Can you imagine living a life that is completely stress free? It’s quite a concept, isn’t it? I’m not sure that any of us would want a life that is completely stress free, because stress is necessary to fuel us and help us grow. There is good stress and negative stress. A great example of good stress is when we feel butterflies in our stomach about an upcoming event. We use that feeling to move through the circumstance and we always feel more confident on the other side of it. Good stress can make us productive and fuel us forward. It is only when stress becomes unmanageable that we need to begin to understand what is causing it.
Signs of Stress
Some of the signs of being too stressed out and experiencing negative stress include:
Headaches
Insomnia
Anxiety
Upset Stomach
Frequent Colds
Aches and Pains
Low Energy
Chest Pains
Many studies have linked stress to lowered immune function, increased blood pressure and cholesterol levels, chronic pain and altered brain chemistry.
Our body holds every single un-processed emotion. It actually does a great job of being our friend in times of distress. Who else is going to hold onto our feelings? Just think back to how many times you have had a feeling, whether it be sadness or anger, and suppressed it instead of expressing it fully? I can think of countless times over my life, beginning as a small child. What a long time for my body to hold all of my unprocessed feelings. Thank you body for holding so much for me!
David Suzuki wrote in The Sacred Life, “Condensed molecules from breath exhaled from verbal expressions of anger, hatred, and jealousy, contain toxins. Accumulated over 1 hour, these toxins are enough to kill 80 guinea pigs.”
This puts into perspective for us what the body holds as we experience negative emotions and unprocessed experiences.
In fact, all of our emotions are experiences in life which are energetic and stored in the cellular memory of our bodies. We just aren’t taught how to properly move through these experiences. We are very much a society that is trained to use our mind and not include our bodies in the equation.
This is one of the reasons I love using Emotional Freedom Technique with my clients. It is such a revolutionary way of allowing the body to speak to us. I have seen countless examples of people releasing unknown body aches and long time chronic pain just from a few sessions of tapping.
So How Do We Live Stress-Free?
We must understand the difference between good stress and negative stress. We open up to the wisdom of our body and allow it to have a voice. When we have an emotion, we accept that the emotion is real and must be processed through us. This is most certainly a re-learning of how to cope with life. Imagine though, if we can recognize stress and release it, or choose to channel it in ways that are beneficial for us, the results will be magic. It is a delicate balance between the listening and processing of the body and the mind.