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Stress, Health and Resilience
In fact, a brilliant biochemical process occurs in your mind and body to assure this to be true.
When the mind perceives that you are in stress, stress hormones like cortisol and adrenalin (among others) are produced which begin turning off the systems that are not needed during time of fear and stress, when survival
of the species is in danger. These include your digestive and reproductive systems, cardiovascular and respiratory systems, musculoskeletal and immune systems. In other words, every system of your body is affected.
When you are safe and out of danger, these systems will get turned back on as the stress system turns off.
The problem is that your mind does not distinguish between real or imagined threats, physical, psychological or emotional stress. The economic collapse is just as much of a lion to your mind as you worries about not losing weight. The more you worry, the more the stress system fires. With chronic stress, the result can be a shutting down of the mind and body to work efficiently and in your best interest.
Your key to managing this is to keep the stress response in better control. The less often and shorter this response is turned on, the more likely you will be healthier and happier.
Think about it this way: The stress system goes on when you feel like you are unsafe, unsupported and in danger. So your goal is to feel the opposite--safe, supported, loved and nurtured.
Here are some tips how:
• Connect with those you love who can love you back. Support has been shown to heal all kinds of physical and psychological problems. Join a support group, spend time with friends. Reach out.
• Allow yourself to get lost for a short while with your connection to a universe that is much larger than your own world. Spend time in nature or use your imagination to find images that are soothing to you.
• Be loving and gentle toward yourself. This is the hardest of all, especially when your body is not cooperating with giving you what you so want. We live in a world where there is so much blame and shame, we can’t help beating ourselves up for not being good enough. So STOP. Stop “shouldering” on yourself. Stop blaming and shaming yourself and start to love yourself. Cherish you body as the temple that a life would want to be part of, especially your own.
• Choose to surround and fill yourself up with love. Every time you feel badly, sad, frustrated, stressed, fearful, angry……let yourself feel whatever you are feeling. You are not wrong, crazy or bad for feeling this way. Feel it and release is, then do the following:
• Close your eyes.
• Imagine the face of someone dear.
• Imagine that person smiling at you.
• Imagine the person’s eyes are looking deep into your eyes.
• Your eyes are now locked.
• You begin to breathe in sync.
• You both, in sync, inhale deeply and then when you cannot breathe in any more, exhale completely. Together.
• Do this several times in rhythm.
• And begin to repeat these words to yourself: “I am safe. I am loved. I am accepted as I am.”
Do this for at least ten cycles. You don’t have to believe the words you are repeating. Your goal is just to turn off the stress response, even for just a short while. Your aim is to lower those stress hormones and improve the love hormones that can hopefully help you feel happier and be healthier.
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