Feeling Stressed?

We all feel stressed from time-to-time, which is totally natural, however many of us do not understand how to de-stress. We carry our stress around like a backpack until it gets so heavy that we break down.

Modern medicine has discovered that stress is one of the main factors of chronic illness and disease. From a yogic standpoint this makes total sense. When we are stressed the nervous system becomes tense, the mind is scattered, the breath is short and choppy, our heart rate gets wacky, and our muscles tighten up, so all of our energy gets burned up. This creates a domino effect in the body and mind so that every aspect of our being is depleted, and not operating efficiently, which then creates the conditions for disease and illness set in.

Most of us have been so stressed for so long that it has become our new norm. We forget what it feels like to be calm and relaxed. Our nervous system can get “stuck” in a fight-or-flight response, so even when we are not in a stressful situation, we still feel stressed; and because we stay in this state of disturbance, we can never fully rest, thus we become burnt out and eventually shut down.

Yoga practices are specifically designed to de-stress your body and mind, such as deep breathing, meditation, and movement. From the yogic perspective all we need to do is learn how to relax and we will naturally return to our enlightened peaceful nature.

When we are consistent with our practice then we rewire our brain and nervous system so that our baseline is calm, instead of stressed. Of course, stressful things will continue to happen in our life, because that’s the nature of be alive, but we can learn ways to handle the stress when it arises, so that we can return to our peaceful nature.

Meditation practice:

-        Find a comfortable seat on the floor, chair, or couch

-        Focus on the feeling of air moving in your nose. Breathe deeply down into the abdomen at a medium speed at least 10 times. You can do more if you like!

-        Once you feel a bit calmer start to be aware of your thoughts. Simply recognize anytime a thought arises.

-        Notice how before the thought arises there is just silence and space in the mind. Let the thoughts come and go as they please, do not fight them, just acknowledge their coming and going.

-        See how you are not the thoughts, feel how your true nature is silence, space, and peace

-        Stay in this way for 5-10 min