When Your Heart Races : How I Calm Fight-or-Flight with God’s Presence

When Your Heart Races :

How I Calm Fight-or-Flight with God’s Presence

by Nikki of CurlyNikki.com

Has your spiritual self ever received a passive-aggressive or micro-aggressive, or blatantly disrespectful email or text, and immediately felt like your old self, again? Like, no buffer, no pause. Just BOOM. Heart racing so hard you can feel it 808’ing throughout your whole being, a clammy feeling on the surface of your skin, thoughts racing… already drafting the response from the anger? Think of that movie Inside Out… Anger was ready to get on them keys lol.

I got one of those emails this morning. Those are fun. These little echoes. Like pop quizzes. And I felt it. I let the energy surge, I let the lion have me.

But then the Ocean showed up. The Spirit. The calm Fire. The upper energy.

I met the lion with That. With the Real Lion. With Jesus.

This elevated, charged, activated Spirit that we all have in seed form… but we have to grow It, seemingly. And It can only be grown in moments like this. This is the advanced class, the higher grade, you’re an upperclassman, an upper-roomsman now lol. We have to give our Flame, this Holy Fire, attention, even while the lion is there… even when the body is still in the heat of the chase. And it will feel… fake.

Holy Smokes lol as I was writing this just now I saw the image inside of Daniel in the lions den… he didn’t run. He didn’t turn away. He didn’t posture. He just stood in the Presence. In the Power. And God handled the rest. Daniel met the lion with the Ocean… and the Ocean silenced the threat. But I digress lol… It (this BIG LOVE) will feel fake at first. Because anger/fear/lack/sickness/the world is so familiar. The rage feels REAL. But the Ocean? After a few moments focusing on It, was the most real thing in the room.

Why Your Heart Races When You’re Triggered

When your nervous system senses danger, real or imagined, it pumps adrenaline into your body. That’s why an email can feel like a lion attack: your heart races, your skin sweats, and your mind floods with fight-or-flight energy. The body thinks it is in danger. You are gently reminding it that you are not. Not with words, but with Presence.

Understanding the Fight-or-Flight Response

Here’s the conclusion on my practice this morning, because it happened right before we sat for Silent Retreat… for the next time something triggers you:

Your body’s old wiring = the lion. Every time something triggers you (email, text, partner, boss, teacher, deadlines), your nervous system fires the same fight‑or‑flight pattern it learned in old situations. It feels identical whether it’s an email or an actual lion because your body can’t tell the difference.

How to Calm Your Nervous System With God’s Presence

Your new practice = The Ocean. When you choose to sit, breathe, smile, sing, move your body, pray, meditate, you’re literally creating a new pattern for your nervous system. You’re teaching it: “Even when there’s a lion, I can stay in Love.” At first it feels fake because it’s unfamiliar, but that doesn’t mean it’s fake. It means it’s new… new and original… new and ancient at the same time!

Spiritual Practices That Heal Anxiety

What you will feel in the moment = BOTH. The lion will still be very real, you may only get the sea breeze lol, a taste of the Ocean. But these are the reps… like at the gym. Working the muscle. You’ll experience- heart racing + upper room energy at the same dang time… that’s the muscle that will eventually make the lion shrink and the ocean feel normal.

Rewiring Your Nervous System Through Love and Prayer

Over time, meeting each surge of anger or fear with Presence instead of collapse, will actually rewire our baseline. The racing heart still happens for a while, but you return to ‘baseline’ faster. As Eckhart Tolle says, you can unplug a fan, but it’ll keep spinning for a while.

Then it comes less often. Eventually you can stay in that “Arsenio Hall” energy even when hard things pop up, because your nervous system no longer equates challenge with danger.

This “exercise” is not only our spiritual right; it’s physiologically right. It’s not faking joy, it’s introducing the body to a reality the spirit already knows. Interrupting the fear with God.

Pray for the Person, Not the Problem

Something else that works TREMENDOUSLY well, is to pray for that person… that they may feel God’s Joy more than ever before! You can imagine them begin filled with this same Ocean, with this same surge of purifying energy… not so that they’ll treat you better lol, but because this is all you want for the whole world, including them. To be happier, more joyous than they’ve ever been. To know God like they never have. Think of someone who grinds your gears right now… and see them happy, happier, happiest, now that they feel God. This is healing everyone on every level, including you… imagining them happy… you have to feel the happiness first lol! SEE?!

“When you are angry with someone, the way to find peace is to pray for that person and ask God to reward him or her for making you suffer.” -St. Thérèse of Lisieux

Don’t Feed the Lion

OOOH AND DON’T FEED THE LION lol Don’t replay the drama with friends or family to fuel the ‘like, yooooo, isn’t this wiiiiild? can you believe it,’ energy of the old you. You’re done with that. Approach this in a new way! FLY HIGHER. Talk less. There’s less turbulence up here. We can still see the storm tho 😉

PRACTICE AND SIT WITH US!