An apple a day…

The definition of stress is a “strain upon the system”; we talk a lot about stress, usually in the context of how stressed we are with work, family, people, life in general. I sometimes wonder what engineers from over a century ago would think about how we use this word now!

Seriously though, stress is obviously more than how we perceive life emotionally and mentally, it has to take into account nutrition, or lack of it, toxins in everything we eat, drink and breathe, the chronic mild dehydration prevalent in these times, electro-magnetic pollution, even the synthetic nature of the fabrics we surround ourselves with on our body and in our home.

How do we cope with this? It’s stressful just thinking about it! But, everything does have a solution.

I have found that making changes bit by bit works best as each small change we make to purify our lives and bodies stands a better chance of becoming permanent than big, bold changes that we often end up going back on. At the moment I’m finishing off a small book I wrote years ago on stress that I originally wrote as a booklet for people signing up to my newsletter. In itself this book is part of a gradual change process I’m going through but as I added to each chapter if I hadn’t already incorporated that subject into my life I made myself try it out properly. As the book is 90% focusing on mental and emotional stress this is my comfort zone of dealing with stuff but the physical details such as dietary change which I know, as I’m well into middle age is definitely a strain upon the system, was a lot more challenging – I do like my food, my sugar fixes and a glass of wine of an evening…

But I’ve persevered with the physical rejuvenation for various reasons , one of which of course is to not be a hypocrite! The other factor I have had to implement is that of challenging the self. I haven’t, at all, for the past two years challenged myself, and genuinely haven’t felt it was needed but at the beginning of this year just knew that I needed to go “outward” again. So since then have built a new website, rewrote a book, planned my second one, started a blog and began recording small audios at home. It has been challenging. Which is a good thing as it’s one of the things I address in the book itself. If we want to change a circumstance, even if that circumstance involves illness, anxiety, extreme stress, conflict or any number of other distressing parts of contemporary life that first instant of knowing you have to make a change is frightening for most people.

It’s usually the fear of the unknown or a fear that when brought out in the light of day is quite illogical (which I covered a little in the last post). To this end I have endeavored to make the book, called “Why Does Stress Make Us Ill?”, as reassuring, friendly and simple as possible with many ways to go about alleviating stress. Over the next few weeks I will write more about the topics covered in the book as I am intending that some of these process’s will be here in audio form as a free back up resource.

Today however I am just writing; the next post will cover the basics of breathing and include a guided audio, as a means of relaxing, of bringing health and vitality back to the body through increased oxygen uptake and also to beautify the complexion!

Until then, what are you currently struggling with that you know does not increase well-being? What small action could you take towards positive change? When you take that change please do congratulate and be grateful towards yourself for the courage to implement change. If you wish let me know in the comments what you have done!