Have you identified the culprit of some underlying health concerns? Let me guess…STRESS? When patients of mine come in and figure out that part of the reason they haven’t been able to heal is because of stress or that their body is stuck in a stress pattern, many of them will say, “Well I’ll just have to avoid stress.” And then usually, we both have a little giggle. We all know that there are things we can control in life and things we cannot. Walking around trying to avoid stress will actually only cause MORE stress. Ever heard the saying, “What you resist, persists.”? A simple way to say that the more we try to resist or avoid something, the more of it we get! So many of us walk around trying to avoid the things we don’t want that we forget to give attention to the things we do want!
A survey reported in 2023 showed that 64% of Millennials and 65% of Gen Z stated they felt stressed all the time. 59% of Americans reported that the past year was the most stressful of their lives. Honestly, these statistics get higher and higher every year and don’t seem to be slowing down. We know that stress is the cause or a large contributing factor to many chronic conditions today. So what do we do about it? Stressors aren’t going anywhere, but we have to begin to ask the question, “How can we thrive in the midst of stress?” Some of the questions I’ve been asking are, “Do we have a choice what becomes a stressor?” “Why do some people seem to react more to similar situations than others?”
The conclusion I have come to when asking those questions lies in the Nervous System. Our nervous system is our interface with the world around us. Our bodies are picking up on our environment before our minds even notice. Have you ever felt goosebumps or a gut feeling without even knowing why? 80% of our nerve communication is going from the body towards the brain, while the other 20% are from the brain to the body. So when we have a experience in our life, our nervous system is deciding if it is a perceived threat/or stressor based on our passed experiences. One of the keys to decreasing our perceived stressors is shift our nervous system by creating more safety and ease.
Say we have a big meeting or call coming up and we start to feel our palms sweat, our heart rate go up, and our breathing become more shallow. Our body is perceiving this call as a stressor. Next time you are worried or anticipating a challenging conversation, a big call at work, a job interview, or something that usually sends your body into stress mode, try this exercise.
Sit with your spine straight, feet flat, eyes closed. Breath in your nose and out your mouth. Begin to rub your hands together slowly. First pay attention to the right hand only. Feel the skin of the right hand touching the left, notice it’s movement and anything else you are sensing. Do the same with the left hand. The next step may send your brain for a loop, but that’s the point. Begin to focus on both at the same time, the sensations both hands are experiencing. Do this until you begin to notice a shift in your body.
This exercise brings us into what’s called Interception. When we are in a state of stress or perceiving a threat, our focus is external on the world around us. When we can pull our attention in to the sensations happening in our body, we are actually telling the brain and body that we are safe. If there was a true threat, we would be unable to do this because we would need to be reacting in order to stay safe.
The more you practice this during triggers of stress, the more you begin to show your nervous system it is safe in situations that have been labeled a stressor in the past. This practice will shift the baseline of the nervous system to have more bandwidth for the challenges in life.
A modality I use in my office called Network Spinal is another way of helping to shift the baseline of the nervous system. Through gentle contacts along the nervous system, we teach the brain to pay attention to these areas of ease and to create more of that. The body and brain are learning to shift into openness and safety. Ok, one more saying, “Where attention goes, energy flows.” In the office and even while working remotely with clients, we teach the nervous system to to pay attention to what the body wants more of and how to move towards it, instead of moving away from what it doesn’t want.
The stressors and challenges of life are not going anywhere, but what we can do is change our baseline to look for the lesson or opportunity in the challenge, bring more safety to our body and give us a better chance as responding to life vs. reacting and a better chance at thriving!
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