How to manage stress & anxiety.
Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash
Did you know that the majority of the population is chronically stressed out?
Physiologically this means they are in what's called sympathetic dominance; their bodies are in a constant fight-flight-freeze reactive state (their sympathetic nervous system is dysregulated to their parasympathetic nervous system).
Things like being busy, being exposed to constant sensory input through electronics, and drinking coffee exasperate this dysregulation.
In fact, the irony that I fully recognize is that I risk perpetuating the problem by contributing to content online.
I'll be honest, I've had an internal moral dilemma about this for the past couple years and it's partly why I've backed off on posting so often here.
And, I do my best to offer content that activates the parasympathetic nervous system as often as possible for that reason. I want my contribution to this digital world to be an offering that stimulates what's needed to bring everyone back into resonance, rather than perpetuating what's not or somehow contributing to the dissonance.
Anyway, about five years ago, I hit rock-bottom after a two year existential crisis. The process of heading toward rock bottom was violent, volatile, and dramatic (in my experience). But what I learned upon impact (which actually felt a lot more like paused suspension), was that I had been using my energy in a way that was causing huge problems for me internally. I had no idea that I was running a constant low-grade anxiety because of how I was living my life and what I was refusing to acknowledge about myself. My entire system was out of whack. My kidneys, liver, and pancreas especially were suffering the consequences of all those threat hormones running through my body all the time, basically from birth.
Before I continue, I want you to know that what I was trying to avoid wasn't scary dark stuff.
It was my greatness, my light, my power, my gifts, my essence, my virtue, my grace.
To reflect back to that time and see how hard I was fighting to avoid this part of myself is pure comedy to me now. Man, I was so scared, and I made it so much worse by trying to run from it! What a silly thing to run from your greatness, my loves!
The catalyst to this rock-bottom-hitting-awakening was being forced to slow down against "my will" (I put that in quotes because my will back then was not my real will - it was my fear). I was moving fast because I was trying to outrun all the things.
Slowing down felt like absolute torture, but it was the biggest gift I could've ever gotten.
The pain of slowing down is in our resistance to the *perceived* experience. An experience we can know absolutely nothing about until we fully surrender into it.
I say this because my newsfeed is clogged to the brim with posts about the coronavirus. Denmark is on lockdown, the US just closed their borders, and it seems this enforced quarantine trend is on the rise for many other places (a GOOD thing!).
Considering most people are in sympathetic dominance WITHOUT the coronavirus on the horizon, the best possible thing to do with any form of panic and all this newfound free time to do nothing but sit still because of it is relatively simple:
Breathe.
Cry.
Meditate.
Go spend some time in nature (heck, hug a tree while you're there! Wood helps remove negative energy from the body!)
So many complain/brag about being busy, and I understand the consequences many are facing by not being able to work and not having childcare. AND, what a GIFT to receive two weeks with nothing to do but sit still and listen. There is so much available to us in silence, but if we don't slow down to listen to it, we'll never learn to hear it.
And just to be clear "it" is nothing more and nothing less than the greatness that lives inside of each of you.
I love you all so.