How to resolve stress permanently – REPAIR your physiology first!

We know that most doctors agree that stress is the culprit behind up to 95% of ALL diseases.

We now, also know, that any stress reaction is the result of hidden held negative beliefs, patterns of behaviour, attitudes, self-punishment, self-sabotage and all negative emotions that have been unexpressed, and therefore trapped at an energy level within the body, deep within the cellular, within the DNA.

We also know that patterns of behaviour, negative emotions etc. all stem from a thought and an emotional response.

If we know these things and we also know that these events spring from a thought first, theoretically, the best way to resolve stress is through the mind, i.e. changing our thought patterns and hence our behaviours. And, in fact, a lot of therapies on stress management, proceed along these lines.

However, the overriding issue against such a line of action, is that it takes enormous amounts of willpower in order to do that, and when the client has not experienced a sense of relief after a short duration, or seen or felt the change that they want, he/she will then resort to the easiest line of action. They will revert back to their old ways, irrespective of the fact that people have asserted that a new habit only takes 21 days to implement. How hard is that to keep up? Have you ever gone 30 days or even months on the new track and then suddenly when a really, really stressful event occurs, it sends you right back down your old familiar pathway?

So, what is happening here that this keeps re-occurring i.e. your reversion to your former patterns of behaviour, negative thoughts and so on?
It is this. Because these patterns are actually stored at the subconscious level you need to implement an approach that deals with the subconscious. You need to be able to retrain your subconscious mind and repair the pathways that keep you repeating unwanted patterns.

If you continue to use willpower in order to succeed at anything you desire you will place yourself at risk, and eventually revert to your old ways!

Because underlying negative issues and beliefs are the actual cause of stress and are in fact, the triggers for a stress response, you will never be able to resolve stress, unless, and until you resolve these underlying issues!

I will say that again slightly differently! You will never be stress free until and unless you resolve those underlying negative issues. This means that there would be NO STRESS if you did not have any underlying negative issues!

In order to be stress-free, you need to deal with those issues that appear to keep you locked in repeating patterns of behaviour that do not suit you anymore, and are no longer appropriate! If, e.g. you keep repeating a pattern of response that you KNOW is not helpful, but cannot actually change it, it means that it is lodged in the subconscious at the cellular level. If you, as an intelligent person, are not able to change these behaviours, even though you know you are doing them, and the result is always the same, then it means that these are being run from your subconscious.

The interesting thing about these inappropriate responses and patterns of behaviour is that the vast majority of them have been lodged within your subconscious mind at a very early age, most likely between birth and six years of age. Research indicates that this is so, and that this is an accepted principle of psychological behaviour.

Why a child of 0-6 years of age has these thoughts and patterns of behaviour is that the child puts its’ own interpretation on the event/s and then makes a decision, e.g. the child spills milk and the mother says: ’You naughty child. You are stupid and clumsy. You will never amount to anything.’ (Unfortunately, this type of event happens a lot and the resulting patterns of behaviours and beliefs that follow are disempowering). Now. The child will think: ‘This then means that I am no good and will never be good enough.’ So, they make a decision about who and what they are, based on this careless statement by the parent. Now. Why the child retains this, is that he/she is unable to stand up to the parent and say: ‘You stupid person. All I did was spill the milk. I am good enough. I am enough.’ If the child had done that, and expressed his/her emotion, then the unexpressed version would not become trapped within the cellular level. How this pattern becomes ingrained is that over time, the child will hear many versions of these statements, and will store them away, without releasing the charge that these interpretations and decisions hold. This then translates into a belief that the child will generally hold throughout their lifetime.

The problem with this “storing of unexpressed emotions” is, that we never learn to react in a different way. When someone in our present day life says something that upsets us, we will tend to respond the same way as we did when we were 6 years of age. Our responses are generally based on our childhood interpretations and decisions that we made about ourselves at that time.

During our lifetime we could have experienced 70,000 of these events, where we were not able to respond to effectively, and release the charge, by telling the person what we really think or feel. This means that we have stored an enormous number of these events within our DNA. We have a virtual repertoire of how to respond to various events lodged within the cellular memory.

When a stress event is triggered, the sense, or information signal, goes immediately to the heart. The heart then sends a message to the brain. The brain then sorts through the catalogue of stored unexpressed emotional responses and says: ‘This is like that event and therefore how I will respond is this.’ For example, if your boss says to you: ‘Could you please re-do that report as it is not comprehensive enough and does not cover the details required.’

Now you could take that as is and not react at all. However, the majority of people will think: ‘I have not done a good job on this report and therefore I am not good enough,’ or some such response. This automatic response will set off a large number of stress triggers and your body/mind will swing into action and start sending chemicals throughout your body. Your heart rate will change. Your blood flow will alter. Your breathing will increase. Your emotions will be on high alert and so you will be placed in a similar position, to that when you were a child. You are unable to express your true thoughts and feelings. And you then place your body in a stressful situation that it now has to deal with.

So, not only are you dealing with the emotional reaction, you now have another problem, the effects of stress on your body/mind. If this continues for long periods of time. You will be harming your health and placing yourself in the path of disease, should you continue to repeat this pattern of response indefinitely.

This is truly scary because the majority of people do not actually know this part of the equation, i.e. that each time you continue to repeat a stressful pattern you are harming your health.

The other thing is, that once this event happens, and you are not able to release this tension or stress or pain within a short period of time, how you will deal with is this will generally further damage to your mind/body. You may then: take excess alcohol, eat sugary things, have more coffee, take up gambling or take drugs of some kind. So, not only do you have the initial problem, which was how you reacted in the first place in that it was from a position of a 6-year-old mind, you also have the new problem of constantly flooding your body with stress hormones and chemicals which are further adding to the path of disease. You may now also have an addiction problem!

So, can you see what is happening here?

An underlying issue that has not been dealt with, and by that I mean released permanently from your mind/body keeps you locked into responding to everyday events as a child, which is mostly not helpful if you are an adult! So, imagine the results of this on relationships in general! You and your partner, child, family, parent or boss, are ALL communicating at a very primitive level. You are communicating at the level of:
‘I have not had my needs met. I need you to give me the love and respect I deserve. I feel I am not good enough. However, I want you to show me that I am good enough.’

Imagine if that kind of pattern is playing out in so many relationships around the world it is any wonder that we can communicate at all.

Ok. So can you see how this happens, and what effect this is happening to you on a daily basis? At some stage, if you are using willpower to overcome underlying issues or patterns of unwanted negative behaviour, you will come unstuck as the subconscious mind is soooo much stronger than the conscious mind. The subconscious keeps you alive. It keeps you breathing. It keeps you reacting and responding. Primarily, the conscious mind and the brain are pattern recognition response mechanisms. They search for patterns already stored within your body/mind and react accordingly.

So, this means that you need to somehow deal with, retrain, repair, overcome the subconscious mind. You need to understand what happens when a stressful event triggers the stress response mechanism, and how, and what to do, to overcome this. Yes. It will take time and effort. However, there is a way forward that has been scientifically proven and researched for many years with extraordinary results.

Let me explain what happens when you react to a stress trigger. Firstly, the body/mind senses danger and the sense is transmitted to the heart. The heart then sends a message to the brain and the brain searches its’ data bases and then sends signals throughout the body/mind on how to react.
If inherent danger is sensed, then how the signals are transmitted is via the autonomic nervous system, which sets off the stress response mechanism.
These signals inform various body systems to shut things off, send water to specific areas, reroute the blood flow, activate certain muscles, alter your breathing, and so on. It is very quick.

The point here is that the stress response mechanism is contained within the autonomic nervous system. When there is a stressful event triggered the sympathetic nervous system goes into action. When the stressful event is over the parasympathetic nervous system helps calm the body systems that were activated.

The interesting thing here is the first stage of this whole process when the information is sent to the heart. It has been proven that the heart centre is a separate brain. In fact, this brain sends out 60 times more signals than does the head brain. So, in effect, once the heart is activated residual damage from the stress response can still be contained within the heart, if the signals do not shut down completely. For example, if someone says something to you that you find offensive, you may get over the initial reaction, and tell everyone that all is forgotten and forgiven. However, if secretly you are holding any resentment in your heart, then this is simmering away, in fact, eating your heart out. Evidence for the fact that the heart holds emotional responses and finds it difficult to release them fully is witnessed by the increase in numbers of ALL manner of heart disease: stroke, heart attack, irregular heartbeat, cardio pulmonary diseases and so on.

a. So, somewhere in our treatment of stress we need to look at repairing the heart.
b. The other thing to notice is that signals are sent up and down and throughout the body, via the autonomic nervous system. In particular, it activates the stress response mechanism. So, one of the areas we need to look at in order to resolve stress permanently is also to look at the ANS (autonomic nervous system).

You see, it has been proven that negative emotions, thoughts and patterns of behaviour, all contribute to energy leaks throughout the body. When you keep focused on these negativities, you drain your system of its’ life force, even though it may still be running, it is not up to par.

Take a look at a motor vehicle. It may have spark plug issues, needs re-wiring, or needs more oil, it may continue to run but not efficiently or effectively. It still runs. Same as your body. Even though you may be tired to the point of exhaustion, or have no energy, you still run. We can fix the car easily with a proper mechanics. Similarly, we can “fix” the energy leakages of the body easily when we retrain it and repair some aspect of it. If we take a mind over matter approach and try to “fix” the body with new positive affirmations or instigating mindfulness, eventually it will fail and revert to the path of least resistance which the subconscious has ridden for so many years.

So, how do you do that, retrain and hence REPAIR your subconscious mind?

The subconscious controls ALL of the automatic processes that you have in place throughout your life, such as: breathing, circulation, muscle contraction, blood flow, digestion, heartbeat, growth of cells and so on. You do not have to give this part of your mind instruction. It automatically does this for you.
The initial role of the subconscious was to download as many programs as we could when we were young, so that we had a store of information to draw upon. This helped us develop more quickly. The unfortunate thing was, that we downloaded the beliefs and patterns of our parents, or care-givers, whoever was around at the time. Unfortunately, some of these beliefs were inaccurate. Because the subconscious mind acts like a stimulus-response mechanism, a lot of our responses to stressful events are automatic. We do not have the ability to alter these underlying programs easily. Therefore, any treatment for stress needs to incorporate being able to alter subconscious programs.

Imagine if, every morning you had to say: ‘I now need to breathe for the rest of the day. Please implement that program’, and that you had to do this for every automatic function you had, throughout your body. This would be insane! So, most of your subconscious body/mind has these automatic programs to help you live an easier life. However, we know that in all stress responses, the heart and the ANS is involved, and that both of these centres are activated automatically. So, our approach has to involve these two centres, as well as being able to later any subconscious programs.

We know from years of research that the ANS can be retrained through breath.You may have experienced this when you have been in a stressful event and someone says: “Breathe”. And you do so, and you feel better and calmer. The problem being, that in order to make this pattern a habit, you need to be doing it on a regular basis, so that when a stressful event is triggered once again, that you are in control of your breathing, and hence your response to a stressful event.

The second aspect is to look at and treat or heal, is the heart. The heart is our primary brain centre and is so involved in how we feel on a constant basis. Research has indicated that when the heart “feels” positive emotions, it sets off various mechanisms that trigger the release of the “happy hormones” such as: serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin. These “happy hormones” not only make us feel better but they also contribute to “REPAIRING” the heart. When you repair the heart you reduce the charge over an emotional response and gradually change and heal the heart so that it will be more prone to “feeling” positive emotions, rather than emitting signals of negative emotions.

Our automatic state appears to be fear because our subconscious has always been trying to protect us from harm. So, in order to feel happy or positive emotions, this takes conscious effort, and willpower.

So, in summary, we need to:

i. retrain and hence repair the ANS through breathing and we need to
ii. repair the heart through actively pursuing positive emotions.

Repetition of specific breathing patterns achieves the first aspect. And attaching a positive feeling when we do those breathing patterns, repairs the heart.

Specific breathing patterns close the energy leaks!

Stress is based on underlying beliefs and automatic patterns of behaviour. When a stress trigger evokes a memory and hence a stress response, the corresponding emotion, which is usually based on some degree of fear, triggers a flood of chemical and electrical response throughout the body. These chemicals, hormones, are causing damage to our physiology. The emotions also cause stress. The chemicals cause stress. All of this is taking up energy, depleting our reserves.

So, stress is causing energy leaks. This makes you tired. So, part of the process of healing the ANS, retraining the subconscious, repairing the heart, is that when those energy leaks have been repaired, you will gain more energy. So, once the energy leaks have been plugged as we breathe in these new patterns, and, adding at the same time, positive feelings, not only does this repair your heart, it also resets your baseline resilience level to stress, so that your reaction time to stress will be changed.

Positive emotion heals your heart, and at the same time, resets your baseline resilience level so that your reaction to stress will be changed.

The beauty with this system is that you are already doing this, i.e. you are already breathing and you already feeling. The main change is that both of these actions will now be directed through your heart. All that is needed is to re-order and regulate these normal everyday activities.

The problem being that most people are stuck in negativity. They live from a basis of fear. Negative emotions are all versions of fear, e.g. guilt, doubt, criticism, judgment, anger, rage, resentment and so on. So, once you have changed your habits and breathe in this new way, and add positive feelings at the same time, you will be moving into a more naturally, positive state.

Once this happens you will notice that:

• your energy increases, generally within the first week,
• you will sleep better,
• you will feel better,
• your reaction time to stress will slow down, and in fact, quite often you will be able to stand back and say: ‘I used to respond like that. Now I seem to have a choice. I will/will not respond that previous way anymore.’
• Your brain will become clearer
• You will have increased endurance
• Anxiety and fear will be reduced
• You will experience reduced drama, time and energy waste
• You will gain increased concentration and focus under pressure, and the list goes on.

In summary. Yes. You can resolve stress firstly by retraining your ANS, an aspect of your subconscious automatic functions, nurturing and nourishing your heart with positive emotions, then together with these things you will be REPAIRING your physiology. When you do that, you will go a long way towards eliminating some of the underlying issues that keep you locked in unwanted negative patterns of behaviour and response.

If you would like more information on how you might do this, please visit our website listed below, or simply click on the video link below.