Many of my clients come to me wanting to change something about their health or their body. It’s a lovely goal, and one I deeply support: our body and wellness is the foundation of all that we are and all that we do. In all my work, I teach that physical wellness is vital to creating any other kind of wellness or spiritual growth.
But it works the other way, too. Our bodies play a big role in our daily lives. But our daily lives leave a deep imprint on our bodies, as well.
When a client comes to me struggling with a health or physical concern, before I focus on how their physical self needs to CHANGE, I ask them specific details about what their physical self is ENDURING.
Like, how often are you stressed, anxious, overwhelmed or feeling like you can’t take a deep breath?
How much intense or negative information are you receiving on a daily basis (from the news, from family members, from work)?
How much light, noise, air pollution are you exposed to in your life?
How much time do you spend on social media?
How many high-stress activities do you do every day (driving in traffic, working in a deadline-focused job, dealing with small children or volatile adults, living in or around a lot of conflict)?
The answer is always: stress stress stress.
So much stress.
Work stress and family stress and money stress and too-much-to-do stress and stress from past traumas.
On top of that, we all have collective pandemic stress and stress from the news and what’s happening with the climate, and then environmental stress from living such busy ungrounded lives and spending so much time in loud, chaotic, artificially lit spaces.
All of that stress accumulates directly in your body. It causes chronic tightness and pain, disrupts our hormones and endocrines, impacts our digestion and gut, messes with our reproductive system, damages our nervous system, and plays havoc with our sleep.
This is why it’s so vital that we work on reducing our stress before…
…we sign up to run our very first marathon
…we embark on a radically new nutrition challenge
…we beat ourselves up for having chronic health issues
…we decide that it’s all about “willpower” and “self-control”
So often, a client will want to see drastic improvements in their health or body…without dealing with all that stress. Which is really the same as just adding more stress!
On the other hand, when clients are willing to bravely tackle and eliminate areas of stress in their lives, they start seeing incredible results in their physical wellness, often without having to try as hard! More sleep, a calmer nervous system, a low-stress environment — you’d be surprised what these things can do to help with a new eating or exercise commitment.
If you’ve been considering making a lifestyle change to help support your physical wellness, I want you to try this simple exercise: make a list of the main stressors in your everyday life and find one — just one! — that you can reduce or eliminate this week. There is no right answer here. This is just to help you get in the habit of identifying stress and working to eliminate and reduce it.
Maybe it’s as simple as deleting social media apps off your phone. Maybe it’s taking a break from the news, or deciding that you won’t be answering your phone to any family drama this week. Maybe it’s even smaller than that.
Give yourself the gift of a little less stress this week — and see what happens.
