Even when we carry on our daily routine, where we deal with familiar choices and objects, we can still notice some peculiar signs. It is a formidable thing to witness how our body and mind connect and how their relationship influences our world. Let’s try to remember how we feel when we are stressed. Usually, your thoughts are following the rules of chaos, and concern is clouding your judgment.
However, this is not the entire story. You might also experience headaches, nausea, and vertigo. Not only that, but science has also correlated stress with higher chances of heart disease, depression, accelerated aging, and even cancer. However, if your mind can damage your body, it means that it also has healing powers if your thoughts are positive. Let’s follow this discovery and understand why the only relationship you need to focus on is the one between your mind and body.
The Sources of Stress
Unfortunately, we are living in a day and age where the expectations put on ourselves are so high that our stress levels are skyrocketing. Today, we learn to live our lives with the ubiquitous presence of anxiety.
Many clinically declared illnesses affect our nervous system and require medication. It can be Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD, which occurs even in children after a traumatic experience and affects patients and people around as well. However, most stress sources of the modern society don’t need medication as a treatment. These stress triggers can be:
- A sugary diet;
- A Sedentary lifestyle;
- Vitamin D deficiency;
- The pressure of choices with too many options, such as shopping or job hunting;
- The media that promotes violence, sets high and unrealistic personal standards of beauty, and reduces interpersonal relationships to superficial levels.
These five agents of stress are a significant proof of how much power the external world has over our mind and body.
The Power of Thoughts
However, these external factors have something in common. They all have to persuade us that they are bad. This means that it is ultimately our choice if we let them have a negative influence in our lives or not.
It is the way we look at things that impacts our lifestyle. Almost all stories are characterized by duality. For example, a common stress source that affects nearly all workers is commuting. There are train delays and traffic jams that manage to get to us and change our mood for the worst.
However, people have a choice. They can see commuting as a bad thing and let it affect them in a negative way. On the other hand, the alternative is to be aware that this problem isn’t important enough to let it influence their mood. Plus, if you take traffic jams into consideration each morning, you will leave earlier which gives you more time for yourself. You can read, learn, listen to music, or solve a task for a less busy work day.
The same goes for all other stress sources, like expectations others have of you, waiting in long lines at the supermarket, waiting for a new purchase to be delivered and so on. If you think of them as bad factors, your mind will affect your body negatively. However, if you accept these situations exactly how they are, the relationship between your mind and body will enjoy a harmonious synergy.
Consequently, stress sources have as much power as you allow them. By nurturing your dual dimension, you will strike a much needed inner balance.
Meditation
Studies show that the way we breathe has a significant impact on our health. Slow breathing helps regulate our blood pressure, as well as our heart rate. Our body is not made to support chronic stress, so our metabolism doesn’t adapt to a faster pace. In time, the effects of stress will become corrosive for our body and soul. However, we can take proactive measures and help the metabolism slow down with breathing techniques.
Meditation is a common practice that helps us detach from our daily stress sources. By becoming more aware of yourself and less conscious of your responsibilities, you can acquire a deeper state of relaxation.
Mindfulness is the simplest form of meditation. You can practice it whenever and wherever you are. It preaches the idea of focusing on the present. All you have to do is take five minutes of your time and live only in the moment. All deadlines and past events have no power here. Concentrate on your breathing. The air enters your system by breathing through your nose and mouth. Then it reaches your lungs which in their turn expand to receive the fresh air. Then they shrink back when we breath out the carbon dioxide.
Nothing else matters during your sessions of meditation than the present. In time, you will come to understand why you shouldn’t get physically involved in trivial matters. You become mindful about your life, and you will be able to take the problems life throws at you as they are. Your relaxed mind will influence the body to preserve a healthy heart rate when you are in a time-consuming queue or traffic jam.
Physical Exercise
Physical exercise has a similar effect on your health as meditation does, only it works the other way around as well. You use your body through beneficial exercises to persuade your mind into a relaxed state.
Physical training has many benefits in store for patients. Encouraging your body to movement leads to weight loss, muscle gain, an increase of strength, and stress management. By putting your body into a challenging effort, its response will be to release a wave of endorphins. This compound is also called the happy chemical, and its purpose is to alleviate the pain you feel.
An active lifestyle will also reduce damaging moods like fatigue and exhaustion. These states weaken your mind, which loses its power of concentration. Consequently, living your day in a fresh state of mind will make you more mindful about your decisions.
Your body and mind relationship will work at its high capacity to make you aware of how much an agent of stress influences your life. By being conscious of the consequences, you will avoid falling victim to anxiety.
All in all, it is understandable now that medication isn’t the only way to manage stress. When the source of stress is actually an external agent, you can use the body and mind synergy to solve and eliminate it from your life.
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