There Are Real Ways To Reduce The Impact Of Stress

You are stressed out. You may not know that you are, or, you feel like you are managing your stress but, I can almost guarantee you that your stress levels are beyond what your body can tolerate.

Never before in recorded history has so much stimulation and demand been placed upon your body and mind. You are inundated everyday with enough stimulation to last you for months and it just keeps coming. It has been so constant that you are most likely stuck in a sympathetic nervous system response.

What is a sympathetic nervous system response? It is your Fight or Flight response and you are living at some level of fight or flight every moment of every day.

Our systems were not designed to handle this much sustained stimulation and demand on the autonomic nervous system. We are supposed to be stimulated to “get up and go” by the Fight or Flight response system and then calm back down using the Rest and Digest side of the autonomic nervous system - but the opportunity to calm down does not come.

Living in a state of fight or flight is like driving around with your foot fully depressing the gas pedal every waking moment of the day. There isn’t any time for oil changes or tire rotations because you are always driving as fast as you can to get to as many places as possible. The car is completely worn out and at some point it is going to break down.

Now, you are probably thinking, “but I can't take my foot off of the gas, I have too much to do” or, “What, am I supposed to do, sit and meditate all day?” Trust me, I hear you. I felt the exact same way. When you are trying to make it in this world it is hard to find time to take your foot off of the gas and try to calm down because the effort is too time consuming and the techniques are too hard to perform with any positive effects.

Well, that is most likely because what you were trying to perform was a mental exercise and not a physical one. Trying to relax the body is very difficult because the system you are trying to effect is autonomic, meaning not under conscious control.

But, if you stimulate the physical components of the autonomic nervous system (primarily the Vagus Nerve) you can have a great effect upon this system. Through positive stimulation with vibration, breath and eye movement, just to name a few, you can calm yourself down and move into a parasympathetic nervous state.

The best part about this is that it is actually very easy to do and it does not take much time at all. If you are not in the Charlotte area and cannot book a Stress Reduction Therapy Session at Vital Shift Therapies then you will need to do a little bit of research to find the techniques you will need to learn to calm your system down.

Here are some tips on what to search for and where:

• Search for the term Vagal Toning in Google or an AI prompt

• Amazon has hundreds of books on the subject and you can look through them here

• To learn more about the Vagus nerve and its influence on your life look for the Polyvagal Theory by Steven Porges (this is a link to his book)

• YouTube has lots of videos, I like the Human Garage, they have a great video for a full body stress reset

My best advice, of course is to try lots of things and do what feels best for you and your body. With a little practice and consistency you will be finding states of calm you didn’t know were possible.

If you would like to learn more about the Stress Reduction Therapy Sessions at Vital Shift Therapies please click here. And, if you are in the Charlotte area and would like to book a session please click the Book A Session button.

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