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Stress - the mind-body connection

Ways to deal with the tension in your life

Author: Doreen Corbey February 9 2011

Imagine you have a day off, it's a beautiful warm day and you're meeting a friend for a lunch and shopping date. You probably feel great, excited. Now imagine your friend cancels at the last minute, your purse is empty and you realize you left your credit cards at home. How is your breathing? How do your muscles feel? Is your back crouched over or your shoulders up to your ears? Some of us constantly experience these stress symptoms. If this is you, your body will spend an unhealthy length of time with elevated heart beat, shallow breathing, constricted blood flow and a posture or movement which tightens or shortens the muscles.

Some believe that the root cause of many health challenges is stress or a stressful event. Meta-medicine say "there is a deep connection between the body mind spirit … and that our emotions are intimately tied to our health issues." They go further to say that specific types of emotional stress affect different areas of the body, which is why you might get eczema or inflammation occurring only on certain parts of the body.

There are many ways in which you can help ease your stress. Counselling therapy used to be considered a trend that only Americans did. However, it's been taken more seriously in this country, and rightly so. Have you ever had an issue that was bothering you and you needed to get it off your chest? Was it a relief when you managed to share it with someone? That relief would also have had positive repercussions in your body, whether you were aware of it or not. Your mind would have been clearer, your breathing deeper and your body less tight.

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Women are often good at talking out their stressful issues with a friend or close one, but men tend to internalize because they feel it's best to put on a brave face. However, if you can't share (and halve) your problems with a friend, or your stress is too great to offload onto a close one, a counselor may be the best alternative.

Massage has proved to be very effective in dealing with stress, offering psychological as well as physiological benefits. At massagetherapy.com, they say that "the more massage you can allow yourself, the better you will feel". Even short sessions of massage in 15-30 minutes are beneficial. Some people prefer a light, flowing touch purely to relax their mind and body. For others, especially those with tight muscles, relieving tensions and unwinding restricted muscles and nerves can be painful. But then, that part of your body may have been 'stuck' in that position for days, weeks or more!

Hopefully one of these ideas will help you beat whatever stress and tension there is in your life!

About the Author

Doreen has had a passion for massage since she was 15 years old. She still has that passion, and offers massage, specialist facials and other beauty treatments in her home-based salon in Surrey. With any energy left over she will devour all the beauty pages of all the magazines she can lay her hands on!

Doreen's homepage: Bellessence