A Balanced Approach to Wellness!

Posts tagged ‘stress’

Handling stress and negativity

Stress and negativity cause significant imbalances in our health. The book Vitality!— How to Create a Life That Is Healthy offers general tips for handling them.

De-stressing stress

If you feel stress and you want to let this feeling go, your mind must move to other things. To de-stress, do one or more of these activities:

  • Drink a glass of water.
  • Prepare a comforting food that is also nutritious.
  • Think of a way to make another person happy, and then either do it immediately or make a concrete plan to do it.
  • Call a person who lifts your spirits.
  • Go outside, look at the sky, and think about expansiveness.

Protecting yourself from negativity

Negativity creates imbalance. It can come from external and internal sources.  External negativity comes from other people who think ill thoughts about you. Internal negativity has many causes, such as internalization of negative messages from past caregivers or personal feelings of inability to handle tasks. You can spiritually protect yourself from internal negative thinking and external harmful thoughts.

Protecting yourself from internal negativity

Do one or more of these activities whenever you feel critical or unhappy with yourself:

  • Notice the physical state of your body and force yourself to notice all the systems that work properly (blood is flowing, lungs are working, etc.).
  • Breathe normally and then hold your breath for a moment. Make a laughing sound and then return to breathing normally.
  • Knock yourself on your head (not hard) and say aloud “People certainly are interesting.”

Protecting yourself from external negativity

  1. Either stand or sit in an erect manner.
  2. Locate your solar plexus and breathe to and from it for ten breaths.
  3. Think about a gaseous substance exiting your body from the solar plexus that protects your body. Think about this gas first covering the front of your body, then the sides, and then the back. Take your time, making sure your entire body is protected.
  4. Breathe to and from your solar plexus for five breaths.

    This protection technique can be done any time you will be encountering people that you think might be thinking negative thoughts about you. There is no need to do this technique more than once a day.

Note: This information has been spiritually received and is taken from the book Vitality!— How to Create a Life That Is Healthy, available on amazon.com

Category:

Conflict

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What’s up with “fight or flight”?

Distracting colors

Are “fight or flight” our main responses to fear and stress? That’s what everyone says, but is that so? I’ve asked Spirit, because I want to know. Here’s what Spirit informs me:

People have built-in mechanisms that evaluate danger. (We can call them signals and pulls.) These mechanisms help us evaluate situations and feel how to respond. Our responses depend on many things: age, health status, physical impediments, mental breadth, hunger or thirst, breath capacity, emotional attachments, emotional memories, abdominal state, vision, fears, and awakeness. Besides these uniquely personal statuses, we are influenced by our family, neighbors, responsibilities, and desires.

When a situation requires a response, our bodies (intangible and tangible) must process a response that suits our personal statuses and our outer circle. If the outer circle (family, neighbors, etc.) has strong influence, then our response will be geared towards others. If our response is completely our own, then the personal statuses will force us to devise a response to suit our current situation. If we choose a response that doesn’t suit (for example, choosing to hide when we are too exhausted to move), our signals or pulls will usually join to give us the ability to pursue the chosen response.

Here are typical responses to fear and stress: hiding, lowering to the ground, pulling inwards to be physically compact, freezing in place, falling asleep, entering a shock state, denial, emotional displays (crying, sobbing, begging, anger), and confusion. And possibly, fight. And possibly, flight.  Fight and flight are two responses among many so that to speak only of fight or flight is an incorrect characterization of human response.

Each of the responses has a different effect on the body, some effects being more destructive than others. Stress that is handled through freezing in place or denial has differing effects than fight or angry actions. Stress that is denied can be more destructive than stress that is released through tears. Fear that is handled by hiding can be permanently installed in the body, while fear that is handled through entering a shock state can be forgotten. Each response yields a different effect on the body depending on the personal statuses and the forces of the outer circle.

Characterizing the effects of fear and stress as fight or flight is too broad. Each person is an individual response being, and no two people are alike.

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Act, People

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Healing the heart from stress

heart on the beach

Scientific studies have proven that stress hurts the heart. Spirit has advice to counter the effects of stress on your heart.

Breathing

  • As much as possible, breathe deeply. The more deeply you breathe, the more open your veins stay.
  • If you’re having trouble breathing through your nose, remain unstressed about this breathing situation. The body is designed to inhale and exhale through the nostrils—sometimes through both simultaneously and sometimes alternatingly. Feeling stress when one nostril seems to be closed is stress misplaced. The body will balance the breathing, unless excessive amounts of mucus are being created because of a cold, allergic reaction, or reaction to medication. In these cases, slowed breathing through the nostrils or mouth will sustain the body.
  • If you are feeling stressed, heart breathing can help: as you inhale, think of the breath coming in and surrounding your heart with care and protection. As you exhale, let the escaping breath leave your body carrying out unwanted thoughts. Heart breathing is strengthening and repairing.

Activities

  • Movement can release stressful forces on the heart. Simple movement, such as wiggling the fingers or gently moving the head in different directions and angles, are minimal movements that lighten stress. Walking in nature or engaging in an enjoyed sport can be more helpful.
  • Listening to music that relaxes lowers stress.
  • Interacting with animals lowers stress and opens the arteries.
  • Smiling relaxes the lungs, which then invigorate the heart. Smiling releases stress.

Involvement in society

  • Showing gratitude to others—on a regular basis—helps  the heart stay strong against stress.
  • Meeting with people who are not stress-inducing—on a regular basis—helps the heart stay resilient against stress.
  • Listening to others and empathizing with them helps the heart be pliable.

The heart and stress

The impact of stress on the heart cannot be studied easily, because of stress’s impact on the other organs and systems in the body. Our bodies are holistic entities that cannot be separated into parts without sacrificing the reality of interconnectedness.

All the tips presented in this blog post have impact throughout the body. They are worthwhile to pursue for well-being and balance. More can be done for well-being and balance, but doing these suggestions is a way to begin.

Note: This information has been spiritually received.

Category:

Heart

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