Stress Less

Stress Less

Stress is unavoidable - the body and mind need "stress" (or stimulus) to act and react - it keeps us safe and alive - depending on the situation!
Stress - in the more modern parlance is usually a mental and physical response to pressure - again this can be positive and negative.
Training puts the body under stress, a challenging work task is a stress. It is the level that determines if it is a manageable stress or an overload.

Extreme overload can look like overwhelm, anxiety or similar. Prolonged periods like this will have a mental and physical toll.

Most of us, fortunately, experience manageable stress day to day.

The main implication in the body is the raised level of the hormone cortisol - this is to down regulate the stress hormones - mainly adrenaline - and bring you back to a place of mental and physical balance.

You can help your physiological response along in a few ways:
- Meditation - focusing on a positive thought pattern
- Mindfulness - similar to meditation, but more a slowing and reduction having thoughts rolling around
- Breathing - eg Box Breathing to lower the heart rate, control gas exchange in the lungs and slow fight or flight responses
- And more... See second picture below

Hanna and I talked about this in this morning's Morning Coffee chat here:

https://youtu.be/JN78VIt3HKw

Stress is necessary - our reaction and support strategies can be a big help in smoothing our ride through life ?