The science shows us that some animals are born with a defence mechanism to survive, but humans are born dependant i.e. someone else had to put our needs ahead of theirs in order for us to survive. The human evolutionary advantage is LOVE. As a baby, you had to do nothing to be loved. Bio-chemically mothers have oxytocin to make them love their baby, no matter what the baby does… Oxytocin wears off and suddenly we have to be a certain way to get attention and this creates our Blueprint.
When you first walked, you may have had love, and so achievers were born. Or, maybe you cried and screamed, and no-one came so you crawled and bumped your head, the mother comes running in for an injured cry, and there we learn “hurt = love”. So now as an adult we either feel we have to achieve to be loved or we talk about pain and problems because our subconscious believes pain = love. Essentially, we all crave the unconditional love we had before.
THE STRESS RESPONSE
When we were cavemen, we needed the stress response to keep us safe from tigers and bears. The adrenaline would pump around the body, which heightens our awareness so we can hear a twig snap a mile away to give us time to run from the tiger. The same thing happens today when you hear a noise in your house, adrenaline floods your body so suddenly the washing machine sounds more like someone robbing your TV… We don’t have tigers or bears anymore, but we do have deadlines, and bosses, and exams (rooted in the need to achieve to be loved) – whatever the stressor, our response to ‘danger’ is the same: our body is flooded with adrenaline and cortisol.
So, we have some options – fight, flight or freeze. We can get angry, run away, or hide in bed.
CHANGE YOUR LENS
So how can we change this? FIRST, we have to change our lens so it’s not danger in the first place – so it moves from a threat to a challenge or opportunity! That will kill the stress response in its tracks, suddenly it’s not a have to but a want to. We have to practice letting go of the fear of failure, make loads of mistakes, get messy, and learn that we are not loved for our achievements, but that we are enough, just as we are.
HEALTHY EXERCISE
If we cannot change the lens and we’ve gone into fight/ flight/ freeze then we need to rid the adrenaline and cortisol OUT of our bodies, which is maybe where we see this increase in exercise addiction too; fill ourselves up with stress hormone all day and then burn them off in the gym all night. Our poor bodies… our organs are on absolute overload creating all these hormones to keep us safe and then have to burn them all off, every day! That level of stress we put our body under physically, because of the level of stress we put ourselves under mentally, is not sustainable, and the body will get sick.
Our bodies are only able to mop up cortisol for 30% of the day – how many of you feel stressed more than 30% of the day? So, the rest of those toxic chemicals are not mopped up by your organs and so stay as excess in your body. This is what causes aging and an acidic environment which damages our immune system and leads to inflammation (anything ending in ‘-itus’ including ‘arthritis’…. and autoimmune diseases) the level of acid that builds up in our body as a result of stress changes our blood. If we are out of balance, we are in dis-ease, and so we experience disease.
HOW CAN YOGA HELP AS A WAY TO REDUCE STRESS?
PHYSICAL BENEFITS OF YOGA ON STRESS
We need to move our body so that we get rid of stress hormones, but we have to do it in a way which doesn’t create more stress… so we need to exercise in a way which is nurturing, not depleting. Yoga is designed to realign and re-centre your body, detox your organs, and mobilise your spine, without impacting your joints or bringing you out of natural alignment, like so many other exercises today!
MENTAL BENEFITS OF YOGA ON STRESS
Hopefully your yoga teacher will weave in the psychology and philosophy of the practice, which eventually rewires your brain to give perspective, subconsciously reminding you that you are safe, and healthy and the rest becomes less important. As you focus your mind (meditation) on your breathing and your posture, you can’t be thinking about all the other stuff you usually worry about.
Yoga allows us to quieten the mind and come out of thinking, giving your brain a break from the constant chatter of the human mind (vriti). As you breathe deeply (pranayama) into your belly, you increase your oxygen levels and decrease the acidic carbon dioxide build-up, so you change the chemical make-up of your body.
If you practice gratitude for what you have (abundance mindset), it stops us focusing on trying to achieve what we haven’t got (lack mindset). We cannot feel grateful and stressed at the same time! And, we learn to fall over and get messy, to let go of perfection and for that to be okay! We learn to love ourselves just as we are now, so the pressure to achieve in order to be loved is off.
And, community. Studies show that the best medication for anxiety and depression is social prescriptions (gardening together, walking together etc) because as human beings, we need to connect, we need to have authentic relationships and conversations to feel understood and to not feel alone. In the right yoga studio that community is there to tap into.
You can join our online community on Soul Sanctuary TV - where you can join in on-demand classes of all styles from beginner classes to advanced classes with the rest of the Soul Sanctuary family!
