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Your body
You cannot think your way out of a body that is braced. This area starts there: the breath, the ground under you, moving, eating, resting, and the small physical things that change how the rest of the day lands.
What works for this
Working from the body first
A body that has not slept, eaten or moved has less left over for holding itself steady. Changing the state you are in is often faster than changing the thoughts you are having, and it is more reliable when you are already worn out.
One move, today
A long slow out breath, longer than the in breath, three times. The out breath is the part that does the work.
What matches
6 practicesThe stress hormone that carries you through a hard month also quietens your immune system while it is high. When it drops, the immune side comes back up.
That is the plain version of a relationship usually summed up as stress making you ill, which is too blunt to be much use. Running high and running…
Getting ill the week after the exams, the deadline or the funeral is not bad luck. It is the pattern.
You hold together through the push, and the moment it stops you are in bed with something. Often it was already brewing while you were still going.…
Wanting sugar, salt and something sharp at the end of a punishing week is physiology talking, not a defect in your character.
Long stretches of high stress come with real bodily consequences, and a shifted appetite is one of the visible ones. Fighting the craving head on…
An immune system that stays switched on with nothing to fight can begin turning on healthy tissue. It is doing its job with the wrong target.
That is a kinder account than the ones people are usually handed, which tend to imply they brought it on themselves by not coping. None of this is…
Digestion runs on the resting side of your nervous system, which is one reason long stress and gut trouble travel together so often.
People with reflux, irritable bowels or years of unexplained stomach pain are often told the two things are unrelated, or that it is stress in the…
The screen tells you nothing and asks you nothing. The plane simply flies better or worse, and the adjusting happens on its own.
That suits people who cannot easily put what they feel into words, which includes a great many children and a great many adults after trauma. There…