How many of you are aware that mental stress can lay down in physical tissue? When life is running at 100 miles per hour, take a second to pause and scan your body. Pay attention to how deep your breath is, how high your shoulders are and the tension in your jaw.

It may be surprising what this brief scan of your body will show. When our bodies nervous system is in a sympathetic state, often called fight, flight or freeze, changes happen to our physiology. Our blood pressure increases, blood flow is redirected to the muscular tissue and away from digestion, breathing shortens and we have an increased resting tone of the muscles.

As a short-term reaction to a real threat, this is a brilliant adaptive mechanism to keep your body safe. If, however, this is a chronic adaptation to stress from work and home… it can start to cause issues. Your body needs the ability to have a balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic states in the nervous system. The parasympathetic being the ‘rest and digest’ side.

There are two types of stress… or rather, two responses to a stimulus. You can either positively adapt to information/ stimulation or negatively adapt. Positive adaptation is called eustress and negative adaptation is called distress. An example of eustress is to think about physical training, exercise causes micro tears in the muscular tissue. The body then repairs this and it builds back stronger. This is a positive adaptation to an imposed demand. Sometimes something may not feel great in the moment, but the body is doing what it needs to.

One of the easiest ways to reframe a situation is to ask – how is this helping / serving me? The answers you get may surprise you, and can create a calming state in the body. It’s important to remember that the bodies reaction to the same stimulus can change based upon your perception of it. So, try to reframe the things which cause physical stress in your body. And check in with it every now and again with a scan of tension.

Heal > Adapt > Evolve