Are You Stressed?
Stress is a modern buzz word and although stress is real people often use the word to mean that they are busy, perhaps even very busy. It is rather like when people describe a common cold as ‘the flu’. But, it is true that stress is real and the more that we know about how our bodies, brains and minds work the idea of stress related disease is now common place. We all know someone who has been affected by stress.
Have you ever experienced Stress?
In Britain Public sector workers take an average 9.1 days sick leave a year compared to 5.7 days in the private sector, research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) shows, and a leading cause of this absence is work-related stress. A large amount of people will require some form of support for stress related problems at some point in their life. Often these are described as emotional, or mental health issues. This can give something that is common place a stigma so that we are not easy talking about it. There is a joke in medicine that people don’t talk about things above their chin or below their waist, they are all taboo.
When visiting your physician or general practitioner commonly the first option, even now, is some type of anti-depressants rather than talking therapy. The strange thing is that we know that talking therapy is a million times more effective than medication, it is also non-toxic and completely biodegradable.
For all of us meditation is the ultimate self-therapy. The magical thing about the mind, brain, body system is that it is self regulating. Just as your skin is designed to self heal after it is cut or your bones to repair after they have been broken, you mind and emotions do exactly the same thing.
When you stop worrying or ruminating on the stressor it’s effects will go away. It does not matter if it is hurt, loss, grief, bereavement, anxiety, jealousy, anger, whatever, once we quieten the inner voice that repeats the stressful issue, then, it’s effects simply go away.
If we wire someone up in the laboratory so that we can monitor their heart rate, blood pressure, skin moisture, respiration, and so on, as soon as we put them through a meditation exercise all the dials drop as the system self regulates itself back to it ‘normal’ state of calmness.
The more that we learn to meditate, the more that we learn to still our system, the more the effects of meditation seep into the rest of our everyday life. This creates, within us, a peaceful easy demeanour that deals more effectively with stressful issues and problems and allows us to become more effective in what area of life we are operating.
As Bob Proctor put, “people don’t need to slow down, they need to clam down”. Effective people speed up and calm down and get a lot of stuff done. The easiest way to calm down is to learn to meditate.
If you are new to meditation then might I suggest you try my free Morning/Evening meditation mp3s They have been downloaded hundreds of times and the feedback I receive is that they are very useful and a great starting point.
Take care, be happy
Sean x
