The room is dark with slightly dimmed
lights and all I can hear are the sounds of deep full breathing reverberate
through out the room, the instructor’s calm and relaxing voice captures the
essence of the mood. A drop of perspiration runs down my face to the pool of
sweat below, my muscles palpitate and shake as I hold a traditional yoga pose
called warrior. The instructor’s soft voice leads the class with a breathing
exercise, saying to “breathe in for a four count envisioning the environment
breathing into you, hold that breathe for a count of seven and calmly exhale
for a count of eight count.” This cycle repeats for several minutes as the
instructor reiterates to focus on our breathing, and to let our worries of the
day melt away. There are many time tested ways to relieve stress and limit the
toll it takes on your body.
During the time that you are stressed
or going through a emotionally cumbersome situation the body responds in a
predictable way that is not uncommon to everyone. Hold on, do me a favor and
find your pulse, either on your neck or wrist. Got it? Now if you have a pulse,
you will have stress, sorry that is just the way it is. I baited you for the
question because I believe it is important that if you have a feeling or
emotion or situation, that you are not alone in that factor of stress. Your not
alone in this world, a common way to deal with stress is to withdraw from
people we care about and that only leads to more harmful emotions most of the
time. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, because usually the counsel of others is
therapeutic. I understand that not everyone has wise counsel to seek advise or
have for a listening ear, but I do know that plenty of services and churches
have plenty of people put here on this plant to help others. Now if you decide
to seek this out, that is completely up to you but without a doubt spend some
time in prayer. It is a common fact that those people that seek the counsel of
God first, tend to lower the amounts anxiety felt and lower the chemical responder
of stress called adrenalin. This gives you the shaky and anxiety feeling
associated with being “STRESSED OUT.”
Something else to keep in mind is that
the human body acts in consistent ways when it comes to stress. I am only
talking about yoga as just one way to reduce stress in a mechanical way, but
believe me I was also very, and I mean very skeptical to this philosophy of practice.
Not only might I lose my man card, but I didn’t think it was…pause as I clear
my throat. Made for someone that was Christian, but I quickly found out that my
faith would stay very intact. I tried this as a stress relieving tactic, and I
do understand that this is not for everyone. What yoga does is train the body
to move and breathe in a harmonious way, and to understand the importance of
this concept an individual must recognize that when put into stressful or
depressing situations the body reacts in a certain ways by means of
conditioning.
Let me demonstrate my point. First,
picture yourself at a time in your life when you felt overwhelming stressed or
depressed. Whether about daily stressful life, a distressing relationship or
having a set of troubling concise circumstances you encountered. Now in your
minds eye see yourself, how do you look? Are you slouched or are you standing
tall. Most likely slouched, is your breathing shallow or is it deep and full.
Most likely shallow, why is that true? This is because you have conditioned
yourself to respond in certain ways to stress or depressing events in life, and
where does this correspond with yoga? Yoga trains the body to elongate posture,
and breathe more fully to relieve stress and tension brought about by stressful
daily rituals. I believe that this method can be an effective way for many
people to break routine of stress in day-to-day activates, and by breaking that
cycle an individual can better cope with troubling circumstances of life.
The human body is very effective at
being conditioned to do certain behaviors and patterns, but it takes practice
and discipline to attain the right ones. This is because if your not careful
the wrong ones will be installed and you will act out those certain rituals, so
be determined to actively install the right patterns for the life you want to
lead.
How do you relax? Do you go for a
walk? Do you read a book? Or maybe you sit in the bathtub with some bubbles in
the water, put on some Yanni and light some incense and drift into you
thoughts…ok too much! Well whatever it is, there are many techniques on how to
relax because if we don’t control our own stress we will live at the effect of
it. If you understand that you are ahead of game, because most people don’t consciously
live out certain behaviors. Make one
change today that will positively impact your life tomorrow, you really can do
it. Till tomorrow, make those daily deposits and you will live a life
people are envious of because you are just the way God made you…Magnificent!
