You are doing all the right things eating a clean diet, exercising regularly, monitoring your sleep but still you feel something is amiss.
You continue feeling tired in the morning, holding extra weight on your belly or your biological functions are not in sync.
I hear this all the time from clients something is not right! Some move on to trying more supplements, medications or meeting with other health practitioners such as doctors, naturopaths, other healers etc.
We are living dynamic beings and our body is always changing just like the weather.
That missing ingredient is releasing stress. Its presence is profound and impacts each person differently.
What are some ways your body holds stress?
In part, it is the way we have developed habits for coping with stress from childhood throughout adulthood to get through a crisis.
It is often shown in areas of sleep, weight on the belly perhaps from adrenal fatigue, or an autoimmune disease, in our posture, or shoulders tense and upright, or holding on and not eliminating. It can become food sensitivities or chronic illnesses undiagnosed.
Trauma psychologist Peter Levine, (author Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma and founder of Somatic Experiencing) writes that "certain shocks to the organism can alter a person’s biological, psychological and social equilibrium that the memory of one particular event comes to taint and dominate all experiences.” There are many ways in which each person experiences stress.
We cannot separate how our mind and body functions when each impacts the other.
We are wired for stress to survive! Stress was defined by Hans Seyle, an endocrinologist who said “the response of an organism to the demands in the environment and, as such, is neither good nor bad in itself.” The stress reaction is deeply rooted in our biology and efficiently designed to support survival. Yet, like anything that gets out of control from its natural cycle can tip the bucket and stress becomes chronic. The autonomic nervous system is not able to move out of the sympathetic state to the parasympathetic state of rest and digest, it triggers hormones, neurotransmitters, chemicals, etc. thinking it needs to stay in fight or flight.
The body holds the stress because “the issues are in the tissues” embedded in our biology. Of course our genetic predisposition, the environment and general health are also a factor.
Animals shake out their stress, humans since no longer hunters and gatherers their stress moves into the mental realm where thoughts, trauma and stress move into the body.
Using the practice of mindfulness meditation and movement are a powerful way in which stress can be released from the body. Thoughts become focused and training the mind and body to be present versus past or future, transforms the biological release.
My programs Feed the Brain and Heal to Health include this missing ingredient. You will experience the feeling of calm, have awareness about your body sensations and gain a greater understanding about stress reactivity in your life, relationships and attitude.