If there is one thing that makes most
people's lives hard, painful,
unhealthy, and exhausting, it is the
stress they feel, perceive, and create for
themselves. Humans have taken the art
of stressful living to exalted levels.
The key to unlocking the need to
stress is understanding how and why
we are designed and structured to
stress, and understanding how our
beliefs, perceptions, and habit patterns
cause us to feel uncomfortable or
stressed. Once you know why you feel
stress, you can utilize your innate
design and structure and natural selfhealing
ability to correct its negative
effects, and clear the beliefs and habit
patterns that cause it in the first place.
The Stress Response
Essentially, stress is caused by the ego's inability to control all the situations,
people, conditions, and relationships that it wants to control. Whenever the
ego cannot have what it wants, it feels powerless. Consequently, when you feel
powerless or overwhelmed mentally, emotionally, or physically, you feel stressed.
The stress response is a function of
the autonomic nervous system's two
modalities of operation: the parasympathetic
nervous system, which maintains
and restores balance in the body
if it has been interrupted by a crisis
response, and the sympathetic nervous
system, which is the fight or flight
mechanism.
Whenever your brain senses a threat
— whether physical, psychological, or
emotional — the sympathetic nervous
system is activated. This "fight, flight,
or freeze" emergency crisis response is
designed to work for only a short period
of time, followed by a period of
normalization by the parasympathetic
nervous system.
But if, as is often the case, your
behavior is dominantly governed by
your ego's fear beliefs — fear of being
rejected and hurt, fear of loss of power
and control, fear of not being good
enough, fear of lack, or any of the
countless manifestations those fears
can take — the sympathetic nervous
system stays activated. The stress
response switch is stuck in the "on"
position most of the time, playing
havoc with your health, your emotions,
and your ability to think and
perceive clearly. You therefore find it
hard to relax even when circumstances
normalize. Instead, you experience
the habit pattern of feeling continually
anxious and on guard, a victim
of the "what if ..." syndrome.
What You Can Do to Change the Stress-Response Loop
Fortunately, you are designed and structured to automatically heal anything
that is out of balance or in dysfunction. What's more, you can facilitate
that healing by taking actions as simple as sighing and looking up, or tapping
specific points on your body to clear negatively charged energy.
As soon as you can, sit down and
make a list of situations at work and at
home that typically cause you to feel
stress. The next time you find yourself
in one of these situations, use the following
step-by-step Automatic
Calming and Centering Technique to clear your body's usual stressresponse
habit and protect yourself
from the negative effects you typically
experience.
Step 1: Stop and SIGH... then look
up. Sighing releases charged emotional
energy. Most people are not wired to
access charged emotions when they
look up. (To feel bad, look down). This
step alone is enormously effective in
alleviating unwanted negative
thoughts and feelings, and should be
done each time you begin to think negatively
or feel stressed.
You can do the next steps with your
eyes either open or closed:
Step 2: Put your attention in your
forehead (frontal cortex). This is done
by simply desiring your mind to gently
be aware of your forehead. The frontal
cortex, located behind the forehead, is
the part of the brain that is responsible
for higher functions, such as making
decisions, intentions to change, judgments,
planning future acts, etc. When
your mind's attention is on your forehead
or frontal cortex, the next command
you give it — such as put your
attention on your heart beating calmly
— is directly and automatically carried
out.
Step 3: Shift your attention to your
heart. Feel it beating calmly and rhythmically
in your chest. This causes you
to relax and be calm.
Step 4: Bring your attention back to
your frontal cortex. This strengthens
conscious control of the autonomic
system for the next command regarding
blood flow.
Step 5: Shift your attention to the
blood flowing into your hands and fingers.
Feel them becoming warm and
tingly. This normalizes blood pressure
and is calming. This is also good for
hypertension.
Step 6: Bring your attention back to
your frontal cortex once again. Feel
blood flowing to your forehead as it
becomes warm and tingly. Flowing
blood into the frontal cortex nourishes
it so it can perform conscious interventions
at the highest level.
The next steps are probably going to
confuse your mind because it doesn't
have conscious experience or reference
points on how to do them. Before
it initiates anxiety, ask your mind to
defer to your "Knowing" to accomplish
these tasks. Your Knowing is the part
of you that automatically knows how
to do everything.
Step 7: Guide your attention back to
your heart beating calmly in your chest.
Feel your heart center opening wide
open ... perhaps imagining it as double
doors opening all the way open ... keep
on expanding your awareness or energy
out to each side ... at least by 10 feet or
farther. Remember to do this from your
Knowing instead of your mind. (Your
mind will be thinking, "Am I doing it
right? What if I'm not doing it right?"
Your Knowing knows how to do it
right. After doing this a few times, your
mind relaxes and enjoys it.) Opening
your heart center calms you. Expanding
your energy out to each side raises your
vibration, which gives you a deep feeling
of well-being.
Step 8: Put your attention on the
top of your head. Feel it opening all
the way as a camera shutter would
open. Now expand up four feet over
the top of your head by simply putting
your awareness there. Opening in this
way calms and centers you by expanding
and shifting you to a higher consciousness.
Step 9: Breathe a big sigh and notice
how good you feel. Now think of your
problem again, and notice how your
perception of the problem has
changed. The emotional charge has
dissipated, allowing you to handle the
problem more clearly and easily.
Learning to consistently stop stress
right in the moment interrupts the old
stress response habit and installs the
new habit of reacting with clarity and
calmness. The above technique can be
performed anywhere and teaches you
to instantly get back to centeredness.
As you continue to practice this simple
exercise your emotions and biochemistry
will gradually change, as
will your perceptions about yourself,
your work, your relationships, your life, your beliefs and priorities. Instead
of getting "stuck" in challenging
moments and difficult situations, you
will be able to calmly, easily, gracefully
sail through them — with your health,
happiness, and peace-of-mind intact.
Another major cause of stress is the
forcing of attention to either go or stay
where it does not want to. Any time
you try to keep your attention on
something that it no longer wants to
focus on, you will experience resistance.
Whenever you force your attention
to do what it does not want to do,
you will experience anxiety, discomfort,
overwhelm, and confusion, until
the attention can finally be released to
go where it wants to go.
The opposite is also true. When
attention wants to fixate on something
and you force it to cease by repressing
its energy flow and stuffing it, you will
experience constriction and discomfort
until it can freely express itself again.
To experience this process in action
right now, take a look at some object
that grabs your attention. Keep looking
at it until your attention wants to go
elsewhere, but force your attention to
stay on it. Notice how anxious you feel
until you finally release your attention
to go where it wants to go?
Here's an easy and effective way to
neutralize attention resistance:
Whenever you are working on a task,
such as working at your computer, and
the resistance of attention begins to
build to an uncomfortable level, stop
and take short breaks. Let your attention
go wherever it likes to go. This
can be done repeatedly over a period
of time: First focus your attention until
resistant, then sigh and let your attention
wander. After it has wandered,
focus again until you feel discomfort,
then sigh and let your attention go.
Stretch or move a little, then refocus.
Continue in this manner until your
task has been comfortably completed.
You'll feel the difference.
Barbara Mahaffey is a holistically oriented psychotherapist and consultant who has spent more than 20 years helping thousands of clients to get into congruency with their souls and live the life of ease, joy, and abundance we've all been structured for.
Learn more about Barbara Mahaffey or
discover many more of her simple, powerful
healing techniques in her new
Nightingale-Conant program, Harnessing
Your Life Force: Using Radiant Energy to
Connect Your Mind-Body with Your Divine
Self.
