Stress and balance of personal harmony

A certain amount of stress helps us to adapt to our environment, however too much triggers a chronic stress response, and this is what is damaging.

Let’s step back for a moment and consider our internal environment. The smallest part of us is a cell, although inside the cell are some even smaller parts. That one cell is the most critical aspect for all of this. In his book The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton talks about how our thoughts affect our cells. If we are living in a perpetually stressed place, imagine what kind of thoughts are being passed to your cells. They will respond in the best way that they know how to.

Inside of each of these cells, which are listening in all the time is an old set of programs called unexpressed emotions. Every stressful moment and corresponding thought hangs around doing damage, and we don’t even realise it. Think of a computer which is constantly under attack from viruses and other unwanted gremlins. I see my journal as an anti-virus program. Where the past grunge can be gouged out and a pathway to understanding ourselves carved in their place. Words are powerful, and as we let go of these unexpressed emotions and realise who we are, why those fractals – repeating patterns of how our lives became so fractured our cells start to respond in kind. There is more to it than that, but stress and emotions are a great place to begin to understand how your body responds to life.

Imagine losing these attachments, becoming aware of why you do what you do and creating new beautiful pathways that will serve you more effectively. I wonder what unconscious resistance you have to letting these go?

The memory

The memory is quite a remarkable thing, which encodes, stores and enables retrieval of our experiences. You may well wonder where and how all of that stuff gets stored, why you can easily remember some things and not others. In simple terms information goes in, we encode it in such a way that makes sense to us, which is why no two people remember the same event in the same way. It also means that no two people with experience trauma the same way or react to it in the same way. Similar experiences do not mean similar programs. We have stuff in short-term memory, the things we are currently actively thinking about and longer-term, which is the stuff that is parked out of the way for now.

Your memory is a pattern of stored connections. When we want to retrieve a memory, we are taken along a series of pathways (neural pathways), a bit like following a set of directions to an address, where the experience is retrieved and brought into view. That’s the conscious view; the unconscious view is a labyrinth of things that have not been expressed but leaps out to bite us on our poor little bums when we least expect it.

If you are journaling, then you can capture your experiences, and this will help you to track the trails. Later, when you reflect, you will be able to make sense. We like to make sense of things, don’t we?

Start to think of your mind as a museum, with lots of galleries, some of the old masters, some highlighting different periods or themes, some more abstract and some just fragments of times long ago.

As we get older, we seem to forget more things, which is according to the scientists is all part of natural ageing. But not feeding our brain with the necessary nutrients and not allowing our brain to process and recharge during sleep can create memory loss on a par with ageing, even in your thirties and forties.  All the more reason to journal to get the grey matter moving, eat well, stay hydrated, be mindful, be balanced, live in harmony and living our lives on purpose, in love and light.

Coding our experiences and emotions

Stop for a moment and breathe in your environment. What do you notice? In every moment we consume information through our environment. These are laid down in your mind map using your language and coding structure waiting to be fertilised, waiting to be joined by that one critical connector, which creates the spark and drives it to the forefront of your mind. Your body is continually working with these experiences and emotions. Some will have escaped while others lie trapped looking for an exit route. When there isn’t a way out toxins will accumulate.

How is the body destroyed?

Stress = unexpressed emotions about experiences

Emotions and physical pains are natural responses to life. Keeping them stuffed inside is not natural. When we feel unloved, unsafe and unworthy, it affects the way that we love and shine our light. Toxic emotions steal our light and love. Living in a body where all of this baggage has been kept under lock and key will stunt your growth and ability to live a full and rich life. It also affects the immune system.

Stop for a (another) moment and think about the things that might be triggering an unhealthy response in your life right now. Better still journal about them.

Stress and the immune system

Things like insomnia, headaches, migraines, gut problems, aching joints, and feeling tired are all the result of unexpressed emotions which have festered. As time passes the immune system can grow weaker until all kinds of illnesses, issues, dis-eases, dis-orders present themselves. And then you will know about it. What about you, how do you think your lifestyle is affecting your immune system?

Environment

Our external environment affects all of us. What goes on around us has far-reaching repercussions for what goes on inside. Each of our trillions of cells, like us, are affected by the environment we create for them. Our environment controls us and the environment we create internally controls our cells, which in turn control us. We hold a very powerful key to tapping into our inner wisdom and changing our environment so that we can get rid of toxins, heal and create a healing code that is unique to us.

Cells read the environment, make an assessment and then behave according to what is required. Cells gather together in communities called tissues and organs, and these live harmoniously in these communities until their environment is damaged. Humans likewise create families and communities which contribute to a harmonious or otherwise environment.

How you choose to live, work and play and your values around your external environment will go a long way to giving you your life back. As will eating good nutritious food, drinking excellent water properly, taking exercise, being with people that support and love us and reducing stressful activities will go a long way to supporting a better life.

Acid and alkalising experiences

Your unexpressed emotions and experiences can be classified into acid or alkalizing. Consider that in science, you have a PH (potential hydrogen) scale. Now think of your PH scale as a personal harmony scale, with acid on one side and alkaline on the other.

The numbers on your PH scale range from 1-14. Neutral and has a pH of 7.0. Anything below 7.0 is acidic, and anything above 7.0 is alkaline.

Acid experiences are unpleasant, they burn and sting at one end and towards the middle of the scale are mildly irritating. Alkaline experiences are healthier and used to neutralise an acidic experience. This can mean overdosing on the feel-good factor. What we want is to live and experience life from a balanced perspective.

Journaling and your PH balance of experiences

As part of your journaling and reflecting consider all of the stressful experiences that you have had. What physical, mental or emotional ‘issues’ arose? Were they acid or alkalising?

• Draw up a balance sheet of great times and not so great times
• On one side add your acid experiences and the other alkalising
• Assign each experience a number from the PH scale (from 1-14)
• Which do you have more of?
• Which experiences are linked and which have balanced each other out?
• How can you create personal harmony and balance?

How do you know when you are stressed?

When you look at your balance sheet, were you surprised with what you found? Find a colour that means acid to you and mark up your acid experiences. Then link them together. What insights do you get?

Next, stop, breathe and take a look at yourself. Are you stressed? How do you know if you are or if you are not? Are there any recurring themes – stressors or acid experiences?

Sometimes we become totally ‘stressed out’ and not aware of our rising stress levels as if we’ve tuned out to the repeated knocking. Or you may be fully aware but paralysed and blocked from taking action due to fear. Not all individuals respond to stressors in the same way. Your personality and past experience all dictate how you deal with things and your reactions. In other words, susceptibility to stress-related dis-ease varies among individuals. Some people are particularly vulnerable to stressful situations or events, while others may be highly productive under pressure (short term).

Take a few minutes to consider what you discover, explore and reflect in your journal. Then ask what conscious decisions will you make to change the stress in your life? In your weekly reflections, try this:

• Make a list of how you have been feeling this week, from your daily journal
• How has this week been for you?
• What stands out?
• Does your eating become erratic when you are stressed?
• Do you drink more alcohol to cope?
• Do you forget to drink water and instead reached for dehydrating teas or sugary sodas?
• Is there a pattern?
• What was the trigger?
• How did you behave?
• What is being revealed to you?

Cortisol, stress, dis-ease

Stress, as you can see, is what is called an acidify experience. For now, know that your unexpressed emotions help to create an acidic environment and the release of a hormone called cortisol.

You may have heard of the adrenal glands? These are glands that sit on top of the kidneys. They are responsible for secreting cortisol. Every part of our body works together trying to maintain balance.

All of those experiences gather in your cells to create acidic havoc with the help of the adrenals. They get signal after signal to pump out cortisol, they basically lose their minds and stop responding in a balanced and harmonious way, and that’s when you start to feel tired and potentially fatigued.

The flight or fright response is also managed by cortisol. Whenever we’re angry, scared, anxious, or tense, the brain produces cortisol and adrenaline: hormones specifically designed to incite the fight-or-flight response that was once crucial to our survival. ‘Adrenaline’s main role is to make you alert and focused, with exceptional concentration and memory.  Cortisol also helps increase heart and respiratory rates and getting your muscles tensed and ready.

While those physiological processes worked well for our prehistoric ancestors, they’re not as useful in a world where physical dangers are few. The trouble is, whenever we’re stressed – when a colleague dumps a load of extra work on you when the baby is screaming incessantly when your partner forgets to run a vital errand – these hormones are released into your system.

Though adrenaline levels plummet as the stress subsides, cortisol remains in the body much longer. Since, physiologically speaking, your body thinks you’ve run a mile or two or done something active in response to the ‘threat’, the hormone sends signals to refuel the body as soon as possible. It’s a biological green light to indulge in foods that are not helpful. It’s a vicious cycle of stress, followed by elevated cortisol, followed by that scone or unhelpful behaviour that you don’t need.

What’s even more worrisome is that this encourages cortisol, along with adrenaline, to travel to the body’s fat cells, allowing them to open and release fat – what the body knows as fuel – into the bloodstream, to the liver and then to the muscles to use as energy. It’s also more likely your body will store fat around the belly like a protective reservoir, because cortisol encourages the deposition of deep abdominal fat. This, in turn, increases cortisol secretion, so you end up stuck in a vicious cycle. Weight issues are not what we are here to talk about, but remember the body is finely tuned and all systems work together. You can now see that stress contributes to an unbalanced body, which knocks other systems out of place, which inevitably has an impact on other poor habits, which impacts other systems. So not only can your stress be a factor in illness and dis-ease, it can trigger overeating, which can trigger feelings of low self-worth and so on.

A horrible fact is that people with excess abdominal fat (beer belly or apple-shaped) have a greater risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes and other illnesses.

So how do you break the vicious cycle of stress and dis-ease? This is what you can explore in your journal and with your health practitioner. For now, my invitation remains start journaling and become a detective so that you can get to the root of what is going on in your body and life.

Managing stress: a few simple techniques

The key to success is finding things that work best for you, so you may want to try several different methods. What about these?

Exercise: Regular exercise is one of the best ways to manage stress. This doesn’t have to be hardcore get a sweat on exercise. In fact, that may worsen your stress levels. Think how you can move your body that will also bring joy.

Relaxation and meditation: Listen to your favourite soothing music, read a novel or take a long bath. Practise meditation, quiet reflection time, yoga, aromatherapy or massage

Keep a stress diary: Become aware of stress-inducing occurrences by writing down events that were stressful to you. This can help you to adopt effective coping strategies to manage the causes of stress in your life

Organisation and prioritisation: be realistic! Prioritise what you need to accomplish during the day and tick off each item as you finish them. You must be realistic though – a list of 25 things to do, is not likely to be achievable! Time management is a key step to keeping tabs on stress levels

Delegate! Learn to delegate tasks and responsibilities at home and at work, and learn to say ‘No.’

Stop smoking, limit alcohol consumption: Smoking might affect the ability of the coronary arteries to respond to stress. A study found that smokers, on average, had about 14 per cent less blood flow to the heart compared to non-smokers. Alcohol disturbs regular sleep patterns and disguises the cause of stress without eliminating them

Sleep: It is hard to work efficiently when you are tired, and that can be stressful

Talk About It: Friends can provide with support and guidance to help reduce stress and enhance well-being.