. Take full inhalations, and when you start each
+exhalation, let go of the diaphragm completely. Every exhalation should be a completely
+passive form of freefall throughout which all the breathing musculature is relaxed. Imagine
+the leisurely descent of a parachute. You are not doing any work at all, and it should proceed
+at its own pace. The air should be oozing out of your nostrils on its own. Once you practice
+this for five minutes, you should be able to tell that you were holding your diaphragm like a
+tense “claw” during your exhalation before. Allowing the diaphragm to go limp during the
+exhale is extremely important for its health because, just like all muscles, it needs periods of
+inactivity to regenerate. Because you never stop breathing, its only chance for such a
+microbreak is during the exhalation.
+
+Imagine that for some reason you are responsible for driving a car up and down a low-
+grade hill, over and over again. For a while, you keep the engine on during the descent, but
+since the descent lasts for a few minutes, you realize that you can turn the engine off, put the
+car into neutral, and just let it coast without having to touch the brake, the accelerator, or the
+
+128
+Chapter 5: Recognize Muscular Tension Dormancy
+
+wheel. This is what a passive exhalation should feel like. After you finish your inhale, just take
+the keys out of the ignition.
+
+Your inhalation is also braced; it is just much harder to notice. An inhalation requires the
+contraction of the diaphragm down into the gut to create the vacuum that draws air into the
+lungs. But this contraction is often braced beyond what is necessary, like the opening of a
+tightly clenched hand. This bracing impedes belly breathing and pulls the air into your upper
+chest. If you can interrupt it during an inhalation, you will feel your belly coming uncoupled
+from the bottom of your rib cage. The passive exhale will help you with this uncoupling. As you
+learn to sense your diaphragmatic tension during the exhale, you can teach yourself how to
+lessen the unnecessary tension occurring during the inhale. Once you have done this, your
+breathing will become much more efficient and less labored.
+
+It is worth mentioning that aside from bracing the inhale during the exhale, many of us also
+brace the exhale during the inhale. This is when we keep the thoracic muscles responsible for
+exhalation clenched while breathing in. This is also completely unnecessary. Spend some time
+trying to notice these effects in your own breathing.
+
+After performing the passive exhalation for a few days, a sense of irritation in your chest
+will dissipate. When this discomfort and inflammation is totally gone, you will feel a profound
+sense of relief. The passive exhalation is so important that | consider it the fifth tenet of optimal
+breathing. Expect it to increase the benefits you get from paced breathing. The passive exhale is
+such a fundamental routine that it is actually a reflexive response that all mammals use after a
+stressor has come and gone. Can you guess what it is?
+
+Once a stressful episode has resolved, all species of mammal exhibit “deep spontaneous
+breaths.” They inhale very deeply so that they can then exhale passively to reset and restore
+equilibrium in their autonomic nervous system. We know this as sighing. Even mice sigh, and |
+believe that, like us, they do it to provide the diaphragm with a microbreak. However, if you
+provide your diaphragm with a microbreak during every exhalation, you won’t feel the need to
+sigh anymore. The trick is to learn to exhale limply even after a shallow inhalation. Sighing is
+very frequent in people diagnosed with panic disorders. | used to sigh constantly, but after
+diaphragmatic retraining, | rarely catch myself doing it anymore. Master the passive exhalation
+because it is highly de-traumatizing.
+
+Persistent Muscle Tension Creates Trigger Points
+Excessive muscle tension and the absence of microbreaks eventually produce “knots” that can
+be felt under your skin. They occur all over the body. They are often palpable, raised nodules
+tender to the touch, producing a dull, aching pain when pressed firmly. In the medical
+literature, these knots are referred to as trigger points, trigger sites, or spasms, and they cause
+reductions in muscle mass, flexibility, strength, and endurance.° They are hyper-irritated spots
+in taut bands of skeletal muscle fibers created by chronic muscle overload. They usually involve
+a local contraction in a small number of muscle fibers within a larger muscle bundle.®
+
+Many scientists refer to these knots as “myofascial trigger points.” The “myo” is derived
+from the Greek word for “muscle” while “fascial” refers to the tough outer lining that keeps
+muscles in place (fascia is a type of connective tissue that forms a continuous scaffold around
+all the muscles and tendons in the body). Myofascial trigger points are small patches of muscle
+and fascia that pull together in an isolated spasm. They are different from whole-muscle
+
+129
+PROGRAM PEACE Self- Care Exercises to Reprogram Your Mind and Body
+
+spasms like a charley horse or cramp, which are more transient, have a sudden onset, and
+involve hard contraction of the entire muscle. Although they can contribute to cramping, trigger
+points are different in that they are long-lasting, have a gradual onset, and involve partial
+contractions in small portions of the muscle.
+
+In addition to their immediate detrimental effects on muscle function, trigger points often
+cluster together and pull on tendons and ligaments, causing joint problems and “deep” pain.
+The tension they cause at joints can result in clicking, popping, and grating sounds. Over time,
+they can contribute to bone spurs, pinched nerves, and arthritis.” Trigger points can be seen in
+greatly magnified pictures of muscle tissue like the one below. They look like bunched-up
+distortions in a web-like matrix.
+
+connective tissue
+
+Figure 5.1: Knot of partially contracted sarcomeres in the muscle fiber from the leg of a dog at 240x magnification.
+Compare with the normal sarcomeres above and below it. This knot looks like an active contraction but has no
+electrical (EMG) activity and is, thus, stuck in partial contraction. Reprinted with permission from Simons and
+Stolov (1976).
+
+Dr. Janet G. Travell, MD (1901-1997) is generally recognized as the leading pioneer in
+trigger point diagnosis and treatment. It has been said that she “single-handedly created this
+branch of medicine.”® Travell, who was the White House physician during the Kennedy and
+Johnson administrations, emphasized that trigger points are demoralizing and devastating to
+quality of life. She called them the “scourge of mankind.” Advanced-stage trigger points are the
+worst. They usually present in clusters, are the most painful, and involve highly warped muscle
+fibers with large numbers of molecular aberrations. In reality, most people are practically
+covered in trigger points from old injuries, bad posture, poor workout techniques, and bracing.
+
+Muscle Tension Develops at the Molecular Level
+
+To better understand trigger points, we need a little more background on muscles themselves.
+Muscles are composed of fibers, which are themselves made of smaller fibers. The thinnest of
+
+130
+Chapter 5: Recognize Muscular Tension Dormancy
+
+those hold sarcomeres, in which contraction takes place. A sarcomere is a microscopic structure
+built from two kinds of filament-like molecules: actin and myosin. Actin and myosin form
+interdigitating strands that can be activated. When active, they move past each other, quickly
+creating contractile force.
+
+Fascicle Fiber Myofibril all
+: I
+
+\
+Ui
+
+ml (=a a>
+=
+
+illustration 5.1: A. Muscle made of fibers, containing sarcomeres; B. Microscopic view of contracted sarcomeres in
+a muscle myofibril. An actual trigger point may contain dozens of these tiny knots.
+
+Millions of sarcomeres must contract to perform even the smallest movement. After they
+contract, the sarcomeres relax when their actin and myosin strands are uncoupled from each
+other and pull apart. In healthy muscle, actin and myosin wait patiently in a relaxed, decoupled
+state until an impulse from the nervous system tells them to pull past each other again. In
+unhealthy muscle, they are stuck. Many specialists believe that trigger points start to form
+when overuse causes actin and myosin to become fixed in an interlocked position. This
+interlocking puts the muscle into a static state of contracture, in which the strands no longer
+separate and relax.
+
+Relaxation Actin
+
+ele ACTIN
+
+Contraction
+
+Illustration 5.2: A. Relaxed sarcomere on top and a contracted sarcomere on the bottom with actin and myosin
+visible; B. Myosin curls like a finger, pulling on actin and allowing them to slide past each other to create muscular
+movement; C. Human neck and shoulders covered with clusters of trigger points.
+
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+PROGRAM PEACE Self- Care Exercises to Reprogram Your Mind and Body
+
+Trigger points originate from a few different sources: (1) sustained low-level contraction,
+2) sudden muscle overload, (3) “eccentric” contraction when a muscle stretches and contracts
+simultaneously, and (4) gross trauma or injury to the muscle. Regardless of the cause, trigger
+points slow blood flow to the muscle and cause oxygen deprivation at the affected site.
+The reduced blood flow then causes sarcomeres to contract further, constricting the
+surrounding capillaries. Capillaries normally supply the muscle with blood, so when they
+constrict, it leads to reduced circulation or ischemia that impairs many cellular processes.
+
+Without blood flow, chemical waste products from muscular activity start to accumulate.
+Eventually, the waste stimulates pain receptors in nearby nerve endings, sending pain signals to
+the brain.’ Active trigger points demonstrate an unusual biochemical mix not seen in healthy
+tissue. It is an acidic milieu containing increased levels of proinflammatory, contractile, and
+pain-causing substances. And remember, we draw our very breaths with muscles that are
+affected by these symptoms.
+
+Muscle Shortening and Scar Tissue
+
+A muscle can change its resting length to adapt to the length at which it is habitually used or
+positioned. Muscles usually become shorter due to prolonged contracture. This is known as
+adaptive muscle shortening and places the muscle in a state of partial contraction. It is another
+pervasive clinical finding that affects every person who has ever lived.
+
+People confined to long periods of sitting exhibit debilitating shortening of the lower back
+and hip muscles, especially the hip flexors. Similarly, wearing high-heeled shoes causes
+prolonged plantar flexion of the foot, which results in adaptive shortening of the soleus
+muscles. Constant squinting shortens the muscle fibers of the orbicularis oculi, narrowing the
+eyes. Straining the sneer causes the muscles that lift the top lip to shrink, making the face
+appear hideous. When the muscles in your knees and ankles shorten, they leave you vulnerable
+to sprains and tears. Holding a hunched neck posture leads to shortening of the
+sternocleidomastoid and other muscles in the front of the neck, making it very difficult to stop
+hunching because the decreased length of these muscles pulls the head down. As Chapter 19
+will explain, bracing the muscles surrounding the genitals may play a role in sexual dysfunction.
+There are examples of adaptive muscle shortening in muscles all over our bodies.
+
+The pressure from prolonged contracture pulls on tendons, straining them and distressing
+the joints when they move. Next, ligaments and joint capsules retract. These changes perturb
+nerve endings within the muscles and joints, causing deep-seated pain. Muscle shortening also
+increases wear and tear, contributing to inflammatory and degenerative changes such as
+tendonitis, fasciitis, bursitis, and osteoarthritis. Many different tissue types are damaged by
+strain, including articular cartilages, connective tissues, tendons, fascia, menisci, ligaments, and
+spinal disks.
+
+Adaptive muscle shortening can be made worse by the accumulation of scar tissue. Scar
+tissue is a very tough, inflexible, fibrous material that binds itself to strained muscle fibers,
+attempting to draw the damaged fibers together. The result is a bulky mass of stiff tissue
+surrounding the site. In some cases, it is possible to feel and even see this mass under the skin.
+When scar tissue adheres to muscle fibers, it prevents them from sliding back and forth
+properly, limiting the flexibility of a muscle or joint.
+
+132
+Chapter 5: Recognize Muscular Tension Dormancy
+
+Scar tissue tends to shrink and deform the surrounding tissues, diminishing strength and
+making the body feel heavy. It tends to adhere to nerve cells, leading to chronic pain. Existing
+research has found that scar tissue is weaker, less elastic, more prone to future re-injury, and
+up to 1,000 times more pain-sensitive than normal, healthy tissue. This results in chronic pain
+that, under most circumstances, lasts a lifetime. In people who brace the most, these effects
+create visibly apparent postural distortions.
+
+Excessive Tension is Debilitating and Constrains Your Physique
+
+Muscles encumbered by trigger points and adaptive shortening can be conceptualized as
+dormant muscles. This is so because they are difficult to recruit, don’t move with the rest of the
+body, and are starved of blood. Dormant muscles cannot recover adequately after a workout
+and are resistant to growth and strengthening because they can never fully relax, and thus can
+never fully heal. As long as they are under constant self-imposed strain, they will continue to
+grow harder, more fragile, and decrepit. Scrunched-up muscles crumple your body and cause it
+to buckle under every movement.
+
+Pregnancy itself does not necessarily adversely affect a woman’s physique. Rather, it is the
+months of prolonged bracing, absence of postural variety, and limited range of motion that can
+accompany the later stages of pregnancy for some women that have prominent, long-lasting
+effects. Moreover, although some of the natural variation in physique between humans is due
+to exercise, genetics, and exposure to testosterone, much of it can be attributed to differences
+in dormant muscle that arose due to bracing during stress.
+
+You have significant untapped reservoirs of muscle in your body that correspond to areas
+you brace and have been bracing for decades. For example, think about the hunch you probably
+have in your neck. Starting at birth, you had a natural tendency to straighten the cervical
+vertebrae in your neck, stacking them in a straight line. That straight-necked, upright posture is
+optimal. But social pressures can affect how we carry our heads and necks; the less safe, stable,
+or welcoming your childhood environment was, the more you were conditioned to hunch over,
+communicating modesty or submission. The standard submissive neck posture is to stoop over,
+jut your chin out, and tilt your head back. All of those changes reduce your height and help you
+appear guarded. But they also introduce a slant in your neck, which is an inefficient way of
+stacking vertebrae against the force of gravity. The excessive tension that develops leads to the
+proliferation of trigger points, and those, in turn, cause muscle dormancy in your neck,
+shoulders, and chest, and from there on down the spine.
+
+Chapter 13 will detail exactly how to reclaim your neck and regain its flexibility and full
+range of motion. But the neck is just one example of a reservoir of muscle that has been
+suppressed that you can tap into. These reservoirs can be found all over our bodies. Take your
+clothes off and look in the mirror. Any body parts that don’t appear nubile and supple have
+great potential. If all of our muscles were brought completely out of dormancy, we would have
+the physiques (if not bulk) of elite athletes.
+
+Injuries Lead to Muscular Bracing
+
+Injuries contribute to and interact with bracing. After getting hurt, individuals often try to avoid
+experiencing pain by tensing the area surrounding the site of injury. When someone sprains
+their ankle, they unintentionally contract many muscles in the ankle, setting it in a fixed,
+
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+PROGRAM PEACE Self- Care Exercises to Reprogram Your Mind and Body
+
+defensive position. This is intended to protect the injury. In fact, it is known as “splinting”
+because it acts as a splint to immobilize the joint. Unfortunately, it also deprives the muscles of
+the rest, oxygen, and nutrients they need to heal. As a result, splinting worsens the pain in the
+long term by overtaxing the muscles involved. This happens partly because we tend to breathe
+extremely shallowly whenever we injure ourselves (because as you know, shallow breathing
+causes bracing). This is why, whenever | experience an injury, | pull out my breath metronome
+immediately.
+
+Injuries almost always result in some form of persistent muscle tension. Even major
+medical procedures can contribute. /atrogenic pain is a term referring to pain caused by
+medical treatment and is especially common with the use of braces, slings, casts, and surgeries.
+Immobilizing a broken forearm with a cast can easily lead to frozen shoulder syndrome, in
+which a group of deltoid muscles is barred from moving through its normal range of motion as
+tension gradually mounts.
+
+| had a melanoma removed from my shoulder blade in my mid-teens, and | recently found
+that | have a series of muscular knots under the scar from bracing the area. My brother
+received a large shot in the quadriceps during his appendectomy 20 years ago, and he says the
+same area troubles him often. Think conscientiously about past injuries, medical procedures,
+and other forms of trauma, identifying how they might be causing you to brace or tense
+muscles even today.
+
+Stress and muscular tension also make us more susceptible to physical injury because tense
+muscles fail and tear under excessive force, whereas relaxed ones are more resilient. The
+muscles strained by sitting in a fixed position at a computer for eight hours a day are the most
+susceptible to damage from a fall or car accident. Thus, injury can lead to bracing, and bracing
+can lead to re-injury.
+
+Tense muscle tissue can be conceptualized as an injury or as a trauma even if there was no
+precipitating accident. The word “injury” is defined as physical damage to a biological organism.
+The word “trauma” is defined as an abnormality in an organism’s tissues usually caused by
+injury. By these definitions, any form of persistent bracing, and the trigger points stemming
+from it, are both injurious and traumatic. Unfortunately, once they get bad enough, they can
+poison us emotionally.
+
+The Link Between Tension, Pain, and Negative Emotion
+
+“These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb.” — Najwa Zebian (b. 1990)
+
+Physical pain is an adaptive, evolved mechanism. The pain from a cut or burn informs us that
+our bodies are suffering damage. It gives us built-in motivation to withdraw from the source of
+harm and learn to avoid it in the future. But what about muscular pain, also known as myalgia?
+In contrast to physical pain, myalgia has more to do with restricting movement. It compels us to
+refrain from specific motions that might be damaging or harmful—it tells us not to over-stretch
+a strained muscle, not to bend a weakened joint too far. It also tells us when we approach the
+limits of our healthy range of motion, giving us important feedback about what our bodies can
+and cannot do. This would have restricted aging hunter-gatherers from movements that had
+
+