HEALability & Yoga

Stress Ah kill me!
part 2- How to Relieve Stress in the Body

by Tekhiyah
April/May 2011 (Business Focus Antigua)

This practice changed my life! Talk about “back to the middle”... I found my centre – it was gone for so long...pulled to extremes, this way and that...never resolving the stress of it all ...the trauma, the pain, the depression, the hurts, the disappointment...buried deep within... creating locks, blocks and stops to achieving the desired dreams of fulfilment ...but then I discovered how to relieve the stress...

It transformed me the first day I did it! No longer stuck, energy began to flow through me; I felt alive; balanced – for the first, in a long time. The oneness I had been seeking was restored to the temple of my mind, body and spirit within 60 minutes of practice! Just one week after daily practice, I received comments on how peaceful and relaxed I looked...the outward manifestation of exactly how I felt.

It all began in prayer and meditation. In prayer, I asked the question, “If I truly love myself, what should I do for myself?” In meditation the answer came... regular exercise – the health habit some find the hardest to follow. Despite their best intentions, most people allow exercise to fall by the wayside when life gets busy or stressful — which is all the time!!!

Stress simply disturbs our personal balance. When our physical safety or emotional equilibrium is threatened, the body's defences trigger a rapid, automatic process known as the stress response. This chemical alarm releases a flood of stress hormones, including adrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol which race through the bloodstream. Any anxiety, worry or stress causes higher or faster brain waves to occur, increasing the pounding of your heart, tensing up muscles, and hastening breathing in readiness for “fight-or-flight”. The more cortisol produced, the more stressed you feel, the more vulnerable you are to disease and, the faster you age. Prolonged exposure to stress increases your risk of everything ... from heart disease, obesity, infection, constipation, anxiety, infertility, skin outbreaks, constipation, depression, to cancer. Mental, emotional and physical stress deposits itself within as blocked energy.

Stress can cause widespread damage, so it is essential to learn how to deal with stress to positively reduce its impact on your daily life.

Regular physical exercise is one of the most effective ways of relieving stress. For over a year, I’d been failing to motivate myself to reactivate this much needed energy cycle within. So last summer began by acknowledging the small voice I heard; show self-love by exercising regularly again.

The first exercise I chose left me feeling insane! No joke! I stepped into a 6-day-a-week challenge not knowing what I’d got myself into! I felt insanely exhausted every time I attempted this insanely challenging body sculpting method! It did make me stronger as I pushed myself to complete the first 30-days, I admit, but the six-days-a week whittled down to two or three over the next 30-day challenge.

YOU CAN DO IT!!! No...I can’t...and it’s okay!!!

Before the 60-days were up, I knew there had to be a better way for me to love myself. The insanity I experienced was just a bit too much for me... it was adding pressure not relieving it. I need something a little less taxing on the mind-body-spirit continuum, please! I lost a few inches yes, but my weight stayed the same. After weighing myself, I had to also weigh my options.

Ahhh(sigh)... what to do? ...The small voice said, try yoga...

Click here to read full article in issue 36, p72.
 

HEALABILITY is published bimonthly in Business Focus by Regional Publishers Ltd Antigua and Barbuda.