Stress is an everyday fact of life.
How you respond to your experiences determines the impact stress will have on your life.
Every day you appraise how dangerous or difficult situations are and what resources you have to respond to them.
Imagine you are living back in the times of cavemen. A tiger approaches your cave, real danger!
Your brain immediately relays a signal through your nervous system that sets the “fight or flight” response in motion. Your heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate, muscle tension, and metabolism all increase to help you run away from that tiger quickly. In addition, your hands and feet get cold as blood is directed away from them to the larger muscles such as in your legs that help you to run. You experience butterflies in your stomach as the blood is also directed away from your digestive system to the places it can be used more immediately. Your pupils dilate to sharpen your vision and your hearing becomes more acute to assist you in successfully running from the tiger. At the same time your adrenal glands secrete hormones that inhibit digestion, growth, and tissue repair as well as your immune system response. These very important functions for health begin to shut down.
Meanwhile we still use this “fight or flight” response in healthy ways when we face physical danger, or are participating in active, rigorous sports.
However, a constant or prolonged stress response is not an appropriate adaptation of this response. When lots of little things happen or a major event like a job change or loss of a friend, you may experience long-lasting unrelenting stress.
The good news is that you can turn off that stress response.
It starts with how you assess the situation; most are not truly dangerous. In those cases, you can avert the cascade of physiological responses just by perceiving the situation as non-threatening.
For those situations that are, three minutes after the initial danger indication, the “fight or flight” response burns out. This means that your heart rate, breathing rate, muscle tension, and blood pressure all return to normal. However, lots of times we perpetuate the sense of danger when it is not there.
“There are no drugs or surgeries which can counteract the harmful effects of stress,” says Dr. Herbert Benson, a pioneer in using relaxation for health.
People who are less vulnerable to stress have a good social support system, exercise regularly, and maintain a healthy diet. Most importantly, they see their environment as supportive and friendly. They are able to summon resources from that space.
That viewpoint is often characterized by praise, thanks, and love. top of page
You give it a go:
Look around yourself and choose something - an object, a person, anything. Now find things to appreciate about it and sing its praises. It is as simple as making a decision to find its good and useful qualities. How do you feel after praising?
Next, remember when you last were very grateful for something or to someone. Besides thankful, how did it make you feel? Did you act differently afterwards?
Finally, summon a loving memory and extend your love out to something or someone. Do you feel loved too? Does the whole world look rosy? This is a very powerful emotion, but also the most difficult to summon.
I have researched many mind/body techniques and found the cream of the crop. I teach a series of mechanical techniques to easily avert stress by accessing peace called The Ishayas' Ascension. They are mechanical in the way they are structured to bring both hemispheres of the brain into coherence, ascending above the stress-inducing thoughts of the day.
They are based on praise, gratitude, and love, but you do not have to be feeling any of these emotions in order to use these techniques. As simple statements of truth, they instantly bring anyone to that place of peace. They change the way you look at the world, to not see danger when it is not there, in fact, to be in peace. They are not associated with any religion, and do not require any belief in them to work; they just do.
I hold periodic free introductory talks about the Ishaya teaching and I also teach the basic techniques in a 15 hour course, taught on weekends or evenings. The class schedule is posted at www.ishsya.org.
To learn more, see The Ishayas' Ascension page of this website or call The Arizona Ishayas at 928-649-1619.
Due to government and FDA regulations the following must be stated: These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.
The information provided is not a substitute for professional medical opinion. It is provided for informational and educational purposes only.
