Our bodies are the first responders to our environment. It lets us know when we are safe or if we are in danger. Many times we don't even have to think before our body reacts. The body's first job is to keep us alive. When our body is in a heightened state of arousal, it will go to three things: Fight, Flight, or Freeze. When we move to Fight or Flight, our body is in zone of hyperarousal. This lets us know that when we are in danger, we can fight away or run away from that danger. When we move to Freeze, our body is in a zone of hypo-arousal. When we don't have the ability to fight or run away, we shut down. Our body slows and we can not feel or feel numb. Both reactions are very normal reactions for survival.

While the Hyperarousal and Hypo-arousal are great for survival, it can be very difficult for us to learn and succeed in life. We want our body's in that Window of Tolerance to be at that optimal learning. This is somewhere in between Hyper- and Hypo-arousal. In the Window of Tolerance, you are in a calm state, alert but not anxious, and feel you have control over your life. Think of the Window of Tolerance to be Bruce Banner, hyperarousal to be the Hulk, and Hypo-arousal to be when he is in between those two. While we all like the Hulk, we wouldn't want him to be doing our algebra homework.

There are many factors that can move you to the Hyper/Hypo-arousal (Hulk mode) at faster and higher rate. Sometimes it can be on what you experience during your life. It could be that you had more adverse experiences that you needed to survive during the moment. This can bring you to Hulk mode faster and shrink your Window of Tolerance. Another factor could be that your parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and great great grandparents had adverse experiences that was passed down to you to prepare you for that environment. This does not mean that something is wrong with you. It is the opposite, it means that your body is prepared to survive whatever adverse event is in front of you. The problem is that it is only preoccupied by survival, it can be difficult to do anything else.

What a reset does, is it either keeps you in the Window of Tolerance (Bruce Banner), brings you from a Hyper/Hypo-arousal state (Hulk) back down, or increases the Window of Tolerance. Since our bodies are the first responders, we focus on soothing the body to bring us back to our optimal zone of learning. We notice what is happening in our body and we use one of 5 Resets that work for us. The Resets use Breath, Visual, Auditory, or Body/Movement to help us soothe our bodies. Some resets will not work for you. The idea is to find the 3 to 4 Resets that work the best for you and go back to these when you need to. Practice as many as you can to find what ones that work the best for you. Some might work better depending on certain situations. Understand that Resets don't just help with learning, but can help in other areas of your life.