keeping your balance

When life throws you challenges, how do you keep your balance?

When you are stressed out, anxious, and worn out, how do you stay on your feet?

When the world feels off-kilter and things aren’t looking positive, how do you find steadiness?

There’s a lot going on in the world right now…choose your issue.

Wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Climate change.

And our election season is well under way…and man, is it heated.

A lot is at stake in November…how our government works, how we treat each other, even our very freedoms and liberties.

Thinking about any one of these issues, I feel tension in my own nervous system. If I really dwell on it, I feel fear. Isn’t that interesting? My physical body is sitting here in my office, looking out of the window on a bright sunny morning, and yet I feel fearful, as if I were in physical danger.

Does this resonate with you? If so, welcome to being human! As humans we are uniquely capable of raising our level of cortisol, the stress hormone…

just from our thoughts alone.

It’s easy to get caught up in thinking stressful thoughts without really knowing we’re doing it. Most of us never learned any differently. No one ever taught us that we can turn our stress dial up or down, and that reducing stress is essential to our health…physically, mentally and emotionally.

In other words, having a revved-up nervous system when we’re not in a bona fide fight or flight situation isn’t just unnecessary…it’s really quite bad for us.

So how do we find our way back to feeling good when so much is going on to stress us out?

The truth is, there’s no magic bullet or one-size-fits-all solution.

But there are a lot of tools that can help. And as you practice the tools that work for you, it’s quite easy to bring yourself back into balance when you’re feeling stressed-out.

Here are some things that work for me and for my clients:

Get outside. Breathe some fresh air. Go for a walk or a run. Sit under a tree, get your bare feet on the soft grass, or lay down and look up at the sky.

Deep breathing. There are lots of established breathing techniques, and you can even learn breath work with a trained instructor. I find that just slowing and deepening my breath lowers my heart rate and frees me from the constricted, shallow breathing that stress brings on.

Journaling. In a recent podcast and blog article, I talked about writing down all of the stressful, crazy thoughts going on in your mind. Just list them, without trying to work on them, change them, or distance yourself from them. Journaling is like emptying the garbage can of your stressful thoughts. This simple tool especially works when you don’t have access to a therapist or coach or trusted friend. Writing stuff down on paper is cathartic. It releases the stuck, pent-up energy that is causing those thoughts to circulate in the first place.

Talk it over. When I’m feeling stressed out, I can talk about it with someone I trust. Like my husband, or a friend, or a sibling, or my dad. It’s important that this person can listen deeply and well; that they don’t try to give you advice or argue with you, but just listen and support. Hold on to the people in your life that truly listen to you…they are golden!

Tapping. EFT, or tapping, is a powerful tool that works beautifully to calm anxiety. EFT (which stands for Emotional Freedom Technique) is a proven protocol for accessing different meridians in your body to calm your fight or flight response and activate your parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for rest, relaxation and repair. Here’s a link to a short and effective video that will teach you how to tap for yourself.

Bilateral movement. Any simple activity that engages both sides of your body - in alternation and somewhat rhythmically - can help bring the hemispheres of your brain back into a state of balance. Just passing a small object like a pencil back and forth across the midline of your body from one hand to another (for about 60 seconds) will calm and quell anxious feelings. Alternately, you can tap your hands one at a time on the corresponding upper leg (R hand taps on R thigh, L hand taps on L thigh) for about a minute. Walking is a bilateral activity that moves you forward through space and time. Going for a walk is a powerful way to shift the energy of stress and fear.

The bottom line is that stress and anxiety and fear don’t have to be like guests that visit you and never leave.

You have tools at your disposal to restore well-being in your body, mind and spirit. And it’s vitally important that you use these tools regularly to keep yourself in balance.

Feeling better - despite everything going on in the world right now - just takes a little know-how and practice.

Your life will feel better for being more in balance.

Your world will be better for you understanding how to take care of yourself in this way.

And as you get really good at this, you will help those around you do the same.

Because as you balance your inner world, you help balance your outer world.

Try it and let me know how it goes.

Let me help you find balance! Click here to schedule a free connection call with me. And for more juicy life stuff, check out my podcast, coming home (to yourself). As always, may your week be filled with self-love and rich insights. With love, Amy ♡♡♡