The power of stress...

Today I weighed in at 200 lbs. When I saw that number on my scale, the first feeling I had was one of utter defeat. I immediately heard a powerful old self talk come out as "what's the use." Man, what a difference a week makes. Last week I was feeling really strong, making progress and moving forward, one little setback and whammo, the patterns return.

As I look back for some idea of what happened I notice that my stress level has been quite high this week. We started the next series of VA Programs, I am behind schedule on the workbooks, DVDs, Galen's Bar Mitzvah, home maintenance, house cleaning, family responsibilities and so much more. There are pressures coming at me from what feels like every direction possible in my life. I have been sleeping less, feeling more pain in my body and craving coffee and subsequently, sugar.

We teach our students about the holistic approach to the healing process and the fact that the three levels of human existence - Physical - Mental and Emotional depend upon each other for support and can affect each other negatively as well. We encourage students to listen to these three levels intently and recognize how they correlate to each other. With this knowledge, one can take active control over much of your life. I may not be able to relieve myself of all pain from a chronic injury but I can certainly reduce my pain symptoms by altering how I think and feel about the pain and related circumstances. It starts with stress...

What we feel as stress begins with a stimulation of the sympathetic side of the autonomic nervous system. Or more commonly called, the fight or flight mechanism. When the stress response is triggered, many systems jump into action with the elevation of heart rate, breathing rate, blood pressure, mental acuity... while some fall back to allow more room for the necessary response, most notably, digestion. So the more stressed out I feel, the harder it becomes for me to properly digest my food, leading to a myriad of digestive disorders such as ulcers, gastritis, colitis, irritable bowl syndrome, migraines and much more. As my digestion slows, or in extreme cases shuts down, my ability to process food properly, diminishes thus causes more food to be stored instead of released. This is on top of the myriad of hormones released while under stress which lead to storage, rather than processing of, food.

I am clear that key for me on this journey will be to use my stress management strategies to allow my body to maintain a more balanced approach to processing food.