Stress has got a bit of a bad reputation over the years, imagine life with no stress or what some of us might call excitement, wouldn’t life be a bit boring and non eventful? Has there been a time you felt a little scared but some how really alive or perhaps your achieved something after much effort and learning and felt the feeling of exhilaration.

The fact is we all need some degree of challenge to grow in our lives, and for many people it is some of the more challenging points in their lives that they grow the most, so I am saying that it’s great to feel stressed out all the time? No however its important to understand that life is paradoxical, by that I mean without one extreme another can not exist so for example you can not have up with out a down you can not have a light with out a dark, they may be opposites however without one the other would cease to exist to make a point of this perhaps you might want to play a little game with me .

Sit on a chair and begin to tense your toes then move up through out your body tensing your buttocks then your back, arms and neck. When you are totally rigid with tension, let it go that’s right weird ah? After all that tension follows relaxation.

So why is stress a problem?………………………..

Well you have to go back many thousands of years. Imagine two cave men lets call them grunt and grumble and they are out walking in the local bush area, when suddenly a huge sabre tooth tiger leaps out from the bushes, well grunt and grumble have never seen such a thing in their lives. So grunt goes up to make friends with the big fluffy pussy cat and promptly gets eaten, grumble being a quick learning homersapian decides this may be a good time to run. His body automatically gives all resources to the areas of the body that are needed, to make his escape and grumble makes his escape and after a little rest he returns to normal relaxed state (minus a best friend!!)

So stress is there to protect us so why does it cause the problems………………….
Well it’s not the stress that causes the problems it the perception of stress.

What do I mean by this? well think back to grunt and grumble, stress was and is necessary in certain situations and normally over short duration s of time, then with a time of what we might call COOL DOWN time we return to a centred state. However consider modern life, the part of our brain that controls our stress levels is in a part of our brain that is very primeval and does not recognise the difference between a sabre tooth tiger and a mobile phone that will not work, or a credit card bill that has to be paid. Modern life produces these perceived threats daily and many people live in a consistent level of aroused stressfulness THIS IS WHAT IS UNHEALTHY ABOUT STRESS

So how do you control stress?

• Become aware when you are stressed.
This might seem obvious but many peoples stress is so habitual that they are not really aware of jus how stressed they are.

• Mind body connection
As I said earlier the part of the brain that controls stress is in the part of the brain that is very old and because of this becoming aware of ways to control your stress with the way you use your body. Learning techniques in breathing can when done consistently relax you in minutes.
• Create total mind and body relaxation
Modern life does not seem to allow for time to just be. You can learn techniques to completely relax either at a beginning of a day or an end of a day or both that creates an environment for you to recharge your mind and body.

• Use anchoring to access a relaxed state at any time

Anchoring is a NLP technique that creates a connection between a stimulus and a response put directly to can create a link between your mind and body and access a relaxed state at any time.

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