How often do you notice feeling overwhelmed, or stressed, during your average week…or even in your average day? How often do you notice yourself experiencing your tell-tale symptoms of anxiety or stress?
Feelings of being stressed - the experience of feeling “stressed out” is becoming a more common and - sadly - more accepted state amongst we modern-day humans. Although the sensations we experience when we become stressed are evidence of normal reactions of the body to changes in our environment or experience, these reactions do result in physical, emotional and intellectual responses within the body and they have a downstream effect on us if we experience for extended periods of time.
Stress is a normal human reaction that everyone experiences, whether it be from time to time for brief moments, or over more extended periods of time during their lives. The human body is well equipped to experience stressors in life and to react to them. We each possess a complex and intricate system within us which shifts us from rest/digest (parasympathetic) to fight/flight (sympathetic) modes of operating and back again, over and over, all day long, as required. When we experience changes, challenges, threats or certain demanding situations (stressors), our bodies respond both physically and mentally in a number of different ways in order to allow us to move forward through the situation. We've likely all experienced sensations we associate with feelings of 'being stressed' - clenching of the stomach, tightening of the chest and throat, dryness of the mouth, racing of the heart, loud roaring noise in the ears, spontaneous sweating, inability to sleep or calm the mind...the list of symptomatic experiences could go on and on, but I’m willing to bet we have all experienced some of these from time to time.
These stress responses help your body adjust to new situations. Stress can be positive in short bursts - keeping us alert, keeping us motivated or heightening our senses to avoid danger. But these same stress responses, which are beneficial over short bursts, become a problem when the response continues without relief or periods of relaxation.
When a person experiences long-term stress response activation, we begin to see physical, emotional and behavioural side-effects developing due to this continued fight/flight (or sympathetic) response activation. And the symptoms we experience can be many and varied -aches and pains, racing or irregular heart rhythm, chest pain, exhaustion (often coupled, ironically, with difficulty sleeping), headaches, high blood pressure, dizziness or shaking, muscle tension or jaw clenching, digestives problems, compromised immune system, hormonal imbalances, relationship and sexual problems, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, irritability, inability to focus and think clearly, difficulty managing day to day activities and commitments, sadness and despair.
Even this very long list of conditions is not exhaustive.
So much of our day to day health - both short term and long term - is affected by the way in which we are able to manage our responses to the stressors in our lives, thereby also managing our autonomic nervous state - whether we are operating in sympathetic or parasympathetic, and if we are supporting our ability to easily move from each state to the other when stressors arise and ease off.
What some of us don’t realise is that our autonomic nervous system - that part of our physiology which operates autonomously - without conscious effort on our part - to ensure basic functions of the body continue or cease, slow or speed up as it is required (based upon the signals it receives each second of the day) - is heavily affected by how we respond within our environment. We signal our body all day long in many different ways without even realising it, so it’s important for us to recognise some of these signals we are sending and how the body responds to them. If we are aware of how we are signalling our autonomic nervous system, and the downstream results of this signalling, then we also become aware of how we can change our behaviours to begin sending the particular signals to our system which will have a positive and beneficial effect upon our short term and long term health.
The stressors will always be there, in some form or another...and if we are able to take care of ourselves in a way which enables us to move easily from sympathetic to parasympathetic, we are far more likely to avoid some of the very common, sadly chronic health problems experienced by those who spend way too much of their lives in a sympathetic state.
One simple example of one of the physical ways in which we are constantly sending signals to our body, is our posture. Think about the posture you come to for the majority of your day- the shape through your spine and the position of your chest and shoulders that you take through your work day and also possibly during a portion of your down time. For most of us, this dominant posture would likely be described as a stooped forward position …being forward bending through the mid-upper spine, forward rounding through the shoulders and upper back, shortening of the space across the front of the chest.
We are naturally forward-facing creatures, with eyes facing the front and our working arms and hands able to reach most easily to the front of us. It’s only natural that we would spend a lot of our day working on things in front of us. However, when we add into this, the knowledge that this particular posture we adopt for a lot of our day is actually silently signalling our autonomic nervous system that we are being threatened by something…well, we begin to understand that there is far more at stake with spending a lot of time stooping forwards than just ending up with sore shoulders!
Think about it. The posture I’ve described here is rounding forwards…often, we have the head bent down as well, arms coming forwards, sometimes even almost across the body (as in when typing or using a device). This is the same posture we would adopt if we were defending ourselves from a threat, or indeed fleeing a threat. It’s the classic fight or flight posture - protecting our most valuable and vulnerable organs from impending threat.
And this is exactly what our nervous system reads of this posture. It’s automatic. We can’t even rationally tell ourselves anything different to this if we try to - the posture itself does the talking, and our autonomic nervous system does the listening and responding! And responds it does – putting us into a sympathetic state, releasing cortisol and adrenaline into the bloodstream, shutting down or limiting all the general functions of the body bar those relevant to the fight/flight situation it perceives us to be in.
So, now that we know this, we can focus our attention on trying to keep ourselves out of sympathetic state and start to practice strategies which will reverse this signalling and begin to send signals of safety and ease to the body. As you may have guessed, to do this we need to come to postures which are the complete opposite of this forward-facing, stooped norm.
So, we use postures and movements which promote openness though chest and shoulders; which bring more space between shoulders front and back; which lengthen the spine and bring arms away and possible behind the body. Again, think about the posture now, in these kinds of shapes. We are now open through the front of the body - our vital organs are unprotected and vulnerable. The signals that our autonomic nervous system is now receiving are those of safety, of calm and ease within our environment. No fear or defensiveness or need for protection. If we were afraid or in danger, then we would be protecting these organs …but we are not. This is the signal. And it is heard by the body loud and clear! Whether we take our arms into stretch while sitting at our desk, bringing them up and out and back , breathing deeply as we do this, or perhaps lie on the floor with a bolster or a rolled blanket along the length of the spine with arms out to the sides on the floor - we are reversing the forward facing posture and opening the chest and shoulders and literally changing the signals to our body.
The more often we do these things, then the more often we give our system a break and let it rest in parasympathetic. This in turn strengthens the connections and pathways in our nervous system to become more practiced in this process. And it ensures we are bringing ourselves out of sympathetic state - where our body is focused entirely on surviving the next few minutes rather than living well for a long time - and into parasympathetic, state, where our body can function optimally in all its autonomous processes - digestion, circulation - heart rate and blood pressure, temperature regulation, sexual function (hormone production and release), detoxification and waste removal, respiration, cell autophagy and regeneration. All of these functions simply do not happen - or at the very best, happen at a bare minimum of operation- whilst in a sympathetic state, so it is of utmost importance that we know how to and that we actually do come to parasympathetic more often and for longer periods of time to optimise our healthy, normal functions.
And this is just one way that we can change our signalling …the breath is another readily available, simple, free way we can also do this. Just as the way in which we sit and stand and the way we hold our spine and shoulders sends certain signals to nervous system, so too does the way in which we breathe.
To put this in perspective, think about some of the reactions that occur in the body when we are feeling frightened or threatened…one of the most noticeable reactions will likely be that the breath becomes short and fast and shallow. This is a natural adaptation of the body in a stressful situation – evolutionarily, we needed the breath often and fast to power our body through explosive movement to run from an aggressor or to fight against one. Although this type of action is rarely a requirement in modern stress situations, it is still the way the body reacts). And, parallel to this, we need to realise that we are constantly being affected by the way in which we breathe – not just during stressful situations. During the course of our day, it is common for the breath to become short, shallow and fairly quick in its rhythm. This thoroughly mimics the flight or fight breath pattern, and so of course it sends the same message to the body – danger!
So, if we know this, it becomes obvious that we are also able to affect change on our state by breathing differently to this short, shallow rhythm. When we lengthen and slow the breath - and there are many, many ways that we can do this - we signal the autonomic nervous system that there is nothing to be afraid of, nothing to flee from, nothing to protect against…there is no problem. Our slow, long breath rhythm, especially if we breathe through the nose rather than the mouth - tells our system that all is well…. we have plenty of time to take a long, slow, deep breath and to let it out long and slow too. And, when the body recognises that all is well, we are able to easily switch into parasympathetic mode. Which, as we now know, is the state in which our bodies can do all the things they need to at the optimal level to create and maintain good health.
These are just two ways that we can have a profound impact upon our general state. If we add to this our ability to train ourselves how to re-direct our awareness and attention away from concerns and problems that may arise, and onto simple points of focus (such as the rhythm of the breath or the sensations of the body, or even the landscape outside our window) then we are really building ourselves a useable, effective armoury against our modern human tendency to revert to a sympathetic state for long periods of time.
If you would like to learn real, effective, life-long strategies, practices and techniques to help you manage your responses to stressors, and to support your wellbeing and optimum health, I would absolutely love to have you along to experience and learn what a yoga practice can offer you. And please don't think I am just talking about teaching you how to stand on your head or tie yourself in a knot. Yoga offers so much more than these (no doubt very clever) postures. Yoga provides us with postures, movements, meditations, breathing techniques and – importantly - with practices which create deeper awareness of our body, our physical, mental and emotional states and how all of these are intrinsically linked and affected by each other.
Let's learn how to use our breath and our mind, along with our body, to bring positive change to our health - so that we are not tossed about in the storm of those traffic jams and arguments and piles of work tasks. Instead, we might stay focused, calm, at ease in our environment, so we can comfortably work and rest and play - and get the most from ourselves while also creating health and maintaining wellbeing and experiencing ease, comfort and joy in each day.
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