Author: jaredreser

Last night, I engaged in a prolonged session of interoception, focusing specifically on the visceral sensations in my gut, voicebox, and chest. I did my best to pay concerted and sustained attention to the parts inside me that ached and felt uncomfortable. These are the tense, overworked muscles and tissues that drive anxiety and negative emotions. It led to a rather entertaining insight: I felt as though I was performing surgery from the inside.

We often view attention as a passive camera, a way to simply record what is happening. But my experience confirmed for me that attention is actually an active, remedial agent. Without lifting a finger, without invasive tools, merely paying sustained attention to the parts of me that ached and were inflamed helped bring them to peace. It was as if I had physical access with my hands to the interior of my body, massaging the soft tissues that drive negative psychological cycles.

The Scotoma of Aversion

Why do we rarely do this? Because it hurts. When we turn our attention toward our internal turmoil, the immediate sensation is aversive. Most people have very little capacity for this because the moment they notice the discomfort, they reflexively turn away. We develop a “scotoma” a blind spot—for our own internal milieu.

This avoidance is a defense mechanism. Biologically, pain signals usually tell us to withdraw. But you cannot withdraw from your own viscera. So, instead of physical withdrawal, we engage in attentional withdrawal. We ignore the signal, leaving the inflammation and tension to fester in the background, driving anxiety and stress without our conscious permission.

Attention as a Surgical Instrument

Overcoming this scotoma requires effort. Focusing on the turmoil, imagining it in space and time, and picturing it within the mind’s eye is difficult at first. However, over just a few seconds of sustained observation, the dynamic changes.

I realized that we don’t need external tests or assays to diagnose this internal state. Our somatosensory abilities already have complete access. The communication is bi-directional. When we direct high-fidelity awareness toward these areas of tension, we aren’t just listening to the complaint; we are sending a signal of safety back to the tissue. It is a non-invasive form of surgery where the “scalpel” is mirror sustained concentration.

The Clenched Fist and the Shape of Pain

During this process, I found that the turmoil had a specific texture and shape. It was an object in my perceptual field. Visualizing this shape was critical.

It is analogous to looking at your own hand. If your fist is clenched tight, you can look at it, realize it is clenched, and simply stop clutching it. You have the proprioceptive feedback and the motor control to release the tension. But inside the torso, we lack that visual feedback. The tension in the gut or chest remains “clenched” because we aren’t looking at it.

By using interoception to give that turmoil a shape, by essentially “looking” at the clenched fist of the viscera, we gain the ability to release it. We convert a subconscious physiological loop into a conscious one that we can regulate.

From Affect to Perception: The Mechanism of Granularity

A crucial detail of this experience was that the turmoil didn’t just fade away; it had a specific texture and shape before it dissolved. This distinction is biologically significant. It represents the shift from affect; a vague, sweeping feeling of “badness” or “danger,” to perception, where the sensation becomes a distinct object with dimensions and edges.

When the internal signal remains low-resolution, it acts as a general alarm, hijacking the amygdala and triggering a systemic defense response. But the moment we visualize it—giving it a geometry, a temperature, or a density in our mind’s eye, we force the brain to process it as specific sensory data rather than an existential threat. This creates a necessary distance. We are no longer in the turmoil; we are the observer looking at the turmoil. This shift recruits the insular cortex to map the signal with high fidelity, allowing the “soft tissues” that drive negative psychological cycles to finally stand down.

Starving the Reflex

This process does more than just relax us; it disrupts the reverberating neural loops that maintain chronic stress. These physiological holding patterns rely on our lack of awareness to persist. They operate in the shadows of the subconscious, reinforcing themselves through automatic reflex loops.

By holding these sensations in sustained, non-judgmental attention, we essentially “starve” the reflex. We prevent the automatic reinforcement cycle that keeps the gut churning or the chest tight. It turns out that the turmoil cannot survive direct, high-resolution scrutiny. It needs the “scotoma” to exist. When we remove the blind spot, the loop loses its momentum and dissolves.

Rehabilitation, Not Just Relief

Ultimately, this felt like more than just a momentary release; it felt like rehabilitation. Just as we might rehabilitate an injured limb through targeted physical therapy, we can rehabilitate these internal areas through targeted attentional therapy. The experience suggested that we have an innate capacity for a healing experience that is completely self-contained. We don’t need to perform assays or look for external validation. The machinery for diagnosis (interoception) and the machinery for cure (sustained concentration) are one and the same. We simply have to overcome the aversion to looking inside.

Reversing the Internal Tension

Today, after spending an hour doing this last night, I feel significantly better. The turmoil dissolved not because I fought it, and not because I ignored it, but because I examined it with the precision of a surgeon. This suggests that healing isn’t always about adding something new to the system; often, it is simply about removing the blinders and allowing our innate somatosensory loops to do what they were designed to do: communicate, regulate, and restore peace.

For more on these concepts, keep reading programpeace.com

Exciting News for the Program Peace Community!
We are thrilled to announce the launch of our very own Program Peace Discord Server – a new, dynamic platform for all our users to connect, learn, and grow together in their journey towards mindfulness and self-care.

What is the Program Peace Discord Server?

Discord, traditionally known for its strong gaming community, has evolved into a versatile platform for communities of all kinds – and now, it’s home to our Program Peace family. Our server is a specially curated space that echoes the principles and practices discussed in the Program Peace book. It’s designed to provide a supportive, engaging, and informative environment where users like you can delve deeper into the art of self-care and mindfulness.

Why Join Our Discord Server?

Community Support: One of the core strengths of our Discord server is the sense of community it fosters. Here, you’ll meet like-minded individuals who share your dedication to personal growth and well-being. It’s a space to share, learn, and support each other on this journey.

Learning and Practicing Self-Care:

The server offers a plethora of resources, from guided meditations and stress management techniques to discussions on various aspects of mindfulness. Whether you’re looking for advice, tips, or just a bit of inspiration, you’ll find it here.

Interactive and Engaging:

Unlike passive learning, our Discord server provides an interactive experience. Participate in live Q&A sessions, join group discussions, and engage in activities that make learning and practicing self-care both fun and effective.

How to Join?

Joining is simple! Click here to join the Program Peace Discord Server.

https://discord.gg/XgVwnmfbPE

(89) Discord | #🚩start-here | Program Peace

A Personal Invitation

My friends Monomer and Aether helped me create the new Discord server and they are active moderators there. We personally invite you to be a part of this exciting new venture. Whether you’re just beginning your journey into mindfulness or are looking to deepen your practice, the Program Peace Discord Server is a place for you. Join us, and let’s cultivate a community that thrives on compassion, understanding, and the shared goal of achieving inner peace and well-being.

See you there!

Performing a body scan technique after voluntary hyperventilation, such as in holotropic breathing, can be a powerful tool for reaching a new level of relaxation. This is particularly relevant because holotropic breathing can lead to various sensations, including the feeling of pins and needles, increased heart rate, tension in various muscles, and even a sense of panic or unease. The amplification of these feelings can give you the leverage you need to face and quell them.

After engaging in holotropic breathing, the body is in a unique physiological state. It alters the usual balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the body. At this point, the practice of a body scan can be especially beneficial. A body scan involves mindfully focusing on different parts of the body, identifying areas of tension, and consciously attempting to release this tension.

This technique aligns well with the principles of progressive relaxation, a method where different muscle groups are relaxed sequentially, leading to reductions in neuromuscular tension, breathing rate, and sympathetic nervous system activity. This method, developed in the early 1920s by Edmund Jacobson, is a therapeutic exercise that helps in healing trauma and managing stress.

In the context of holotropic breathing, the body scan serves several purposes:

Identification and Release of Tension: After hyperventilation, a practitioner might experience heightened sensitivity or tension in various areas. The body scan allows for the identification and acknowledgement of these areas of tension. By focusing on each area of tension and consciously relaxing it, the body scan facilitates a deeper level of relaxation.

Healing and Trauma Release: As mentioned, progressive relaxation and techniques like the body scan are effective in healing trauma. After the intense experience of holotropic breathing, engaging in a body scan can aid in processing and releasing emotional and physical trauma stored in the body.

Balancing the Autonomic Nervous System: After the stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system through hyperventilation, the body scan helps to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, promoting a state of rest and digest, which is essential for holistic relaxation and well-being.

In conclusion, performing a body scan after hyperventilation can be a powerful practice for achieving deep relaxation and healing. It allows the individual to connect with their body, identify and release tension, and balance their nervous system, thereby reaching a new level of tranquility and inner peace.

You can try this now using Wim Hoff’s guided meditation here:

https://youtu.be/tybOi4hjZFQ?si=1_qYw2teKhEi-YUw

Or you can try it here and breathe with Sandy.

https://youtu.be/ONsvMaytg_0?si=KktcqVPKBwspK5hL

Responding to bullying can be a challenging and delicate situation.

Calm Non-Contention:

It’s vital to respond to provocation with a sense of calm and without contention. Maintaining a non-reactive demeanor is crucial. This means not responding as if you are a victim of the bullying. Strive to handle conflict with charisma, showing self-awareness and a willingness to apologize or offer clarification when necessary.

Avoid Emotional Reactivity:

Responding with anger or emotional volatility can be perceived as a sign of weakness or emotional immaturity. This approach demonstrates confidence and self-assuredness. Remember, as Schopenhauer said, “Every reproach can hurt only to the extent that it hits the mark.” Therefore, maintaining composure and not showing distress or discomfort in response to provocation is key.

Constructive Communication:

When presenting your side of an argument, do so in a straightforward, matter-of-fact manner. Show empathy towards the other person and try to elicit the same from them. If the situation escalates, focus on de-escalating it. Recognize the origins of impulses to become angry or take things personally, and aim to address these underlying issues. Instead of seeking to “win” the argument, focus on understanding and resolving the situation constructively.

Reframing and Solution-Oriented Approach:

Avoid condoning acts of incivility and lower your guard against perceived threats to your ego. Instead, reframe the offenses of others as shortcomings in their judgment or social maturity. Focus more on finding solutions than defending your position. This approach helps in moving past the conflict towards a resolution that is beneficial for all parties involved.

Maintain Composure Under Scrutiny:

Bullies often use tactics like staring or facial expressions to provoke a reaction. They might expect you to adopt a submissive facial posture or show signs of discomfort. The key is not to submit to their visual inspection. By under-reacting, you demonstrate that their tactics are ineffective. This approach shows that you are not easily manipulated or baited into losing your composure.

Look Tough, Act Nice:

This principle involves being tightfisted with nonverbal cues but easygoing with your words. Instead of playing submissive nonverbally and dominant verbally, which can make you seem anxious or alienated, the focus is on appearing well-composed and being a team player. If someone is rude or mean, a simple frown or flaring of nostrils can be a dominant response without resorting to aggressive language. Asking for clarification calmly, such as saying, “Okay, explain that one to me,” can be a powerful way to address the situation without escalating it.

Ignoring Abusive Behavior:

You have the right to ignore other people’s abusive behaviors, as long as it’s done without anger and with a willingness to engage in alternate topics or activities. Ignoring rudeness without becoming sullen or brooding demonstrates that you choose not to respond to negativity. This approach can be seen as giving the other person a pass, which can lead to their respect and realization that you’re not easily dragged down by their behavior. It’s about maintaining your dignity and not allowing the bully to dictate your emotional state.

In summary, dealing with bullying involves a mix of maintaining composure, nonverbal assertiveness, and choosing when and how to engage with the bully. It’s about staying true to your principles, not allowing bullies to control your reactions, and demonstrating strength through calm and assertive responses.

The best way to breathe during social interactions, involves a few key principles:

Diaphragmatic Breathing:

This is the most recommended method for breathing during all social encounters. Diaphragmatic breathing helps in maintaining calmness and composure. It can initially reveal tendencies for agoraphobia and social anxiety, but with practice, these can be overcome. It’s transformative to practice diaphragmatic breathing in public settings, such as restaurants or parks, as this will help in making the practice more sincere and natural.

Nasal Breathing:

Many people tend to switch from nose to mouth breathing when they feel nervous, especially in social situations. However, nasal breathing is advantageous as it builds composure. It’s suggested to practice breathing through the nose with the mouth closed more often, even in public and social settings. This helps in becoming more comfortable with nasal breathing and enhances facial composure.

Breathing Assertively:

This involves ensuring that social concerns do not disrupt your breathing pattern. It’s important to breathe deeply, smoothly, and at long intervals while socializing. Using a breath metronome daily can aid in developing a strong habit of diaphragmatic breathing. It’s also crucial to monitor your breathing during conversations to prevent it from becoming shallow. The idea is to maintain a tiny but continuous sip of air that never pauses and always proceeds at a steady rate.

By incorporating these breathing techniques into your social interactions, you can enhance your composure, reduce anxiety, and present a more assertive and confident demeanor. Remember, like any skill, it takes practice and patience to master these breathing techniques.

In this post, I’m gonna talk about a single exercise introduced by Stanley Rosenberg that is intended to decrease stress and increase health and well-being. I’m going to give an explanation for why I think the exercise works and how it can be improved.

Basically, I think it has users adopt a posture that in most social situations, would cause them to feel uneasy, but by spending time there under no social pressure, they learn to relax.

The “Basic Exercise” by Stanley Rosenberg was introduced in his 2017 book, “Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve.” This exercise is a part of a set of techniques designed to reset the ventral vagus nerve, which plays a crucial role in our body’s autonomic nervous system. Rosenberg emphasizes the effectiveness of this exercise, noting that he uses it with everyone he sees.

https://stanleyrosenberg.com

To perform the Basic Exercise, you start by lying down comfortably on your back, interweaving your fingers and placing them behind your head. This simple position is believed to enhance social engagement, increase blood flow to the brain, and create a positive effect on the vagus nerve.

Most people are not at all comfortable, resting their hands behind their head with their elbows in the air. This is a non-verbal expression of superiority and dominance that would be difficult for most people to do in a crowded space or even among friends. However, having someone do this, in a safe setting, may help them, and certain unconscious brain centers, discover that their sensitivity to this posture may be an overreaction, and that it might be safe after all.

The other aspect of the exercise is looking to the side. Side eye is often a negative expression of contempt or disapproval. When used in social situations, it usually increases discomfort or tension between people. As I detailed in my other blog,

… it probably stems from covert looking, where apes won’t face or look directly at other apes that they do not trust. In other words, looking with a side long glance, out of the corner of one’s eye is usually an uncomfortable posture and maybe neurologically linked to the stress response.

Although we probably would never perform this exercise in public, performing it in a safe place allows us to relax. I think that we can relax our response to these postures even further by performing paced diaphragmatic breathing.

You can use my free app available on Android and iOS to do this. I recommend breathing around five seconds in and seven seconds out. The app is called Program Peace.

I think performing a body scan and being aware of the tension in your throat, chest, and stomach while using Stanley’s exercise can also be beneficial and improve its benefits.

This is all part of the concept of diaphragmatic generalization, where anything you do while breathing calmly is cleansed with peace. For more, please check out my free book Program Peace.

http://www.programpeace.com

The free PDF version has been downloadable from this site for years. But now that the book has been fully fleshed out it is available on Amazon as a softcover, hardback, and ebook. Get your copy here.

I would like to thank my good friend Maxim Elramsisy for taking these shots of the book in his studio. Adam is an excellent professional photographer and his email is maxelram@gmail.com. To find out more about his work you can visit his website at www.maxelram.com

Take a look at the photos below to get an idea for the look and feel of the book.

The Description on the Back Cover:

“Did you know the most dominant apes and monkeys are usually the kindest? They share the most food, groom others more often, break up fights, are slow to anger, and breathe in a relaxed manner. Those on the bottom of the social hierarchy are the opposite. They are stingy, combative, irritable, anxious, depressed, and they breathe shallowly. It is not easy for a submissive primate to become dominant. They have mindsets, mannerisms, and muscle tension that keep them from escaping their subordinate social strategy and the chronic stress it produces.

All of this generalizes to people. If you want to be free of negative emotion, you need to rehabilitate physical trauma in your breath, eyes, face, voice, heart, gut, spine, and brain. Program Peace will coach you to do precisely this by first retraining your breathing pattern, and then walking you through dozens of innovative and effective self-care exercises. After creating new mindsets and mannerisms, and learning to reinvigorate muscles you never knew you had, you will find yourself more confident, healthier, kinder, and reprogrammed for peace.”

More About Program Peace

Program Peace is a self-care system that will guide you through exercises designed to help your body function optimally. Every organ in the human body is adversely affected by stress and negative emotions. The results of these changes are harmful to health, and accumulate over time. The activities in this book will help you rehabilitate the aspects damaged by long-term stress, freeing you from pain and allowing you to feel comfortable in your own body. Using this system will give you more energy, increased confidence, improved posture, and the ability to breathe freely.

The Program Peace methodology begins with the breath. Reading the book will teach you how to breathe in a way that activates the resting and healing division of your nervous system. The key is to breathe with maximal activation of the diaphragm. All mammals that are in a calm and peaceful state breathe with the diaphragm. However, this changes when they are scared or stressed.

Like other stressed mammals, from mice to monkeys, you and I have learned to stifle and strain our diaphragm. Cumulatively the non-peaceful moments in our lives have programmed us to breathe more and more shallowly. This is known to scientists as “distressed breathing,” and it is highly destructive to your physical and mental health. It results in constant muscular, respiratory, and cardiovascular fatigue. It is why so many people endure persistent pain, rapid aging, and an inability to catch their breath.

Our nervous system will always prioritize short-term survival over long-term well-being as long as it assumes our environment is dangerous. Most humans live and breathe in survival mode all the time. This is true even though our modern environment rarely involves immediate physical danger. The Program Peace method involves assuring your body that the environment in which it lives is safe, happy, and peaceful. But you can only convince it of this if you change your breathing pattern.

Program Peace is designed to train you to recruit the diaphragm with every breath you take. This will help you build diaphragmatic breathing back into your daily habits and behaviors. The process of transitioning from short, shallow breaths to long, deep breaths is depicted in the site logo on the top left corner of your screen. As your diaphragm strengthens from consistent use, its range of motion increases, and your neurological control over it improves, allowing you to breathe more steadily and easily all the time. It will take months, but the results are worth it. This is one of the most important changes you can make in your life.

What follows are the bullet points from each chapter of the Program Peace book. I wanted to post them all together here so they can be found easily as a collection. You can access the entire book, chapter by chapter, for free at http://www.programpeace.com.

Chapter 1: Bullet Points

• Submission and aggression are highly detrimental and we want to replace them with assertiveness and playfulness.
• All mammals use submissive displays to show subordination to more dominant animals. They do this to reduce social conflict over food, sex, and other resources.
• Humans use submissive displays, too, often just to be friendly.
• We commonly use suboptimal body language because we are afraid that, otherwise, we might come across as too aggressive.
• It is difficult to stop using submissive displays because they become habitual, and the people around us come to expect them.
• Your composure, posture, and breathing style are all products of your social environment.
• Ongoing submissive displays lead to muscle tension that is apparent to others. The chronic muscular strain caused by the display becomes a badge of self-perceived low status.
• As you perform the Program Peace exercises, I think you will be surprised by how much and how often you use suboptimal body language due to modesty.
• We all suffer from this to different degrees, and it causes suboptimal functioning of various muscles and organs. It also causes chronic pain, which contributes to depression and anxiety.
• Our attempts to stop acting submissive and make our behavior more dominant are fear-inducing and cause us to breathe shallowly.
• Shallow, distressed breathing is a submissive display.

• Using diaphragmatic breathing while practicing dominant displays and postures can make them very comfortable and make nonverbal assertiveness a new default.
• Replacing submissive behaviors with assertive ones will improve how you feel, the way others perceive you, and how you get along with them.
• Dominant animals are the most assertive, and submissive animals are the most aggressive. This should inspire us to be assertive without being aggressive. It requires that we learn to retain our composure and learn not to allow provocation or threat to affect the face, voice, spine, or breath.
• This chapter is the first step in helping you reconceptualize yourself as dominant, pure of heart, slow to anger, and not easily offended.

Chapter Two: Bullet Points

• Your body is a “survival machine” designed to support a competitive molecular replicator: namely, your DNA.
• Our biology prioritizes the DNA, and for that reason, our bodies are designed to sacrifice our physical and emotional well-being for the sake of survival and reproduction.
• As one example of this, we are built to adapt to stressful environments by upregulating our stress-response activity, resulting in anxiety and pain.
• Even in the modern world, everyone’s stress system has been over-activated to some extent. This anxiety or “hyperarousal” results in chronic muscular, respiratory, and cardiovascular fatigue.
• Anxiety and chronic stress negatively affect every organ in the body. These organ systems are roughly congruent with the ancient Hindu system of chakras—familiar body parts that need to be rehabilitated with love and care.
• We use anxiety as a submissive display to prove to others that we are neither “too calm” nor “too good” for them.
• The overuse of submissive signals leads to the accumulation of trauma within our tissues and organs, especially the breathing muscles. The result is often chronic defeat, otherwise known as depression.
• Being nonsubmissive is not about being tougher than anyone else; it is about not wasting energy on competitive nonsense that leads nowhere.
• Dominant mammals are usually the most composed, and the least traumatized and hyperaroused. They don’t feel any need to use anxiety as a form of social lubrication.
• Deep, diaphragmatic breathing is the foundation of dominant behavior because it builds unconscious self-confidence.
• You can escape the cycle of social anxiety by breathing deeper and longer breaths in social situations—fearing no one but treating everyone well.
• Through developmental plasticity (new gene expression), you want your body to make persistent, beneficial adaptations that are responses to an optimal environment. To do this, you must give the body the right cues to trick it into assuming that your environment is safe and full of resources. This is accomplished by breathing with the diaphragm.

Chapter Three: Bullet Points

• The brain’s fear and grief circuits are tied to distressed breathing. They inhibit the diaphragm, causing breathing to become rapid and shallow.
• The more traumatized a mammal is, the less its diaphragm moves with each breath. The animal instead recruits other muscles to power breathing and the diaphragm atrophies.
• Disuse due to stress reduces the diaphragm’s range of motion and causes it to become stiff.
• Most people breathe in a narrow diaphragmatic range. This range narrows further as stress increases. You want to expand your diaphragm’s range of motion by breathing more deeply.
• To engage the diaphragm fully, follow these four rules: (1) breathe deeply, (2) breathe at long intervals, (3) breathe smoothly, and (4) breathe assertively.
• Breathing slowly, deeply, and smoothly forces the diaphragm to contract evenly, increasing diaphragmatic strength, coordination, and range of motion.
• It is common for people with anxiety to have inhalations that merely last one second and exhalations that last only two seconds.
• To rehabilitate our breath, we should practice breathing at least three seconds in and five seconds out (3×5). To make this your default breathing rate, it helps to practice breathing at even longer intervals. Performing paced breathing at 5×7 and working toward 10×12 will accomplish this.
• Weakness in the diaphragm is apparent in the form of tiny gasps or unevenness in the breath, called apneic disturbances, which are associated with the startle response.
• You can iron out apneic disturbances by breathing smoothly at a slow and even rate.
• Breathing assertively involves making sure that social concerns do not interfere with the first three rules. You want to breathe deeply, smoothly, and at long intervals while you are socializing.
• Using a breath metronome daily is essential to developing a strong diaphragmatic breathing habit because it will allow you to train yourself to follow the four rules while you focus on other tasks and activities.
• Monitor your breathing carefully during conversations; don’t let it become shallow.
• Your breath should be a tiny but continuous sip of air that never pauses and always proceeds at a steady rate.

Chapter Four: Bullet Points

• Squinting, eyebrow raising, looking down, and gaze aversion are forms of trauma that fracture our composure but can easily be rehabilitated.
• Widening your eyes, relaxing your brow, looking up, and practicing a fixed gaze have many benefits and will literally change your perspective on life.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Social trauma has caused us to become afraid of fixing our gaze on anything, especially another’s eyes.
• 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.
• After making eye contact, look at or near the eye line rather than below it.
• Looking at characters on the TV straight in their eyes will strengthen your ability to look real people in the eyes.
• 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.
• 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.
• Watching TV upside down can reinforce looking up and eye-widening.

Chapter Five: Bullet Points

• Tense muscles with excessive tone burden us. Their tension develops from extended periods of uninterrupted use. This prolonged use is known as repetitive strain or persistent muscle tension.
• Much of the muscle tension that we experience comes from unnecessary bracing. Bracing is largely involuntary but is avoidable because we can become aware of it.
• Rest and microbreaks give strained muscles the downtime they need to regenerate.
• Deprived of breaks, overused muscles become ultra-fatigued. But, given the proper microbreaks, the same muscles could have been healthy and toned.
• Long-term strain changes our muscles physically, leading to adaptive muscles shortening, scar tissue, and the formation of trigger points.
• Adaptive muscle shortening is a form of partial contraction in which a muscle can neither rest nor contract completely. The fact that the muscle is shorter can distort posture and proper skeletal alignment.
• We have partially contracted muscles in the face, vocal tract, spine, abdomen, genitals and other areas.
• Muscles that have been in partial contraction for years go dormant. Dormant muscles limit movement, promote frailty, and lower metabolism. They are atrophied, weak, inflamed, surrounded by fat deposits, susceptible to injury, and, worst of all, painful.
• Most people have unknowingly allowed muscles in the crux of their necks and lower backs to become completely dormant to the point where they are immobilized and can hardly be contracted at all. If they happen to contract fully, as during a fall or when lifting something heavy, it would be painful and would result in injury.
• We brace our breathing muscles, including the diaphragm, when we are nervous. This can push them into partial contraction. To unbrace the diaphragm, allow your exhalations to become passive. This involves doing no work during the exhalation and letting the breathing muscles go limp. The exhalation provides a brief opportunity for all the breathing muscles to relax and receive a microbreak.
• Pain signals sent to our brain from tense muscles overwhelm our emotional lives. They cause the “pain-body” to flare up, heightening aggression, ego, and competition for status.
• Muscular tension is a fundamental medical and biological problem. Due to its relation to stress, it is responsible for a wide range of downstream pathologies and health issues.
• Several studies have shown that relaxing the muscles of the body reduces anxiety.
• Distressed breathing results in muscle tension and increased bracing. Chronic distressed breathing results in copious dormant muscle.
• Diaphragmatic breathing reduces excessive muscular tone, allowing muscles the microbreaks they need to regenerate. This makes it so that the repetitive strains of everyday life strengthen our muscles rather than weaken them.
• Your body has learned to be tense, but you can teach it to let go of the tension.
• Unbracing, which can be accomplished by allowing muscles to go limp, is an acquired skill that can rehabilitate your entire body when combined with diaphragmatic breathing.
• Corpse pose involves lying on the back and focusing on full-body relaxation.
• Progressive relaxation involves systematically scanning over the entire body, tensing muscles, then completely releasing them.
• The most dominant primates are the least affected by bracing and brace the least during confrontation and opposition. So, unbrace.

Chapter Six: Bullet Points

• Massage can repair tense, painful muscles all over the body. It works by forcing partially contracted muscles into a resting state, which allows them to regenerate, heal, and receive fresh blood and nutrients.
• Pressing firmly into tender, achy muscle provides ischemic compression, which forces the blood out of the tissue and then, when released, increases blood flow.
• Muscles that are sore when compressed are the most in need of massage.
• All the muscle soreness in your body can and should be removed by massage.
• Performed regularly, compression will restore proper length and tone to the muscle, increasing its range of motion, strength, and regenerative capacity as well as reducing tension and pain.
• There are key areas of the body that, when massaged, can recover providing tremendous benefits.
• Muscle compression is most effective when used with diaphragmatic breathing.
• Percussion is another massage modality that involves gently but rapidly striking a muscle. Vibration is a third modality that uses a vibrating, electric massage tool.
• Massage also improves posture, athleticism, muscular endurance, coordination, flexibility, and mobility.
• Learning to massage yourself is awkward at first. Achieving the ability to do it effectively may take months but is a skill worth investing time in. Getting professional massages can help the learning process.
• Grooming in primates is vital to stress reduction, social cohesion, and well-being. You can achieve the same positive outcomes by making time to affectionately massage, rub, and caress those closest to you.

Chapter Seven: Bullet Points

• The fear and grief centers of our brains have been recruited as part of the default network. This makes negative thinking exceedingly difficult to stop.
• Disengage from fear and grief by repeatedly envisioning yourself as nonjudgmental, nonresistant, and nonattached.
• Learn to reframe stressors, live in the present moment, and recognize thoughts for what they are: just thoughts.
• The worst-case scenarios that we worry about so much rarely come to pass.
• Recognize that many of your concerns are just defensive pessimism disguised as practicality.
• Negative thinking is a trance. Snap yourself out of it.
• Acute stress may give you a slight, temporary, advantage in some immediate situations, but chronic stress is a disadvantage in all situations.
• Keep in mind that the calmer you are, the better prepared you are to respond to adversity.
• Recognize that you do not need anxiety to be alert, cogent, and socially functional.
• Negative thoughts broadcast unhealthy biological signals to the entire body. The more airtime you give to negative thinking, the unhealthier you will become.
• Stressed thinking causes important brain areas, like the hippocampus and PFC, to physically degenerate, whereas the absence of stress causes them to flourish.
• Don’t let the downsides of stress as described here cause you to fear stress or anxiety. You might even find that your anxiety calms if you allow yourself to feel free to be as anxious as you want.
• Prolonged paced diaphragmatic breathing strips negative thoughts and memories of their ability to abduct your train of thought.
• There is no good reason to be reprocessing insecurities from months or years ago. If you have already made an effort to compensate for them, let them go.
• Try being “dead calm,” first by yourself and then with others.
• Minimize replaying or imagining negative social scenarios, especially confrontational or violent ones.
• Be very calm when you model social interactions in your head.
• Be very calm in social situations. Retain complete composure. Make being calm a priority in your life, eclipsing the fear of appearing rude or unsophisticated.
• Expect that the most relaxed version of you has what it takes to resolve any scenario.
• The dominant monkey is not stressed because it believes in its ability to deal with whatever new hardship comes along. It trusts that it doesn’t have to overthink things to react adeptly to any circumstance.

Chapter Eight: Bullet Points

• We brace the muscles in our face throughout the day, resulting in continual wincing, grimacing, and frowning.
• Facial bracing causes the muscles to become stuck in partial contraction and develop trigger points and adaptive muscle shortening.
• The repetitive strain of facial muscle is disempowering because it anchors you to negative thoughts and emotions.
• The activation of latent trigger points in the face destroys our composure and contributes to social fatigue and introversion.
• Practicing a resting face, corpse face, or expressionlessness will stop the accumulation of strain and make your face agile and “light on its feet.”
• To make expressionlessness effortless and ensure that it does not offend people, it must be combined with diaphragmatic breathing, widening of the eyes, fixed gaze practices, and positive intentions.
• Expressionlessness will reduce strain and keep latent trigger points from becoming active. However, removing the trigger points requires massage and hard contraction of the muscles involved.
• Exercising the facial muscles by contracting them beyond their normal range until they reach fatigue, and combining this with diaphragmatic breathing, will strengthen and revive them.

Chapter Nine: Bullet Points

• Deep tissue compression and percussion will reduce bracing, dormancy, and hypertonia in your facial muscles.
• Pressing firmly into any muscles that ache while breathing diaphragmatically will pull them out of partial contraction, making you more attractive and better composed.
• Massaging your face will make it so that you rarely experience social fatigue and so that your resting face is inviting and receptive.
• Your facial muscles will become more prominent and will have increased range of motion.
• Your skin and facial definition will improve. Your face will appear leaner and will have reduced pain and inflammation.
• Your neutral “resting” face will become authentic and it will be easier to be expressionless.
• Being expressionless and keeping a stolid composure is empowering. However, keep in mind that you will generate animosity if you use your composure to elicit subordination displays from others.
• Aside from the physical benefits there are emotional benefits as well because you are wiping out the low-grade wincing and frowning and the related microexpressions.

Chapter Ten: Bullet Points

• In monkeys, baring the teeth is a threat and subordination display, so the smile is intrinsically tied to the stress system.
• Our smiles have become tainted by repetitive strain, and the smiling muscles are stuck in partial contraction, full of trigger points, and painful. Our tight, braced smiles aren’t happy—they’re just submissive and tense.
• Contracting the smiling muscles completely while breathing diaphragmatically (and then compressing the muscles afterward) will reverse the bracing.
• Isolating and fully contracting the zygomatic, risorius, and buccinator muscles will improve your smile.
• Careful practice will enable you to remove the squint, eyebrow raise, and sneer from your smile, freeing it to be a purely positive expression.
• Practicing a smile while making eye contact with yourself in front of a mirror will help you smile while making eye contact with others.
• Practicing smiling while reading out loud will help you smile while speaking to others.
• As often as possible, practice wearing either the biggest or the tiniest smile that you can.

Chapter Eleven: Bullet Points

• Distress causes over-breathing, also known as hyperventilation, which is strongly associated with anxiety and has many negative symptoms and repercussions.
• Taking exaggeratedly slow breaths will put you on an “air diet,” reducing distressed breathing and hyperventilation.
• You want your diaphragm to approximate a large piston moving in slow motion.
• Because nasal breathing forces you to breathe more slowly, it will strengthen the diaphragm and greatly reduce distressed breathing. Taping the mouth helps with this.
• Breathing in for as long as you can will force the diaphragm to contract completely, expanding its range, pushing it to fatigue, and allowing it to rest afterward.
• Stretching the diaphragm and contracting it isometrically will make it stronger and increase its range of motion.
• Breath holding, mewing, and pant-hooting may help rehabilitate your breathing habits.
• Providing compression to the nasopharynx, soft palate, and tongue will remove trauma in these areas.

Chapter Twelve: Bullet Points

• Stressed and submissive mammals vocalize in an artificially high range. This is also true of humans.
• Over time, persistent high pitch strains the voice box, leads to the degradation of the voice, and creates a stubborn lump in the throat.
• Speak deeper, louder, and more assertively. Start using your outside voice indoors and your distance voice in close quarters.
• Never whine. Stop yourself whenever you notice that you are speaking in a voice that it higher than natural.
• Tense throat muscles can be rehabilitated in several ways, including exercising the muscles involved by holding a chin lock, therapeutic coughing, massaging the throat muscles externally, muting your internal monologue, developing a relaxed default vocal posture, and engaging in diaphragmatic vocalization.
• Diaphragmatic vocalization will pull your vocal muscles out of dormancy. To do this, you take a deep inhalation and then vocalize until you have no air left. You can hum, sing, speak, growl, cough, or yell. Repeating this over and over with the voice deep and relaxed will rehabilitate your vocal tract. Afterward, it is essential to let these exercised areas rest completely. 
• The optimal resting vocal posture includes limp vocal cords, a relaxed glottis, and breathing as if you are fogging up a glass.

Chapter Thirteen: Bullet Points

• Mammals signal submission with their body posture. They collapse the spine, which, over time, strains it and causes pain.
• Postural concessions lead the muscles that support confident posture and dominance poses to become frail, shortened, and stuck in partial contraction.
• Stooping to look non-threatening will bend your spine into a forward C-shape over time.
• Backbends repair this forward C-shape by strengthening your backward C.
• Laying backward over an inflatable stability ball, foam roller, or basketball will straighten your spine.
• The five tenets of optimal posture are:
• Space your feet shoulder-width apart with toes pointing forward.
• Roll your hips forward and contract your gluteus muscles.
• Tense your abdomen taut and gently pull your belly button toward the spine.
• Pull your shoulders back and down.
• Tilt your head back and pull your chin toward your throat.

• Building postural muscles can be accomplished by pairing paced breathing with firm contractions in the muscles that support the five tenets above.
• Combining very firm contractions of muscles that are not used to contracting firmly (and may tremble under load), and combining this with paced breathing is a therapeutic method called anti-laxity.
• Vary your position often, whether sitting, standing, or lying down.
• Postural inattention is a major contributor to poor posture, so be mindful of your posture during everyday activities.
• Sitting tense, motionlessly, while shallow breathing is highly detrimental to posture and health in general.
• Sitting directly on the sitz bones rather than the tailbone will support your lower back and keep it strong.
• It is much healthier to sit on the floor in various positions than to sit in a chair or a couch.

Chapter Fourteen: Bullet Points

• The anti-rigidity technique is performed by searching for dormant muscles whose joints crack or ache, then rehabbing them. To reach these dormant muscles, the body must be placed into unfamiliar positions.
• Rehab is achieved by finding a postural configuration that cracks and then holding it for five to 30 seconds at a time. It feels like a stretch but is a contraction that you want to hold until the muscles involved reach fatigue.
• It is well known in exercise science that firmly contracting a muscle before relaxing it brings it to a deeper level of relaxation.
• Usually, contracting dormant tender muscles makes us breathe shallowly as if we were being submerged in cold water. The key to anti-rigidity is to pair the contraction of dormant muscle with diaphragmatic breathing.
• Anti-rigidity reduces the internal impedance within the contractile tissue, resetting the muscle to its biomechanically optimal orientation. If you want peak performance, you need anti-rigidity.
• Anti-rigidity releases foundational postural muscles from strain. Some of these muscles may have been lying dormant for decades. This results in the reintegration of dormant muscle with active muscle restoring strength, endurance, flexibility, stability, and ideal posture.
• Anti-rigidity will get your muscles firing again, tone and balance your body, reduce fatigue and soreness, and counteract the poor loading profiles of the modern lifestyle.
• For a muscle to be healthy, it needs times during the day when it is pulled to full resting length and other times when it is contracted to its smallest dimension. Use anti-rigidity daily to achieve this.
• Experiment and play with the muscles you have neglected for so long, and with time, you will experience an “incredible lightness of being.”
• Muscles are like springs that are bent out of shape. A muscle that has low tone and is not firing properly is like a spring whose coil has become stretched out. Such muscles require anti-laxity.
• A muscle stuck in partial contraction is like a spring that is not at its resting length (relaxed) or its shortest length (contracted) but stuck somewhere in the middle. Such muscles require anti-rigidity.

Chapter Fifteen: Bullet Points

• Underused muscles need anti-laxity, and overused muscles need anti-rigidity.
• Dormant muscle tears easily leading to injury.
• Perform anti-rigidity while you perform yoga or while you lift light weights so that you can get leverage into dormant muscle.
• Cardio and weightlifting increase circulation, and thereby make subsequent anti-rigidity more productive.
• Employing anti-rigidity with exercise releases muscles from deep strain, reduces fatigue, and restores strength and endurance.
• When exercising, don’t put all your intensity into an invariant form. Alter your form, using as many configurations as possible. This creates multidimensional strength.
• Progress from body weight and very low weight toward heavier weights.
• Rest once the first muscle group reaches fatigue.
• Focus on debracing and dissipating tension after a set or workout.
• It is highly beneficial to perform anti-rigidity and massage on any muscles that are sore the day after a workout.
• Always exercise using the tenets of optimal posture.

Chapter Sixteen: Bullet Points

• In most people, the neck is severely underused and holds massive amounts of strain.
• Anterior head syndrome, also called the “dowager’s hump” and “nerd neck,” is caused by jutting the chin out, bending the top of the neck backward, and pushing the bottom of the neck forward. This is called neck protraction and is a highly submissive posture.
• Counteract this by performing neck retraction, which involves pulling the bottom of the neck backward and pushing the top forward while tucking the chin inward toward the chest and throat. This should include a chin lock.
• You can assume many postures that will help you locate dormant muscle in the neck and shoulders so that it can be rehabilitated with anti-rigidity training. These include neck retraction, protraction, and extension, pressing the shoulders down, shrugging, hugging yourself, shoulder external rotation, opening the chest, clasping the hands behind the back, holding them out to the side, and many others.
• The more you practice bringing dormant neck and shoulder muscles to fatigue, the sooner they will be strong enough to hold an athletic and stable position naturally.
• If you use anti-rigidity to rehab the stiff, rigid muscles in your neck, you will become less tightly wound and you will find the act of exercise to be easier and more rewarding.

Chapter Seventeen: Bullet Points

• Portions of the lower back are rarely used, so they remain in a tense state of partial contraction. This leaves them susceptible to injury and causes lower back pain.
• To optimize lumbar mobility, use anti-rigidity exercises in the lumbar region by bending, extending, and flexing it in every direction.
• Doing sit-ups, yoga poses, Pilates, toe touches, trunk twists, hip-hinging, hip-swiveling, deadlifts, squats, and lunges will all help.
• These exercises should be performed with only your bodyweight, at very low intensity, with many repetitions.
• Bend over and touch your toes several times per day. When doing so, bend from the hip, not the waist.
• You can employ traction to decompress the spine by using an inversion table, “stretchlying,” or decompressive massage.
• You can unlock the lumbar spinal muscles, glutes, hips, and the entire sacroiliac joint by massaging the area with baseballs, compressing it with your knuckles, or percussing it with tools.
• Put your lower back and hips into as many unfamiliar configurations as possible. Rehab these configurations from all angles using deep breathing, anti-laxity and anti-rigidity.

Chapter Eighteen: Bullet Points

• Walking is highly health promoting.
• Maintain the five tenets of optimal posture while walking.
• Strut and swagger while you walk to build confidence.
• Walk with exaggerated, solider-like posture for two minutes until the muscles involved reach a healthy fatigue. Then allow the muscles at least a minute to rest completely before repeating.
• Perform upper-body anti-rigidity while you walk, by moving your arms, shoulders, and back through different, unfamiliar configurations.
• Walking regularly with your hands in the air and the neck retracted will help put your cervical and thoracic spine into optimal configuration.
• When you walk for prolonged periods take breaks to allow your muscles to regenerate.
• When you break from walking, refresh your muscles by squatting, lunging, and touching your toes. This will bring fresh blood to spinal sections that have become stale.
• Practice glidewalking where the glute, calf, and toes of the back leg are fully deployed with every step.
• Walk with both feet pointing straight ahead.
• Capture the remaining momentum from each stride so that it can be applied to the next.

Chapter Nineteen: Bullet Points

• Primates are violently sexually competitive, causing all but the most dominant individuals to become sexually submissive.
• Most people have a submissive urogenital posture secondary to suboptimal responses to sexual bullying.
• Sexual submission involves pelvic floor bracing, which is related to sexual dysfunction, and the regression of psychosexual development.
• Pairing diaphragmatic breathing with exercising both the urinary retention and expulsion muscles can rehabilitate your pelvic floor.
• Spend time focusing on the physical sensations emanating from your genitals, and touch them in affectionate and reassuring ways to reduce bracing.
• When alone, spend time naked. When in public, pretend that you are both naked and comfortable.
• Whether you are nude or clothed, flex your buttocks, push your hips forward, roll the top of your pelvis backward, and otherwise use your body language to show that you are proud to have your genitals on display.
• Don’t obsess over perceived physical or performance inadequacies.
• Get people and media that are toxic to your sexuality out of your life.

Chapter Twenty: Bullet Points

• We don’t crave healthy foods because we have not had the experience of getting full on them by themselves. Give yourself that experience by eating full meals that consist of only fruits and vegetables.
• Use a blender to turn fruit and vegetables into smoothies. It is a speedy, healthy, inexpensive, and low-calorie way to get full.
• We overeat unhealthy food to transiently increase our dopamine and endorphins as an attempt to self-medicate against panic and stress.
• We have spent our lives pairing hunger with thoracic breathing. This is why hunger causes distress, which, in turn, causes us to overeat. By fasting for a meal and pairing the fasting experience with paced breathing, you can detraumatize your nervous system’s relationship with hunger.
• Stop eating when you feel 80% satiated.
• Only start eating when you feel at least 80% hungry.
• People with copious dormant muscle must diet to a stress-inducing extent to maintain a healthy weight. Reviving dormant muscle using anti-rigidity will increase your metabolism.
• Most people have an extensive reservoir of dormant abdominal muscle. Your stomach will become much leaner if you rehabilitate this muscle with massage and anti-laxity and anti-rigidity exercises.

Chapter Twenty-One: Bullet Points

• Don’t fear stress. Apprehension of stress makes it more physiologically detrimental.
• We can respond to stressors in a healthy way by considering them challenges (challenge response) or in an unhealthy way by considering them threats (threat response).
• Whether your unconscious mind responds to stressors with the threat response or the challenge response may be determined by the quality of your breathing.
• Virtually all drug use leads to withdrawal symptoms that weaken you as a person.
• People who mix socializing with drugs unknowingly brace various muscles and organs for sustained periods.
• Video games, loud music, and violent, suspenseful entertainment lead to low-level panic that can become chronic.
• You are on “no chill” mode. And you need to come off it.
• Consider taking one day a week, perhaps Sundays, to unwind and remove yourself from all worries, work, rushes, and social conflicts. A whole day of rest serves as a “macrobreak.” Committing 1/7 of your life to restorative relaxation can make a huge difference over time.
• Regular exercise releases endorphins and enhances our mood, keeping our minds from running our bodies into the ground.
• Anxiety is your body’s way of begging you for exercise.

Chapter Twenty-Two: Bullet Points

• Interoception is the ability to perceive the sensations going on within your body. Developing interoception will allow you to learn how to unbrace your internal organs.
• Preexisting tension in your abdomen combined with stress causes that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach.
• Compressing your abdomen with a basketball will relieve this tension and make you immune to gut-wrenching episodes.
• Your heart chronically beats too fast, causing cumulative damage to it.
• If you listen to your heart with a stethoscope, you should be able to sense that it is beating too fast and out of proportion with environmental demands.
• Listening to your heart with a stethoscope while paced breathing provides a form of relief that you cannot get anywhere else.
• As you do this, imagine breathing into and out of your heart.
• Paced diaphragmatic breathing causes your heart to slow, your vagal tone and HRV to increase, and your blood pressure to decrease.
• Tell yourself that you are the kind of person whose heart beats slowly.
• Your thought process is playing a game of table tennis with your diaphragm. Your heart is the ping pong ball. Each time the ball strikes a paddle, you have a heartbeat. Right now, they are playing at a furious pace and none of the players are enjoying themselves. You want to slow them down. You want them to be lobbing the ball to each other, keeping an easy volley going, and having a fun, non-competitive game.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Bullet Points

• Dominant or alpha primates have higher serotonin levels in the blood and brain than the other members of their group. If they are deposed, their serotonin plunges, and the new alpha’s serotonin will soar.
• Being an alpha with high serotonin that can never be deposed is a state of mind you can create with time.
• Increased serotonin makes you feel less stressed in response to threats and less concerned with other people’s expectations regarding your subordination displays.
• We act in ways to increase our serotonin, but this often brings us into conflict with others and can lead to self-destructive behavior.
• Any wins garnered through aggression or hostility are temporary and unsustainable.
• Increase your confidence not through pitting yourself against or comparing yourself to others but through appreciating the abundance you already have.
• You don’t have to be a high-energy extrovert to be assertive and high in status.
• You have reached ego dissolution once your breathing is no longer controlled by pride or prestige.
• The same boost you used to get from pulling others down, you can double it by being successful at building rapport or making a new friend.
• Your nervous system supports a mode of operation in which all movements are fluid and unwavering, as in tai chi.
• Social submission interferes with fluid movement. Your gesticulations at a party should be as smooth and effortless as your motions in tai chi.
• Camaraderie, gratefulness, and a mindset that is not attached to status and not dependent on the regard of others will help us transcend serotonin blows.
• It shouldn’t feel socially awkward to have dominant body language.
• Get your confidence boosts by competing with yourself and aiming to beat your personal bests.
• Master the belief that no matter what, you will be just fine.

Chapter Twenty-Four: Bullet Points

• Hostility is associated with heart disease, high blood pressure, insulin resistance, and inflammation.
• There is no need to be right or make anyone else wrong.
• Don’t embed barbs in your comments.
• Never let anything anyone says cause you to beat yourself up from the inside.
• Use skillful assertion to bring out the best in people.
• Do as much as you can to see others as tribe members, collaborators, and players on the same team rather than rivals.
• You should never feel forced to choose between being a nice guy no one respects and being a jerk who gets everything he wants.
• When dealing with a difficult person, you want to sidestep their negativity and take the shortcut to the outcome that you want while remaining fair and equitable.
• Resist the emotional urge to take offense and pursue vengeance.
• Respond to provocation with calm non-contention.
• Handle conflict charismatically.
• Never respond as if you are reacting to bullying. Never be a victim.
• Trying to be better than other people and outdo them is exhausting and ends up taxing your health.
• Cultivate self-awareness for your tendency to take out frustrations and transfer blame.
• Don’t let anyone grab you by the breath.
• Acknowledge that your actions and opinions are fallible.
• Feel comfortable apologizing and offering clarification for your behaviors.
• Avoid implicitly condoning acts of incivility that you witness.
• Lower your constant guard against perceived diminishment and loss of ego.
• Reframe the offenses of others as shortcomings in priorities, judgment, social maturity, and word choice.
• Demonstrate more interest in finding a solution than in defending a position.
• Retain your peace regardless of the other person’s disposition.
• Listen to and make an effort to understand others’ perspectives without interrupting.
• Instead of contradicting the contribution of another, think about how you can build on top of it.
• Be a psychopath with a heart of gold.
• Be absolutely unflappable. Pretend you are a god if need be. That calm exterior starts as a bluff but becomes a way of life.
• Assume the best or neutral motives in others. Maintain an objective stance when conflict arises.
• Instead of taking in the worst from everyone and reacting against it, selectively take the best and channel it into everything you do.

Chapter Twenty-Five: Bullet Points

• Treat everyone as if they are the least awkward person you have ever met.
• There are so many ways to be endearing. There’s no need to forfeit your composure or health to do so.
• Creating a “pure of heart” mindset will make many of your troubles disappear.
• When mammals are playful, they are truly wonderful creatures.
• You can directly reduce stress by stimulating the play and nurturance areas of your brain. To do this, you must be playful with and nurture others.
• The “feel good” neurochemicals like endorphins, serotonin, oxytocin, and vasopressin derive from kind behavior. Nature endorses morality.
• Remember that real virtue does not complement itself and is not even aware of itself as a virtue.
• Laughing exercises will give you a bold laugh and fortify your innards.
• Every laugh should almost sound antagonistic, as if you were laughing at someone, but only because it is assertive and unaffected by submissive tendencies.
• A night full of fake laughing and smiling will increase the tension you feel the next morning. And yet, one minute of genuine, unadulterated laughing can relieve all that strain.
• Self-stimulating happiness is key to perpetuating your upward developmental spiral.
• Self-amusement is very healthy and a trait of dominant people.
• Feel free to be silly.
• Act like every day is your birthday and every night is Saturday night.
• When you are mistreated, think of it as an opportunity for personal growth. Consciously deciding to under-react to negativity is regarded by many to be the most powerful way to achieve spiritual growth.

The entire Program Peace book, and all 26 chapters, is now available for free as a PDF on the homepage. Download the book now and start reading about how you can reduce anxiety and improve your confidence levels today. This version of the book is updated and includes over 200 self care exercises.