How to Use a Pipe Bomb to Calm Your Mind

Earlier this week got pipe bomb was found where I live in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. Which is about a 4-Hour drive East from Vancouver. 

Kelowna is a medium sized city of about 235,000 people and it's the main hub between Vancouver and Calgary.

The pipe bomb was found on the sidewalk of the main highway that runs through the city. It was found by a pedestrian who called police. The police then called a bomb unit to drive in from Vancouver and the surrounding streets were shut down until they arrived.

When the bomb unit arrived they successfully detained the pipe bomb and deactivated it. The next day in a news release they stated that if the pipe bomb had been activated it would have been successful in detonating.

As all of this was going on, I was noticing that I was starting to spiral into a stressful state.

It's a lot easier to compartmentalize what's happening in the Ukraine, China, and other areas of the world that are suffering when they seem so far away.

Yet earlier this week, a bomb unit deactivated an explosive device only 10 blocks away from my home.

Suddenly, the chaos of the world started to feel very close to home and I found myself losing my grip in maintaining my go-to peace of mind.

I'm often asked by clients and people in my community how to mentally grapple with a sense of dread, worry or fear with everything happening in the world.

With this recent pipe bomb incident, I thought it would be helpful to share how I personally deal with these types of situations in my own life.

When I noticed that I am losing my peace of mind, there are a few cues that alert me that I've moved out of alignment. Those cues are:

Racing Thoughts:

My thoughts started to run wild going into the ‘what ifs’. What if the bomb had been successful? What if this person is going to try this again? What if they target somewhere else? What if my family will be harmed? Why is this happening? etc. Etc.

Change in Breathing Pace:

My breathing started to change where I begin taking short shallow breaths into the throat rather than my usual deep full breaths into my diaphragm.

When we take short shallow breaths, that moves the brain further into a stressful state sending signals that we are in danger which cues the fight or flight response and releases more cortisol, the stress hormone, into our system further exacerbating symptoms.

Muscle Tension:

I started to notice tension in the muscles of my neck and upper back which is where I wear stress. These muscles felt instantly tight as muscle knots appeared out of no where, leading me to feel even more constricted and worse about the situation.

It's helpful to know what your unique cues are for when you slip into a stressful state. Because as you become more aware of what your cues are, you can catch yourself and rectify not only your peace of mind but also your physiological response to stress before it continues to escalate further.

Once I noticed my personal stress cues, I realized that I needed to return back to my natural state of calm, contentment and peace by reminding myself how the mind really works.

I know that I'm living in the feeling of my thinking. And because I was having stressful thinking, it was leading me to feel stressed, which led me to more stressful thinking, feeling worse, and there you have the spiral.

And so, the first step to breaking that cycle is to know that it's my own thoughts that are creating how I am feeling.

From there, I know that I can use my thoughts to let go.

Let go of worry and fearful thoughts as my mind gets stuck playing through all of the 'what if' scenarios.

Clinging to the worry and fear of a situation that I have no control over is only causing me harm.

The human mind likes to cycle through all of the ‘what if’ scenarios in attempt to solve problems that haven't happened yet. This is in attempt to maintain some semblance of control by planning for all possible scenarios.

However, we are never in control. I truly can never predict what the future is going to bring. I can hazard a best guess, but chances are I’ll overwhelm myself in attempt to try and plan for and control an unknown future.

The idea of letting go of an unknown future at first can feel scary to the mind. It feels as if I’m letting go of control (albeit a false sense of control), which is also letting go of my personal sense of power.

But in fact the opposite is true.

I've learned by loosening my grip of trying to control the unknown, I can relax into the present moment. Only then, my mind is clear from racing thoughts. My body is lighter as it releases the muscle tension I was carrying around.

And I’m confident that if a terrible situation arises, I will know what to do about it in that moment.

In the meantime, I'm only causing myself to suffer by trying to anticipate what that terrible situation might be, as my mind spirals through a thousand different scenarios.

It's the old "we'll cross that bridge when we get there".

At first there's some resistance from my mind as I gently remind myself to let go of the worrying ‘what if’ thoughts, as it wants to continue trying to solve problems. It is an inherent survival mechanism after all.

But with practice, the present moment feels like safest, calmest, and most peaceful place that I could be.