Quite a while ago, I read "My Stroke of Insight" by Jill Bolte Taylor. In her 30's, she suffered a stroke while working as a neuroscientist. She had a pretty good understanding of what was happening as it happened. Still, her mind failed to work as it had and as she wanted it to. She wanted to call for help and she knew her telephone could do that but she couldn't think how to use the phone. She found that she couldn't speak coherently nor make sense of the symbols on the phone.
She has a TED talk about the experience and her book is available in paper and in ebook form.
In her book, she refers several times to a 90 second interval. She says that when something triggers a natural reaction of emotion, say, anger or fear, the natural body circuit takes about 90 seconds to launch and run its chemical course. She taught herself to wait 90 seconds to experience the trigger, the increase in feeling and its demise. But she kept her awareness on her feelings. If after 90 seconds, she still experienced the feeling that had been launched, she knew that she could, after that length of time, decide to stop allowing that emotion or fear to run. After 90 seconds, she was back in conscious control and could decide for herself how to respond and how to feel about the triggering situation.
I have seen reference to 90 seconds, a minute and a half, in another reference since reading Taylor's mention. Whether one reads the famous "Man's Search for Meaning" or watches the movie "Life is Beautiful", the same message emerges. We cannot always control what happens to us but we can improve our reaction to the events that do come our way. Taylor adds an interval of respect for ourselves, a moment to accept what the body and mind do to respond to events. But after 90 seconds, we can and should take the wheel and drive in the direction we consciously want.
Many yoga and personal trainers would recommend either simply observing calmly whatever sensations, images, thoughts and feelings come to us during the 90 seconds of natural reaction or use the time to breathe consciously and steadily while waiting for the body and brain to run its natural course.
