Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Stress Relief

Tonight I did a presentation on stress relief to a women's group. I've done discussions like this before for other groups. It's a topic I know a lot about as I cover it so frequently with my massage clients. When I taught yoga, I covered it a lot, too.

I'm a firm believer that stress kills. For some it's physical stress. For others it's mental. Some people roll their eyes and say whatever (my husband is one of them). But if you look at the body and all its systems, it's not hard to understand how operating it at full tilt without doing any preventive maintenance causes problems.

I often equate the body to a car. If you drive a car at 100 mph for days on end and never change the oil or get the engine maintained, the engine will blow sooner rather than later. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. Then think about what you put in that car. If you fill it with gas that has water in it, that compounds the problem. And if you operate it in the desert with all the sand and dirt in the air, you have yet another problem.

In our society, we are always on. We don't sleep properly to let our parasympathetic system do the preventive maintenance it's designed to for. We eat food that is full of poison whether it is what they put in our food or the plastic that out gasses into it. And with all of the pollutants in our air, pure oxygen is a rarity for us to breath.

When you break down all of the stressors were exposed to, it's not hard to see why we have so much sickness in our world. It's frustrating to see, but virtually impossible to fix. We demand more and more of people and they depend more and more on convenience. Compromised immune systems are easy prey for pollutants and chemicals.

So the discussion tonight was about tools you have to depend upon to help you cope and manage this stuff because it isn't going away. Exercise, yoga, meditation, massage, reading, sitting by a fire. These are just a few of the tools that can help. It's about using the off button. About being present in this moment. About taking care of yourself because we only get one circle around this globe we call life.

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