Unraveling stress: Your fitness is Inside!

The new fitness revolution is … Stress Reduction.

If you’re not working on your stress you’re missing the boat. You’re adding intensity each and every day to an already overburdened system, only making it work harder, increasing the chances of that it may break down.

Lowering your stress is really the fountain of youth. Your panacea of pleasure. The road towards longevity.

Every time we “pick up” another additional stress we add it to an already full plate. We have so much to deal with during our day that adding even the most minor, simplest thing may fill our bucket to the brim and put us over the edge. Why did you get that cold last week? Stress.

When we are stressed our body enters an unhealthy state of “fight or flight, shunting its attention and the majority of blood to our core, our spine, and our vital organs. It leaves any areas that need repair behind and just focuses on deep inner protection. This means that a system like digestion gets weakened, skin looses elasticity, and the immune system is no longer a priority (Why would your body care to avoid a cold when it believes you are about to run from a man eating tiger, needing to put the energy into immediate survival?)

We just screw ourselves.

But the problem is … reducing stress is difficult because it is one of the most inactive things we can possible do. It is the act of “not doing” anything.

“So let me see (a client says to me)…. Everything else that I want to accomplish in life I have to put energy into, can attack with a bit of aggression, and make it happen. I can acomplish whatever I want that way. For this I have to do nothing? How do I do that??!”

Exactly.

The art of turning off your stress is a delicate process. Hitting it with a hammer to kick it into gear will not work. You must use the most delicate instrument. And the center piece of this is your inner attention. You inner eye.

Using your inner eye you will be looking to see how you “code” intense moments and thoughts in your life.  Each time we experience a stressful moment we “code” what has made us stressed as either meaningful or as unimportant. If it is unimportant we do not take it on as additional stress. It becomes a moment in time that we rise to, one that we meet with some stressful energy, and then it falls away when it is over. It “disappears” as meaningful from our inner programming. If it codes as important inside (whether it actually is or isn’t) then it stays with us, becomes a part of our ongoing stress, and contributes to our aging and breakdown. Can all stressful events be coded as important? Yep. And in that case we get overloaded very quickly, and avoid handling anything else so that we don’t become overloaded again.

How can you tell if you have coded a stressful moment as important or not? If it churns in your mind. After a stressful situation do you spend time and energy thinking about it? Or does it just disappear into the many events of your day? This will give you your answer.

What a game this all is for us. We can overcome the effects of stress if we find out how we relate to each event. Then we can decide if it really has importance, or is completely unworthy of our continued attention and stress. And you will probably find out that most things are just that…. not worthy of any ongoing stress.