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Holistic Living
Healing Stress in Five Simple Steps
by Eric Sjoberg
Stressed out? Try this. Decide what you are most anxious about. Now stop worrying about it. Relax. Feel safe. Stop sweating. Slow your heart rate. Feel radiantly alive.
Have any luck?
Probably less and less as the list went on. But I’m guessing that you would like to be able to do these things.
Does your body overpower your mind? Generally, we are not able to choose how the biology of our bodies works. When fueled by stress hormones such as adrenaline, our bodies go into high alert. Taking in shallow quick breaths, we’re tense and ready to move at any moment. Our hearts race, ready to fuel whatever imminent threat might be looming. A mere thought to stop it is meaningless. Our biology is much more likely to be in control than our mind.
The challenges and stresses that we face in our lives (especially these days) are arguably not as life-or-death as your body interprets them to be. However, when you go into these high alert states, you create stress in your body that inevitably leads to disease. You fumble with your tasks at work. You fight with your family and spouse. Your body’s stress responses actually hurt you rather than help you.
Literature and positive media often provide resources for mind-body therapies to ease stress such as massage, tai chi, nutritional support, and meditation, to name a few. You might respond with, “I’ve already tried meditating and yoga, and they didn’t help. I’m still stressed out.” Of course, this is frustrating. While these techniques may not always be adequate tools by themselves, the model I will describe here lies at the center of my yoga and meditation practice. It will help you begin to indirectly affect your body’s stress responses by choosing what to be aware of and pay attention to. I even use it when I’m just sitting in the backyard. Based on a modality called “Somatic Experiencing,” developed by Dr. Peter Levine, this practice is much more than a technique. It is a perspective that can be applied anywhere.
The first step is awareness. Perhaps the most important aspect of healing stress is the simple recognition that it exists within you. It is one thing to be stressed, and another to be aware that you are stressed. Worry, anxiety, a racing heart, obsessive thinking and zoning out—all can be signs of stress. If you experience any of these conditions, take note and do your best to accept them.
Now take the second step, which is known as orienting. Do your best to come to the here and now. The most effective way to do this is to simply look around and let your eyes fall upon your surroundings. You are not in the future that you may be anxiously anticipating, but here and now. You are not in the past that your body may be reliving in some way, but here and now. Turn your head on your spine, and your eyes in their sockets. This has many important physiological effects on your body’s functioning. Anticipation and history do not exist here in this time and place.
Next experience the third step of resourcing. Connect to something that feels good. Focus on what has been positive, beautiful, or pleasurable in your life. If nothing comes to mind, find something enjoyable to fidget with, like a bottle cap, a marble, or the fabric of your clothes. Focus on the simple sensation of these items between your fingers.
If this is challenging, ask for support from someone to help you connect to what is going right in your life. Perhaps it is your breakfast or your walks on the beach. Spend some time becoming more aware of these simple pleasures, and feel specifically how you experience them in your body. Sense your skin under the sun or your feet on the sand. Find something that works for you.
Once you find some stability connecting to a resource, you can begin the next step, called back and forth. Turn your attention to what is uncomfortable and nagging at you in this moment. Then, after just a few seconds, turn back to what feels good. Choose this. If it comes easily, congratulations. If not, keep practicing, and come back to what feels good after just a moment of allowing your attention to be drawn to what is bothering you. Anchor back into the resource of what feels pleasant. Again, ask for help from someone if this is challenging.
Slowly allow, but do not force, your attention to spend a little more time with what is stressing you. Maybe give 10 seconds. Go back and forth a few times; then orient again.
This stage is about learning how to come into a relationship with what bothers you from a stronger and more centered place where the cup is half full, instead of half empty. When we are stressed out, we lose the awareness of our ability to choose where to place our attention. When we try to focus on something good in our lives, if we even have the ability to do that, we usually do so with our thoughts. It works much better to do it from a physical place. Choose with your mind to focus on the place where you sense pleasure or safety in your body.
Instead of losing ourselves in the thoughts and feelings of the stress, focusing on a resource in relation to the stress allows us to connect to where we are complete, instead of where we are empty or lacking. This is a profound transformation which begins to bring us towards a sense of fullness and safety that is vital and deeply healing.
The final step is discharge. As our physiology begins to orient to pleasure and safety in a new way, it then begins to release the stress and trauma that is stored within it. Various forms of physiological discharge can occur, such as shaking, nausea, or sweating. Digestion begins to accelerate and new feelings arise. This discharge is essential to heal some of the deeper levels of chronic stress. Sometimes practitioners of yoga find this happening spontaneously, in particular during the final pose of a class when they’re lying quietly on the floor. When the discharge eases, return to the second step of orienting yourself to the here and now.
Play with these practices. Learn to orient and choose a resource to help you feel that your cup is half full and that you are not really in imminent danger. As you choose where to focus your attention, you teach your biology that you are not threatened, allowing the stress to release from your body.
If you’d like help with stress management, you can find a practitioner referral directory at www.traumahealing.com. Eric Sjoberg is a Somatic Therapist and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, specializing in healing stress. He offers free presentations monthly in La Jolla and Encinitas, CA. Contact him at 619.807.3042 or visit www.healing-stress.com.