Stress Management
What Happens In Your Body When You Are
Stressed?
Wrong Beliefs Cause Stress
What Can You Do?
What is stress?
Stress is a term used to describe the wear and tear the body experiences in
reaction to everyday tensions and pressures. Change, illnesses, injury or career
and lifestyle changes, are common causes of stress. However, it's the emotional
pressure and tension we feel in response to the little everyday hassles--rush
hour traffic, deadlines, waiting in line, and too many emails--that do the most
damage.
Most Americans are in the midst of a full-fledged stress plague.
Stress is a normal part of life, so there’s no way to eliminate it. But, the
hectic pace at which many of us live our lives exhausts our adrenal glands and
nervous system, adding to the toxic overload within our bodies.
Stress affects people physically, mentally and emotionally. According to the
American Institute of Stress, up to 90% of all health problems are related to
stress. Too much stress can contribute to and agitate many health problems
including heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, depression and sleep
disorders.
Our bodies were originally designed to handle short bursts of
stress, however, it's the emotional
pressure and tension we feel in response to the little everyday
hassles--traffic, high-paced jobs, activity-laden children, deadlines, waiting
in line, too many emails and violent images on television have bombarded our
bodies with stressor after stressor, with little relief.
As a result, constant stress can take a
huge toll on your health.
What Happens in Your Body When You Are
Under Stress?
To understand this better, let’s take a look at what happens in
your body when you are under stress. Many people get a knot in their stomach
when they sense danger. This signals a sequence of biological events called the
“fight or flight response,” which starts
in your brain, moves down the spinal cord, and then to the peripheral nerves.
The nervous system is divided into two parts: the voluntary nervous system and
the involuntary (or autonomic) nervous system. The involuntary nervous system is
also divided into two parts, the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the
parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). The SNS tends to speed up the responses to
your muscular and internal organs to help deal with stressful situations, while
the PNS helps to slow down your physiological responses.
When stress hits, your SNS works in tandem with your adrenal
glands to secrete epinephrine (commonly called adrenaline) and norepinephrine
(also called noradrenaline) into your bloodstream. Norepinephrine directly
enters your heart, abdominal organs, sweat glands, and pupils. Blood then surges
to vital organs and muscles, increasing strength and enhancing mental clarity
for a few seconds.
The adrenals also produce the hormones
cortisol and aldosterone to help withstand stress. Cortisol acts as a
natural anti-inflammatory and promotes the conversion of stored sugars and fat
into energy. It is released when extreme conditions such as infection, toxins,
intense heat or cold, surgery, and other types of trauma threaten your body.
Aldosterone regulates fluid and electrolyte balance in your body.
If you are under chronic stress, your production of these
stress-coping chemicals begins to diminish or
overproduce, as in the case of
cortisol. As a result, instead of
protecting you from stress, your internal coping mechanisms begin to
cause negative changes in your chemical and physical functions, including
binding in your gut and intestines.
Additionally, too much of this stress-related toxic input can overwhelm your
body’s ability to process and detoxify these negative and disturbing images, and
can, in turn, significantly undermine your health, energy, and well-being.
On going stress depletes the body of important vitamins and
minerals, and over time, can cause severe acid build up. Acid comes from three
sources--food, pollution, and stress. Of these three, stress is the greatest
problem. One shot of adrenaline can neutralize and acidify an alkaline diet.
Stress hinders proper
digestion, absorption and elimination of nutrients by throwing the digestive
system out of balance. It interferes with the body’s cleansing process and
actually contributes to toxic acid buildup.
This depletion, combined
with excess cortisol and inflammation, can impair thyroid function; increase
your risk of obesity; contribute to high blood pressure, low bone density, and
osteoporosis; increase your risk of heart attack and Alzheimer’s disease; impair
your immunity; and increase your risk for bladder, stomach, lung and other
cancer’s.
For these
reasons, the reduction of stress is an important factor in achieving optimal
health. You can eat a perfect diet, cleanse internally and exercise regularly,
but if you are in a constant state of mental stress, the physical problems will
not go away. Taking care of oneself both physically and emotionally must go hand
in hand.
Wrong Beliefs Cause Stress
According
to research at Stanford University by Bruce Lipton, Ph.D., stress
originates from wrong beliefs we hold about our circumstances and ourselves.
These wrong beliefs cause us to misinterpret our circumstances as threatening,
which creates internal stress. (These
beliefs are often unconscious, and are always an interpretation of a destructive
internal picture or image. These destructive internal images are what disrupt
the vibrational frequencies of the body.)
The
following is a excerpt of an interview with Dr. Bruce Lipton
titled A Romp through the Quantum Field. Dr Lipton was interviewed
by Mary Ann Butler and published in Awareness Magazine. The entire
interview can be found on www.brucelipton.com
(Part 1 of this article, featuring an interview with Gregg Braden, appeared
in the September/October issue of Awareness Magazine. It can be found online at
www.awarenessmag.com Part 2
continues MAB's interview with Dr. Bruce Lipton.)
MAB: In your workshop, you talked about how we receive stress
information. Would you elaborate on that?
BL: Sure. The principle source of stress signals is the system's
central voice, the mind. The mind is like the driver of a vehicle.
If we employ good driving skills in managing our behaviors and dealing with
our emotions, then we should anticipate a long, happy and productive life. In
contrast, ineffective behaviors and dysfunctional emotional management, like a
bad driver, stress the cellular vehicle, interfering with its performance and
provoking a breakdown.
Stress information can come to the cell from the two separate minds that create
the body's controlling central voice.
The (self-) conscious mind is the thinking you; it is the creative mind
that expresses free will. It's the equivalent of a 40-bit processor in that it
can handle the input from about 40 nerves per second. In contrast, the
subconscious mind is a super computer loaded with a database of pre-programmed
behaviors. It is a powerful 40-million-bit processor, interpreting and
responding to over 40 million nerve impulses every second. Some programs are
derived from genetics: these are our instincts. However, the vast majority of
the subconscious programs are acquired through our developmental learning
experiences.
The subconscious mind is not a seat of reasoning or creative
consciousness, it is strictly a stimulus-response "play-back" device.
When an environmental signal is perceived, the subconscious mind reflexively
activates a previously-stored behavioral response - no thinking required!
The insidious part of the autopilot mechanism is that subconscious behaviors
are programmed to engage without the control of, or the observation by, the
conscious self. Neuroscientists have revealed that 95%-99% of our behavior is
under the control of the subconscious mind. Consequently, we rarely observe
these behaviors or much less know that they are even engaged.
While your conscious mind perceives that you are a good driver, it is the
unconscious mind that has its hands on the wheel most of the time. And the
unconscious mind may be driving you down the road to ruin.
We have been led to believe that by using willpower, we can override the
negative programs of our subconscious mind. Unfortunately, to do that, one must
keep a constant vigil on one's own behavior.
There is no observing entity in the subconscious mind reviewing the
behavioral tapes. The subconscious is strictly a record-playback machine.
Consequently, there is no discernment as to whether a subconscious behavioral
program is good or bad, it is just a tape. The moment you lapse in
consciousness, the subconscious mind will automatically engage and play its
previously-recorded, experience-based programs.
MAB: How did we get our subconscious programming in the first place?
BL: The prenatal and neonatal brain operates predominantly in delta
and theta EEG frequencies through the first six years of our lives. This low
level of brain activity is referred to as the hypnagogic state.
While in this hypnotic trance, a child does not have to be actively coached
into specific behaviors. She obtains her behavioral programming simply by
observing parents, siblings, peers and teachers.
In addition, a child's subconscious mind also downloads beliefs relating to
self. When a parent or teacher tells a young child he is sickly, stupid,
bad or undeserving, this too is downloaded as a fact into the youngster's
subconscious mind. These acquired beliefs constitute the central voice that
controls the fate of the body's cellular community.
MAB: That's pretty sobering! It seems to me that our subconscious mind
is like a chunk of green kryptonite from Superman's home planet, the one thing
that could strip him of his superpowers. The kryptonite is analogous to the
rocky foundations of childhood. As you indicated earlier, the subconscious isn't
evil by nature - and neither is the kryptonite. Yet it's through these avenues
that the programming of our childhood come back to plague us as adults, and -
from what you are saying - rob us of our own superpowers! Many people feel so
stuck, ineffective and victimized, in spite of the fact that their conscious
intentions are focused upon success. So we come to the ultimate question, how
can the subconscious mind be reprogrammed?
BL: To change a behavioral tape, you have to push the record button
and then re-record the program incorporating the desired changes. There are
several ways to do this with the subconscious mind.
First, we can become more self-conscious, and rely less on automated
subconscious programs. By being fully conscious, we become the masters of our
fates rather than the victims of our programs. This path is similar to Buddhist
mindfulness.
Secondly, clinical hypnotherapy directly addresses the issue at the hypnagogic
state.
In addition, we can use a variety of new energy psychology
modalities that enable a rapid and profound reprogramming of limiting
subconscious beliefs. These are forms of Superlearning that open and
integrate both hemispheres of the brain at the same time, allowing us to
re-write our subconscious programs. Using these processes that are
mechanistically similar to pushing the record program on the subconscious mind's
tape player, we are able to release the limiting perceptions, beliefs and
self-sabotaging behaviors.
Energy psychology modalities include Psych-K, Holographic Repatterning, EFT
(Emotional Freedom Techniques), EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and
Reprocessing) and BodyTalk.
MAB:
As a labyrinth builder, I find many people report physical sensations of
profound well-being and peace as a result of walking a labyrinth, as well as
sense of timelessness, such as in an altered or hypnagogic state. Many
spontaneous healings seem to be a direct result of labyrinth walking, and I
myself have experienced healings and a sense of extraordinary wellness. Do you
see this modality as a way to reprogram the subconscious as well?
BL: I believe any process that expands
self-consciousness and allows us to observe and interact with our subconscious
minds will open the gateway for change. With conscious awareness, we can
actively transform our lives so they are filled with love, health and
prosperity. The use of these new "rewrite" modalities provides a way to
communicate with the cells of your body and is the link to transformative
biology as well as psychology.
What Can You Do?
The Healing Codes
I love reading the information available on Bruce Lipton's website and visit it
frequently. On my last visit I was tickled to death to discover that he is
now recommending The Healing Codes. The following is what is posted in
the resource section of Bruce Lipton's website about The Healing Codes:
Now, you can
discover how to: * Super Charge your immune system. * Help your body heal
itself. * Turn on your natural healing systems to heal your pain, stress, fear,
depression and disease. * Turn your body's cells from Protect Mode to Growth
Mode. In growth mode, your body's cells can protect you from or heal almost
anything.
Because I purchased The Healing Codes and use them daily, I
assure you the above statements by Bruce Lipton, understate what The Healing
Codes can and will do for you physically, emotionally and spiritually.
Click
here for more information about The Healing Codes.
