Feeling Stressed? Read This

Stress is insidious. It causes misery, disease, poor digestion, anxiety, back pain, baldness, and even acne.

If anything else affected us as universally and powerfully as stress, there’d be millions of research dollars dumped into it daily.

But instead we patch the symptoms.

We pop pills for emotional imbalance, mask ulcers, paint our office walls soothing colors and pretend that everything’s alright.

But it’s not.

We’re not alright.

We live in a time when the body suspects it’s always under attack. Flashing lights, glowing screens, and the endless humming background noise of electricity and convenience.

Your nervous system can’t take it.

It only knows two modes: rest & digest; or fight / flight / freeze. And we’re always asking it to be in fight, flight, or freeze.

Even “relaxation” is stressful for your system nowadays – filled with TV, video games, loud music, intense sports, and/or alcohol.

Something’s got to give.

Why? Because living on the hair’s edge of a panic attack – or worse – a stress-induced heart-attack isn’t living.

It’s bracing until you die.

So what can you do about it?

You have 3 options:

– Train the mind to think differently
– Release tension in the body
– Teach the emotions to react to stimuli differently

Welcome to the power of yoga.

If you wonder why yoga is increasing in popularity, it’s not because stretchy pants are comfortable. It’s because it’s the only system tested over thousands of years that tackles all 3 of these areas head-on and gives you proven techniques to help navigate the daily stresses of life.

Because yoga’s more than propping yourself in a pose or two and toting around an $80 mat.

It’s about breathing, calming, and centering the mind. Not to turn the mind off – but to create space between what is true (your eternal, still essence) and what fluctuates (your thoughts, body aches, and feelings).

Because YOU are not your thoughts or your body or your emotions. You are the stillness beyond them.

It’s in that stillness that you’ll find the presence of mind to sit through another decade of traffic to/from work, or feel like you have some semblance of control over your unfortunately short temper.

The stillness is the real you. So the question is not are you worthy or capable or it. But rather – how do you get there?

First, start by assessing where you are now.

What are your particular signs of stress?

These aren’t just a random list of symptoms. These are your body’s only way of communicating to you that something is wrong.

Once you’ve honed in on your particular flavor of stress, now it’s time to look at the most effective solution.

There are 3 types of meditative practices that help with stress:

1. Calming practices to ease a current state of emergency in the body, like anxiety, panic attacks, shallow breaths, etc.

2. Connecting & embodying practices to move you out of mind and into present moment. So that you’re not fighting imaginary threats in the future or past, but living right now.

3. Energizing practices to move energy though your body so that you can tap into your natural source of wellness beyond caffeine and other stimulants which subtly stress the body.

Pull up your inbox right now and email me to share a) how stress shows up for you and b) which practices you need. Then I’ll film a few great options to share with you!

Be free. Be brave. Be YOU!

Love,
Alexis