Plotting Your Body Map

The focus of this exercise is to make you more aware of your minor ailments - what they are, when you tend to have them, and why so that you can create better stress release strategies and make them part of your life.

1. Draw a large, simple outline of your body.  This is your body map.
2. Now sit quietly for a few minutes with your eyes closed.  Take your whole attention into your body and analyze how it has felt to live in it lately, Begin at the to of your head, Scan every part,  asking yourself "Do I ever have problems with this part of me?"  Without judgment, mentally log even the little things: eye strain, a tight neck, backache, an upset stomach what ever it may be.
3. When you have finished, open your eyes.  Take a pen and on your body map circle the parts of your body where you habitually experience problems.  Not any other relevant information, such as the frequency and intensity of the problem, outside the outline.
4. Over the next four weeks, monitor your body carefully and make a note of when these minor ills arise.  Analyze the stress-link:  What's been going on in your life?
5. Ask yourself:  What are these ailments telling me?  What does my body need me to do?  Then vow to make one specific change to the way in which you handle your life.  For example, you'll take a massage or spend 10 minutes working through work solution5,  Focusing on your Breath and so on whatever works best for you,  The important thing is that you make change and stick with it.

Read More

Your Body's Messages

Most of us carry tension in our bodies all the time.  It's so familiar that it "feels like home".  I remember giving a massage to one client who lay on my couch rigid with the chronic tension, saying " This is so great I haven't felt this relaxed in ages".  She meant it;  but she had no body memory of what deep relaxation really feels like.  (Two years regular treatments later, her capacity to relax was transformed and she almost had to be peeled off the couch.)

When we are habitually mentally stressed, there is always a reflection of that stress in our bodies: tense shoulders and neck, headaches, aching back, upset stomach, eczema, insomnia the list is long.  One thirty year old man, recently promoted, felt things were going pretty well except for his stomach.  I asked him what he meant; "Well," he said with some embarrassment, "it;s ridiculous. I have an upset stomach all the time  I have to know where the nearest men's rooms is or i get really anxious."  I've noticed time and again that hard working, dedicated people regard physical ailments as "My body's letting me down - it's a real nuisance."  They will do their best to keep motoring through relentless hours, trying to ignore the physical discomfort.  This is an attitude based on ignorance, which is not only disrespectful to your miraculous and hard working body, it's potentially dangerous to your health.  Sadly, people who are over attached to this attitude can even pay with their lives that's how seriously you should take this.

Read More

A Personal Stress Audit

Understanding which aspects of your life create stress is the first step to managing it, both at work and at home.  Your Personal Stress Audit will take time and privacy.  It should not be rushed.

1. Sit somewhere quiet and undisturbed.  Taking a pen and paper, write a brief list of any significant events that have happened in your life over the last two years.
2. Now divide your life into categories, such as Work,Relationship,Children,Family,Friends,Finances and son on.  Write them down as headings.
3. Taking each category in turn, note down anything that  causes tension or anxiety, or makes you feel sad or angry, taking care not to judge or censor yourself.  Keep going until you feel that there's nothing more to add.
4. Looking at each category, are there any common themes that stand out?  Are there any areas of stress linking one category to another, for example long working hours causing unhappiness in your relationship?  If so, draw a line connecting them to each other.  Then circle anything you know you must change, and asterisk anything else that you feel should per a priority.
5. Now create a strategy to reduce stress.  There should be no woolly generalizations; it should contain very specific, achievable steps toward the goal of eliminating each stressor.  For example, if you want to cut back long working hours, steps you could take might include: discussing the situation with your boss; delegation more; minimizing time spent in meetings, and so on.  Be determined to move forward taking these steps will make you fee back in control.

Read More

What Is Stress?

"Stress" has acquired a bad reputation. Originally, the term was used mainly by architects and engineers: a measurement of pressure exerted on to materials, such as metal, so that designers of buildings and bridges could calculate whether structures were safe or likely to collapse.  Then, in the last few decades of the twentieth century, the nation of "stress" came to be applied to the negative pressures that humans experience in life, particularly in the work environment.

In fact, a certain amount of stress can create excitement and challenge.  Have you ever been part of a talented, committed team that has a complex task to perform within an exceptionally tight deadline?  As the team's anxiety levels start to rise, everyone pulls out all the stops, and a kind of anxious exhilaration takes over.  The work gathers momentum and the results are spectacular.  Afterward, every  one falls flat on their backs and asks  "However did we don that|"  The achievement is remembered with real pride,  with relief that is over.

So,  short term stress can be exhilarating and it can lift our performance to an extraordinary level.  When, then, does stress become a problem?   Interestingly enough,  it is not only when we are overloaded too little stress can be stressful, too!  This sounds contradictory; however, when a person is severely under employed they become bored and frustrated conditions that also create stress.

Read More