Mastering The Relaxation Response: The Secret to Peak Performance and Flow

Are you so wound up you can't slow down? Not performing like you want to? Perpetually injured? Can’t fight the funk?

Training the Relaxation System: The Ultimate Athletic Challenge

For action sports folks, being present without the risk of death is a surprisingly difficult task. When you slow down and you're jumping out of your own skin, it's a good indicator there's some balancing of your nervous system to be done.

You’re wired for action—and that’s how you land your best runs. But what if the secret to optimal performance isn’t pushing harder, but learning to slow down? When your mind is revved past redline, you lose focus, burn out faster, and make unnecessary mistakes—compromising vital safety and performance.

The antidote? Training your body’s built-in “brake system” (aka the Relaxation Response) so you can dial in precisely when it matters most and tap into flow on demand.

Picture yourself at the crest of a 50-foot wave, heart hammering—not from fear, but from adrenaline and focus. That’s the power of the Relaxation Response.

Less is More

The body is a magnificently profound organism—wired not only to survive but to thrive and optimize given the opportunity.

As action sports enthusiasts, we are accustomed to the “get after it” attitude. Terms like “go hard or go home” are pretty standard self and community motivational speak. So for those who love a "thrivy-strivy" kinda life, the strategy for peak performance becomes less about striving (you’ve got that down) and more about activating your super powers by training yourself to ​relax into ​the stress response, dropping you into the present moment.

Saying Yes to Stress allows your body to optimize. Providing what’s needed right then to survive, whether that's heightened intuition and super sensory powers as you push your boundaries, improving your mood, or straight-up natural pain relief when injured—your body works smarter not harder.

The Yin Yang of The Nervous System.

The Relaxation Response (RR), first described by Dr. Herbert Benson at Harvard’s Mind–Body Institute, is the counter-intelligence to the stress response. It's your body’s built-in “brake” to “fight-or-flight” responses. By activating the RR through mind–body practices like focus and breathing or simply saying yes instead of no, you trigger parasympathetic signals that slow your heart and breathing, relax your muscles, and shift your chemistry from breakdown to recovery—It's basically natural neuro-hacking.

Why it matters:

• Lowers Heart Rate & Blood Pressure → less strain, more oxygen to your brain

• Increases Reward Chemistry → natural mood boost, pain relief, flow trigger

• Reduces Muscle Tension & Inflammation → faster recovery, fewer injuries, pain relief

• Enhances Cognitive Clarity → sharper memory, focus, better decision-making

• Elevates Problem-Solving → boosts prefrontal cortex function for better focus

• Improves Digestive & Hormone Balance → supports gut health, hormone balance, overall resilience

  
  

Take yourself to the brain gym and set yourself up to flow.

The RR is your ticket to the flow train and your secret weapon in cultivating peak performance. Regular practice activating this response programs your neural pathways, allowing you to drop in quickly. The more you practice relaxing into stress, the greater the chances of hitting a flow state on demand. This is mainly because whether you flow or not is heavily determined by your system's perception of stress and the ratio of skill to challenge.

Think of it like throwing a drogue when skydiving, it slows you down just enough for safety and to optimize the opening into your next adventure. The RR prepares us for an optimal opening into the flow state.

Peak performance is not being maxed out at your edge—it's a "Bee's dick" back from it!

Why is it so hard for athletes to just relax?

It’s counter intuitive.​ When we want to be better at something, we assume working at it more, not less, gets the best results. Even when we are tired and intuition says we need sleep, we still push through. Working hard is definitely what gets results; working too​ hard gets a freaked out nervous system that can take you hostage.

We are chronically stimulated​. Generally speaking the central nervous system has a speedy side and a chill side (sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems). Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers that bind to specific receptors and allow the nervous impulse to fire or not fire. How freely and rapidly your nerves fire and how stressed you ​feel​ is determined by how effective your inhibitory neurotransmitters are at slowing your roll. Two key players are Glutamate (excitatory) and GABA (inhibitory) which act like an accelerator and brake to your nervous system.

Think too much coffee—those racy jitters, that's glutamate without GABA inhibitory influence—No GABA = no pauses between words and you’re running around like your head’s chopped off with fluttering bits n pieces. Caffeine and other wonderfully stimulating life activities prevent us from putting the brakes on and we eventually run out of gas—aka adrenal dysregulation, insomnia, chronic fatigue & panic attacks, which are all barriers to peak performance.

I don’t need to relax, I like to go go go.

A constantly firing nervous system eventually depletes certain neurotransmitters, throwing the balance off and allowing excitatory chemistry to dominate your experience.The relationship between GABA and Glutamate has significant influence on our reward chemistry and are vital for regulating our ability to control pain, how well we sleep, how happy we feel, hunger & stress, and how inclined to sexy time we feel—or not. The right amount of stimulation and you’re on your game, looking good and feeling good. Too much and you’re an irritated, dizzy, unproductive blurry-visioned, sexually muted mess.

GABA gives us a feeling of control in the nervous system; without it nerve cells fire too often and too easily. As the internal sense of control is diminished, often hyper-controlling behaviors surface as a means of compensating like trying to overly control your partner or surroundings and micro-managing at work.

Low GABA activity means the neural pathways for pain and addictions go unregulated, leaving you with express-pass pain signals, making it really hard not to B-line for your self medicating “vice” of choice.

Without GABA, excess Glutamate overly stimulates nerve cells in the brain causing neurological inflammation and cell death. This is the major contributing factor to disorders like migraine, ADD, fibromyalgia, OCD and anxiety.

Rest is how the body reboots itself.

The ​Relaxation Response initiates the parasympathetic nervous system which is the rest, digest and repair or heal mode. It is the body’s evolved system for switching off the “fight or flight”. Not enough time spent in relaxation mode means we stay saturated in stress chemicals and inflammation and the body can’t heal itself.

No matter how good your diet is, without enough rest you don’t digest or absorb your nutrients properly which affects your immune system, metabolism, hormones and neurotransmitter synthesis. This shows up as leaky gut, bacterial overgrowth, IBS, and general unhappiness etc. Know many action sport folks with gut issues?

Love going hard every day? Train too hard without rest and the body can’t calm down enough to integrate what you’ve been doing, so the body hasn’t truly learnt it. Rest gets your training into your body and out of your head faster. Rest is paradoxically necessary for the brain to be industrious and get work done. Some physiological processes only occur when the brain is at rest or sleeping. Unrested, our assessment of risk and ability to focus declines and coping mechanisms go down the toilet.

Many ​studies on meditation show brain breaks and rest or downtime improve​ attention and motivation, boost productivity and creativity and improves decision making—all

essential components to peak performance​.

Hard wired for survival, the body will do everything it can to literally survive when challenged. High consequences certainly help kick us into a flow state but when reserves are low, say low GABA and Serotonin from living a fun lifestyle, you may not be able to initiate your relaxing chemistry to calm your brain enough to think straight, which means you stay peaking. It is in that state stress can take over, mistakes happen, or you die.

The​ ​body has the built in ability to heal itself given the opportunity. That opportunity comes from the parasympathetic nervous system and rest.

There are many ways to elicit the relaxation response: massage, energy work, progressive muscle relaxation, yoga, meditation, visualization, prayer, dancing. The most effective you can take it anywhere free method is by focusing your mind and breathing.

Sleep glorious sleep

So many people have trouble with it, yet it's​ vital to health. Sleep allows the body to detoxify itself,​ promote muscle mass, repair cells and tissues ​and maintain a healthy balance. The glymphatic flush—where your brain cleanses itself of metabolic waste. This only occurs during sleep, particularly during non-REM stage 3 when slow-wave sleep dominates making catching some solid ZZZ's one of the best things you can do for a brain detox and long term cognitive health. Chronic sleep deprivation impairs this clearance and is linked to neurodegeneration. ​Your immune system also relies on sleep to stay healthy. Ever noticed when ​you're sleep deficient you have trouble fighting common infectio​ns?

5 Daily Practices to Prime Your Brain for Flow

1. Handle Your Biological Basics: Nail sleep, hydration, nutrition, movement, gut health and temperature → your brain needs a stable foundation to fire efficiently.

2. Take Mini Brain Breaks: Blink away from screens or daydream for 2 minutes every hour → brief downtime resets attention and prevents mental fatigue.

3. Activate Your Relaxation Response: Spend 20 minutes on focused breathing or a short meditation → you strengthen your “brake” system, making flow easier to access.

4. Prioritize Quality Sleep: Aim for 8+ hours of uninterrupted rest each night → deep sleep repairs neurons and consolidates learning for peak performance.

5. Support GABA Production with B6: Include B6-rich foods (nuts & seeds, sweet potatoes, spinach, bananas or animal foods like chicken, tuna)→ you boost your inhibitory brake, keeping stress chemistry in check.

Ready to start hitting that flow state on demand?

It’s time to train your body’s “brake system” and learn to relax into stress to transform your focus, recovery, and optimize your performance.

If you're ready to take things to the next level, let’s work together and make it happen! DM me to get started.

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