[Teacake]

Hyperarousal is high adrenaline. One of the things it does is move sugar to large muscles. Your body is preparing to fight or flee. The accompanying emotions are likely to be rage or fear. Exhilaration is not an unheard of trauma arousal response either.

I personally dont do anything fight related like shadow boxing or even dojo endurance exercises. Im.afraid to trigger. I avoid brisk walks for the same reason. The last thing I need is to trigger and lose my dense of place far from home.

i do dance exercises. Or yoga. By "yoga" Im afraid I mean stretching. Apologies to true yogis out there. I learned stretches from yoga books. A good deep stretch does yoke up mind and body. So I guess Its ok to call it yoga. Id love to learn real yoga for PTSD.

The big muscles are in butt and thighs. I prefer to stand flat footed and barefoot. Its grounding. One of the best things Ive found is to keep feet parallel, forearms resting on thighs, butt out as a good teacher describes as portapotty pose, and bounce your butt
up and down. Its not elegant. I refuse to do it under a camera or around males but it is a very efficient way to burn off sugar and adrenaline. And it builds your derriere.

Sitting against the wall is a good one. You can do it anywhere. It doesnt look silly.

If you put your palms together like prayer hands...try it and see. It helps. Its a natural position so you can do it anywhere.

Peter Levine says sing voo in the deepest tone you can. Breathe naturally. Exhale singing voo in a strong foghorn tone. Its a vocalists exercise. If will improve your voice.

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Amino acid GABA does what gabapentin promises.

Calcium will.calm and quiet you. Take balanced with magnesium. Vitamin c is tranquilising too. But not dopifying like medicine.

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I do better on vata balancing diet. PTSD is mind unyoked from body. Vata balancing diet seems to ground me.

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Tell me what works for you. If I can share butt bouncing and singing voo you can share whatever works for you. I think we need to compile and share all the simple and free self help we can. We are suiciding at a rate of one every fifteen minutes. One of four suicides is ex military. Trauma kills.

David Bercelis TRE works for me. I will finish certification and teach for free. I dont care if I wash dishes in a restaurant to pay the rent. It is wrong to ask people for cash to learn trauma recovery.

Lets compile the free stuff here.

Lets make the peace we seek.

[MotownJohnny]

I thought about your post since last night. It does actually make sense to me that a good long workout tends to calm me down. If the body is ramping up adrenalin, moving sugars around into the muscles, etc., then a run, a ride, a swim would depelete those.

I was in a pretty foul mood yesterday late afternoon and into the evening. I hit the gym, did a treadmill run, some weights, got on the rower, and then hit the pool to practice my freestyle. I felt a lot better emotionally when I was done. I would burst and die if I didn't have that.

[CalmingOcean]

Thank you Teacake, that is all great ideas. I am just having all this 'trauma' Complex PTSD stuff brought to light (as of about 2 months ago). It's all pretty hard to grasp. I'm not good at the 'calming' stuff, I'm not usually good bring left ei just me and my mind... It's like I have to constantly keep busy, constantly have change... I would like for that to end. I just want peace.

Like Motownso far I find the best thing for me right now is a good hard work out. Sometimes hiking with my dogs helps as well but it's usually not enough, too quiet.

Is it wrong to like my hyper arousal states?

[A Red Panda]

Cleaning. Gets me moving and doing something productive - can also release some aggression if I'm feeling that way. At the end of it, I'm happy to have got all that cleaning done and I am always very focused on what I'm doing (and often times dealing with the horribly strong smell of cleaning products which always focuses me because I find it gagging... - also causes me to control my breathing because I won't want to breathe through my nose!)

[SkyWhite]

I do 30 mins a day on the treadmill and find housework is a good one. Like Red Panda said it can keep you focused. But the best calming thing for me is a not-to-hot bath or shower, although a bath is better.

I'm still trying to figure all this out, but those things seem to help. What really bothers me too is not being able to focus on reading or a movie. I want to enjoy my Netflix but watch the movie for about 30 mins and then walk away. It sucks because I love movies. Maybe they're just sh-tty movies.