Mental and Emotional Stress

Stress is caused by a multitude of things: 

• Less then Optimal Physical Health
• External Circumstances
~ Money
~ Job
~ Family
• Environmental Stress
• Mental Stress
• Emotional Stress
• Spiritual Stress

Mental Stress

The mind and the emotions are always interconnected, one creates the other, creates the other and this cascades onto the body - stress. Where our focus is, where our mind spends its time can either create sensations of ease or of stress. This focus or really lack of true focus is mental obsession, we hold onto and think about one thing or another. Often this is to do with:

• Our Past
• A Mistake
• Pain, Guilt, Shame or Limitations
• Dreams we wish to create but feel far away from
• The Future, either fear or longing
• Then there is the day-to-day grind of meaningless chatter - Monkey Mind

This mental chatter has come about for different reasons, one of which is a society which values being busy above all else. It is also part defence mechanism we have learnt to keep us from sitting in silence for too long to keep us from evaluating our lives and finding that maybe we aren’t as happy with the status quo and that a dream inside is urging to be free.

Emotional and Physical Reactions

As the mind runs through its myriad of thoughts, we are having emotional and physical reactions to all of them. The emotional and physical reactions ebb and flow along with the thoughts. Occasionally a thought takes hold and our emotional reaction deepens and strengthens along with the obsessive replay of the thought. This leads us to extended periods of mental and emotional imbalance. If this imbalance stays long enough we can create entirely new neural pathways in our brains leading to the this state becoming our new norm.

Outcome

Taking all of this into account and adding on top all of the environmental and external stressors we have in our lives, by the end of the day we feel like zombies, we are exhausted, sore, we almost feel hung-over and all we want to do is escape our obsessive minds by loosing ourselves in some show or movie if only for a little while. We are even to tired to escape through books most of the time and TV becomes our way of surviving.

Creating Peace of Mind

There is a saying ‘Peace of Mind’  that we use when we refer to mental and emotional fatigue, we often use it while discussing our desire to go on vacation; that or financial ease. It holds power because that is precisely what we are looking for:

Freedom from the obsessive chatter in our own minds!

Peace of mind is silent mind, it is a mind that is softly focused on the now but quiet. A mind that is aware of and has access to vast reserves of strength when needed but remains still when not. How we achieve a silent mind is by vigilantly being aware of the chatter, and then re-centering ourselves back in the moment so the mind can not wander. At first this vigilance appears to be a lot of work, more work then just allowing the chatter within our minds. With practice it becomes easier to stay in a quiet mind space. A new habit, peace of mind, is being built. Some benefits of the practice:

• The mind isn’t exhausted at the end of the day
• Create a connection to what you do and experience throughout the day
• Memories are more vivid
• The senses are more vivid
• You have an overall feeling of space and peace
• More able to deal with stressful external circumstances and environmental stressors
• Feel more grounded
• Better able to lean into discomfort and work through it back to balance
• Lessen feelings of anxiety, worry, fear and anger
• Fall asleep faster and sleep better
• Have more motivation, inspiration and creativity
• More presence with situations, people and self

A Brief Word about the Exercises

The below exercises will be given in subsequent blog posts. The Awareness Meditation will be on the 17th of November and the last three on November 24th.

Awareness Meditation - Can be done anywhere, the first time is best done outdoors surrounded by nature. You can shorten this down to a one minute exercise that can be done at the spur of the moment anytime you feel mentally and emotionally stressed and out of balance. If emotions don’t dissipate it might mean you need to explore them to find what they have to say or make an external change.

Grounding Exercise - Grounding throughout the day is an important exercise. Being ungrounded leads to: Trouble focusing, a feeling of being disconnected from your body and or surroundings, zoning out, dizziness, light headed or body distortion, living in your thinking. Being grounded can help to: focus and excel in ones tasks, feeling connected to your body and to your surroundings, staying connected to the here and now, a sense of balance, feel peace, a part of something grand, powerful, less hesitant, compassionate, feel safe and supported.

Tapping Exercise - This is actually an NLP technique (neural linguistic programming.) The way it works is by anchoring this peaceful connected state into the body allowing you to tape the body to bring it back in times of stress.

Associating a Smell - This can actually be done with anything, a sound, a sight etc. I use rustling leaves myself. Smell is the one sense which allows you to instantly access vivid memories; and so by utilizing the sense of smell to recall vivid mental silence it can help to make it faster and deeper.

Charlotte Brammer

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