Tag Archives: stress relief

Stress: A Second Look at Public Enemy Number One

Posted on by

Stree: Public Enemy No. 1

These days, stress seems to have attained the special honor of being named society’s Public Enemy Number One. It causes unhealthy weight gain, high blood pressure, prevents the body from repairing and regenerating, prevents a good night sleep, and has other negative effects besides. For many people, life has ended up being a story with two possible outcomes: either they find a way to live a stress free life and end up happy, or they don’t and never get a chance to enjoy their lives. But what if I told you that stress plays an important, even vital, role in helping you live your fullest life?

Stress, Yes…But What Kind?

This has been a subject of much scrutiny in the scientific world. Psychologists, physiologists and athletes have all done vast amounts of research on stress and how it effects people, how to cope with it, and how it can be used to our benefit. One of the important things to understand here is that there is more than one kind. Some do more harm than good, but you are ultimately in charge of whether or not something is going to benefit you. What I want to do here is give you the knowledge that you need in order to make stress of any kind work for you.

“Good Stress”

Lets start with eustress. Eustress is what you experience from an exciting situation, that puts spark in your life and makes you feel good and alive. Roller coaster rides, scary movies, adventures and things of that nature are examples of eustress. Its easy to see how this kind of stress is beneficial, so make the most of it when you can.

Acute Stress

Acute stress is another kind of stress that is experienced naturally throughout life. This kind is a reaction to a surprise that needs a quick response. For instance, someone jumps out and scares you and you either punch them, freeze, or run for your life. It is one of the least damaging types which is good because we encounter it regularly. It occurs when you encounter a perceived threat, either physical, emotional or psychological. Under normal circumstances, once the “threat” is dealt with, the stress response goes away and everything resolves itself in your mind and body.

“Bad Stress”

Chronic Stress is where it gets juicy. This is the kind that causes the weight gain, the insomnia, the weakened immune system, physical pain, and mental exhaustion. Chronic stress, as the name suggests, is a state of constant stress. Repeatedly facing stressors that seem inescapable or unchangeable is what causes this. Having a job that you hate, or a home life that drains you are examples of chronic stressors. This is probably the most damaging kind of stress.

Hormesis

Hormesis is most closely associated with exercise. This is what occurs when you put stress on your body and it responds by becoming more resilient. This is the kingpin to the point I want to make here. A hormesis like response can take place with any of the above mentioned stressors. Your mind and body can adapt and overcome the stressors they encounter. In fact, it WILL adapt, and develop its own ways of coping with whatever stress it is facing.

Unlike with hormesis, however, the adaptation may not produce resilience unless you step in and choose what kinds of coping mechanisms and defenses to put in place. Your mind and body, on their own, will tend to choose the path of least resistance, and that may not be the most beneficial path. For instance, with chronic stress you may end up with a drinking habit, or abusing your family and friends in a subconscious effort to deflect and numb yourself to the stress you are encountering. That’s part of the power of self mastery. Not only can you choose healthier coping mechanisms, you can choose ones that actually make your stronger and more resilient.

A Warrior in a Garden

So…wouldn’t it still be better to eradicate stress from my life entirely, instead of learning how to work around it? My argument would be “no”. You can never create a life that is completely stress free because there will always be circumstances that you cannot control, and they vastly outnumber the ones you can control. In order to live your fullest life, you have to get good at managing stress, and not only that, but turn it into a springboard that will launch you into success and fulfillment. Better to become someone who uses stress to become strong than merely learn to manage it, let alone just hope that you can turn your life into a stress-less one. “It is better to be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener in a war.”

Make Stress an Asset

Alrighty, brass tacks. How can you make stress an asset? First, understand that humans really only grow and develop through adversity. Stop thinking of everything that is giving you a hard time as being “bad”. Every time you feel stressed out, it is an opportunity to practice self mastery, and get to know yourself better. Take an objective look at what’s going on, and simply accept it. It’s not bad, it just is. Use the mindfulness techniques that you’ve hopefully been practicing. Maybe do a little introspection. Every chance you get to know yourself better is gold. Here is a good Health Line article about the benefits of stress. Multiple views are always good!

“Search Your Feelings”

Second, know that stress is an indicator. It’s there for a reason. Pay attention to your feelings and emotions and figure out exactly what they are telling you. What exactly is stressing you? Why is it stressing you? What are you going to do about it? You don’t have to sit there and take the punches; you can fight back, or step out of the ring, or whatever you want to do. It’s your life, and you don’t need to be hemmed in by the imaginary fences that people tell you you need to be hemmed in by.

Take Action

Start brainstorming and strategizing; talk to the people in your life who are key individuals in the circumstances that are stressing you. Your boss if work is stressing you, or your spouse if it’s your home life. If you aren’t hearing it yet…take action. Get a life coach to help you get things sorted and start moving toward a more fulfilling life. You can even drop me a note here or on social media and I can be that coach for you.

Don’t be Hatin’

Every time you experience chronic stress, you’ve been given a chance to upgrade your life. It may not be easy, and it may require sacrifice, but you can effect changes that will make you stronger and your life more fulfilling. Don’t hate the stress, and don’t fear it…use it.

Breathwork for Getting Great Sleep and Overcoming Anxiety

Posted on by

The Power of Your Breath

Breathing: a vital, yet perfunctory process necessary for survival; nothing to it! Or is there? Your breath may be the most powerful tool you have access to at any given time. You can use it to relax, focus, get an energy boost, get more out of a workout, assist with your meditation, cool your body down and warm it up at will, and even get better sleep. Breathwork training has been practiced in many ancient cultures as a way of life, by modern athletes to achieve incredible feats of strength and endurance, and by freedivers and spear fisherman to hunt, swim to great depths, and even play underwater sports for several minutes at a time on a single breath.

Without going into the crazy physiological and biochemical science behind breathwork, I’m gonna give you a few breathing exercises that you can practice to make your life better. Note: with exercises intended to relax you, its important to focus especially on lengthening your exhale. Exhaling is linked to our parasympathetic nervous system, the activation of which greatly aids in relaxation. Conversely, the inhale is more closely linked to the sympathetic nervous system, which controls the “fight or flight” function in our bodies, or the sympatho-adrenal response. You can see this for yourself by placing placing your fingers over the artery on your wrist and feeling your pulse. When you breath out slowly, you should feel your heart rate slow down, and then when you breath in, it should speed up.

Breathwork for Sleep

In order to get your body into “the zone” for a great nights sleep, or to aid in combating insomnia, try this breathing exercise. We’ll call it “Imagery Breathing”.

  1. Begin by closing your eyes and breathing deeply through your nose
  2. As you inhale, pay close attention to the feeling of expansion and how good it feels to be oxygenating your body
  3. As you exhale, pay attention to how you feel. For instance, imagine time slowing down around you’; imagine yourself sinking deep into your bed with each breath out; imagine a feeling of comforting weight settling on you as you breath out; feel your eyes getting heavier, the room getting darker etc…
  4. Repeat the full, refreshing, expansive inhale
  5. Use the same or different imagery as you exhale
  6. Repeat for 5 or 10 mins or until you’re too tired to think about what your doing and you can fall asleep.

Another simple exercise is a simple mindfulness technique with a small twist. This technique couples the soothing affect of breathing deeply with a “counting sheep” like essence.

  1. Close your eyes and mouth
  2. Inhale deeply, slowly and deliberately through your nose.
  3. Exhale slowly and deliberately.
  4. Steps 1 and 2 are one breath, and once you finished your exhale, count one
  5. Repeat steps 1-4 until you reach 10 breaths and then start your count over at 1 until you become relaxed and tired enough to fall asleep

Breathwork for Anxiety

Anxiety. What a nasty demon. This breathwork exercise will help you overcome the symptom: an overwhelming sense of anxiety, or an an anxiety attack. The underlying issue is something that you definitely need to explore on your own or with a coach or therapist, but as you take down that monster, here are a couple specific things you can do, utilizing the power of your breath, to help you stay afloat.

Because this is a topic that is super important and that affects an increasing amount of people these days, I want to take a little extra time to explain the basics of breathing for combating anxiety.

When a person is having an anxiety attack, or is stressing out to the point that they’re panicking, they are naturally going to start breathing heavily and from the chest. There are two fundamental types of breathing: Thoracic, which is chest breathing, and Diaphragmatic, which is abdominal breathing. You may have heard abdominal breathing talked about like its breathing from your stomach.

The Breath Test

The easiest way to tell which way you are breathing (thoracic or diaphragmatic) is to lay down on your back and place one hand on your chest, and one hand on your lower abdomen, or stomach. Now take a deep breath and note which hand rises and falls. If it’s your upper hand, you are breathing with your chest, or Thoracic breathing. If your lower hand rises, you are breathing though your lower abdomen, or Diaphragmatic breathing. Your body will use diaphragmatic breathing if left to its own devices, without your conscious influence. Diaphragmatic breathing is what you want to be doing when you are breathing to combat anxiety. So without further ado, here are a couple of breathing exercises you should commit to memory so that you can whip them out when you need them.

This one is probably the most simple breathwork exercise out there, but it sets your breathing pattern to one where your body thinks, “Oh, I’m safe, obviously, because I’m breathing slowly and correctly”.

  1. Keeping your shoulders relaxed, breath in deeply through your nose. Your abdomen, or stomach area, should expand while your chest rises very little, if at all.
  2. Exhale through your mouth, pursing your lips slightly, and keeping your jaw relaxed.
  3. Lather, rinse, repeat, for 3 to 5 minutes, or until you start to feel better!

A Note on CO2

Note for those of you who try this exercise and feel even MORE anxious: If at first, when you try this exercise, you feel MORE anxious, don’t worry. An excess of CO2, a gas naturally created by breathing, is increased substantially by hyperventilating and shallow breathing, both symptoms of anxiety and anxiety attacks. Here is a pubmed study on that. BUT, the good news is that you can train your body to react differently to CO2. Scott Carney, an extraordinary immersive journalist, and author of The Wedge, talks about his experience with CO2 and the fact that, even though a strong intake of CO2 can actually trigger panic attacks, with enough practice, your body can learn to respond positively to it. So take a break when you feel overwhelmed, and try again. Eventually, this breathing technique will help you regulate your body tempo, and help you calm down.

Here is a similar exercise, but one that takes a little more time and focus.

  1. Lie down and close your eyes
  2. Breath in through your nose, for a count of six. Imagine that you are breathing in a calm color like cool blue, or warm yellow.
  3. Don’t fill your lungs to full when you do this (focus on slow breathing, not necessarily deep breathing)
  4. Breath out through your mouth for a six count, lips pursed slightly, imagining that you are exhaling a stressful color, like red, or black
  5. Once you feel calmed and soothed, take a couple of minutes to breath regularly and focus on how your body feels

Resources

For more breathwork tips and tricks, check out Whim Hoff, this Healthline article, and longwhitecloud qigong. I also wrote an article about stress that may offer some perspective. Hope it helps!

I promise you, taking a deep dive into your breathing will lead to nothing but better performance, health and mental well being. So take a deep breath, and become the incredible person that your family, friends, community and the world needs!