Written by Dr. Jazz
Have you ever been in an exam, work meeting, or any other stressful situation and you’ve completely seized up and had a complete mental fog? One of the main reasons for this is due to our nervous systems. You’ve most likely heard of your ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response, this is called your sympathetic nervous system, it does things like increase your blood pressure, increase your heart rate, increases your breathing, and dilate your arteries so more blood can go to your muscles in preparation to run or fight. It’s natural instinct, our body wants us to run, this means that less blood is going to organs such as the digestive system or the brain. This reduction of blood flow causes a decreased supply of oxygen which means we can’t think as clearly. 
The opposite to your fight and flight is your ‘rest and digest'; your parasympathetic nervous system. To no surprise this does the opposite of the sympathetic nervous system, it slows your heart rate, slows breathing and lowers blood pressure.
These two opposite nervous systems can’t work together, so to switch one off you need to turn one on. Taking deep, slow, steady diaphragmatic breaths signals our parasympathetic nervous system to calm our body down. Another way this can be achieved is through chiropractic adjustments.