Life TherapyTM
Psychotherapy & Coaching + Mindfulness & Meditation

Body Has a Built in Stress Reliever?!?

I enjoyed this NPR article Just Breathe: The Body Has a Built in Stress Reliever.
Here are some highlights:

  • “As it turns out, deep breathing is not only relaxing, it’s been scientifically proven to affect the heart, the brain, digestion, the immune system — and maybe even the expression of genes.”
  • “…breathing can have a profound impact on our physiology and our health.”
  • ‘Our breaths will either wake us up or energize us. It will relax us, or it will just balance us’…
  • “Research has shown that breathing exercises like these (see article) can have immediate effects by altering the pH of the blood, or changing blood pressure.”
  • “But more importantly, they can be used as a method to train the body’s reaction to stressful situations and dampen the production of harmful stress hormones”
  • “She says rapid breathing is controlled by the sympathetic nervous system. It’s part of the “fight or flight” response — the part activated by stress. In contrast, slow, deep breathing actually stimulates the opposing parasympathetic reaction — the one that calms us down.”
  • “Research shows that breathing can even change the expression of genes. He says that by using your breath, you can alter the basic activity of your cells with your mind.”
  • “What’s happening when you’re stressed is that your own body is giving itself multiple shots of that anti-inflammatory hormone, and so that tunes down your immune system’s ability to do its job to fight infection,” Sternberg says.

35 Symptoms of Stress

35 Symptoms of Stress: Inherently we tend to have cognitive and emotional symptoms of stress, that if ignored, will lead to physical and behavioral symptoms.
This means, that if we ignore our thoughts and feelings stress comes out in our behaviors and in our bodies. Continue reading “35 Symptoms of Stress”

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