Have you noticed a change in your stress level lately? Maybe you’re in a constant state of stress. Or maybe you have become great at burying it and are unaware that this is what you are feeling at all.
No matter where you are on the stress continuum, life today offers many opportunities to allow stress in, taking up permanent residency.
Stress is a response mechanism, yes fight or flight, and is a state of mental or emotional strain created by stressors offering opportunities for you to feel anxiety, worry, tension, or strain. It is expressed in your body as a protection against immediate danger. For many of you, when the danger, real or perceived, is gone, you remain in prolonged alert, negatively affecting your physical and emotional state.
Some Stressors
Personal
- Death of a spouse
- Death of a close relative
- Death of a loved one.
- Marriage
- Marriage separation
- Marriage reconciliation
- Divorce
- Raising children
- Nurturing parents
- Injury or illness
- Moving
Professional
- Starting a new job
- Stepping out into the entrepreneurial world
- Stepping back into the corporate world
- Job loss
- Retirement
- Moving to accommodate a new career
- Demanding Job
- Working in the wrong job/career
- Finding work/life balance
Basically, any shift in your current routine, planned or not, is a stressor. When you talk about stress be aware of these stressors; your actual root case. Stressors lead to your body’s stress response kicking in and keeps you at high alert.
Physical Consequences of Prolonged Stress
Your fight or flight response is housed in your endocrine system which influences almost every cell, organ, and function in your body. It regulates your mood, tissue function, metabolism, and reproductive processes. So when your body is stressed, the glands of your endocrine system start to produce stress response hormones. Once released your liver produces glucose, raising your blood sugar and keeps you in your ‘fight or flight’ state. This restricts your ability to relax and recover to a normal healthy state.
The Endocrine System
- Helps your body to restore and heal
- Develops of a restful sleep pattern
- Promotes hormones levels that bring your immune system back in balance
Choices to Aid Endocrine Balance
- Message – Increases circulation in endocrine system helping transport the hormones responsible for balancing your immune system.
- Essential oils – Uses the same delivery process as the glands in your endocrine system and can enhance your well being
- Anxiety – Aromatherapy treatment is to calm the mind, de-stress, relax the muscles, soothe (cedar, frankincense, rose, lavender, marjoram, melissa, palmarosa, rosewood, sandalwood, ylang ylang)
- Depression – Aromatherapy treatment to uplift the spirits and nervous system (Agitation- melissa; emotional instability – roman chamomile, geranium, lavender; fatigue- cypress, basil, peppermint; sadness – mandarin, frankincense, rose, neroli)
- Fear, stress, aggravation, and sleeplessness – Aromatherapy treatment to calm and relax (lavender, chamomile or neroli)
- Take Action – In fight or flight mode, your body is ready to act, so go ahead and get physical
- Exercise – First, exercise within your ability. Simple squats, contracting your muscles, release and shake it out, or take a walk around the block
- Breathe – Try the Four Fold approach – Take a breath in through your nose for four seconds, hold it for an additional four seconds, then completely exhale through your mouth for another four, and then keep you lungs empty for the final four seconds… repeat for ten to twenty rounds, or until you begin feeling calm.
- Meditate – Take a moment and pause, become aware of yourself and close your eyes. Consider using guided imagery and mindfulness to engage in the moment. Become present and focused will realign your body.
I invite you to choose a stress-free start of the New Year and embrace the chance to look at your actions and alter your choices just slightly. Engage in conscious living; take time to decide what’s important to who you are and what you want to become and allow your process to unfold.
Create a routine to keep your endocrine system healthy now.
If not now, when?
Make conscious choices for conscious living now.
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