How Stress Affects the Body
Stress is mental and physical—and they are not two separate things. Our mind is physical. Our awareness exists because of our physical body. Awareness is simply noticing the body, whether it registers in the conscious mind or not. It is also energetic. Just as the mind can remember past wounds, the body and its surrounding energy field can hold those imprints. Unless you’ve specifically cleared them, you are still carrying them.
Read that again.
The body, our physical expression of the world, is shaped every single day by every single stress we experience. The stress of growing from infant to adult gave us the ability to walk and talk. Those were stressors—not necessarily bad, but life- and body-changing. The way we speak shapes the mouth, tongue, and lips; this is why accents persist and why foreign sounds can feel difficult. Our throat and mouth haven’t experienced those particular stresses, so they can’t yet meet those demands.
Apply that analogy to daily life: hours at a computer, eyes fixed on a phone, lack of sleep, overwork, or limited community support all mold body and mind. Then, when we finally crave connection or rest, we find it hard. We may feel anxious around people or restless when trying to sit still. Maybe you’ve said, “I can’t meditate—my mind is too busy.” That may be true right now, but it’s only a pattern—one formed by accumulated stress.
Consider the Earth itself. Its rocks, oceans, and landmasses bear the marks of stress. Human consumption adds more. Stress is not inherently bad, but understanding it is essential if we want positive change or hope to halt negative patterns. To do that in your own body, you must feel stress. You can’t go on ignoring it. Reading this may help, but a paper alone won’t shift anything unless you begin sensing where stress lives in you and act to transform it. If you’ve long been in the habit of dealing and carrying on, you probably need guidance and some slowing down to help you feel again. To re-sensitize you. Above all else our movement, meditation and other modalities at Life in the Body are designed to increase your sensitivity, which gives you a much richer life experience, as well as empowers you to respond to things in a healthy way when they arise instead of waiting for them to become catastrophic before addressing them.
On that note, if you have ignored things in the past, now is not the moment to lament that and let it pull you right back into the pattern. If anything I can rave most about, it is that Life in the Body is the most welcoming and accepting place, there is no judgement or expectation. We are all in this together, and there is no shame for any way you’ve lived your life, there is only joy and encouragement for you as you discover and revel in better ways and how good they feel.
One powerful way to begin is through foundational movement and meditation practice, combined with gentle sound therapy. You can start with a tuning fork session to bring the body’s energy field back into coherence, helping release old tension and restore a natural sense of harmony. Or begin with our Get to Know YOU package, that will walk you through all aspects of the studio offerings to give you a taste of how it can turn the stress pattern around. We will help you put your body under healthy stress that lead to change and growth, instead of the unproductive stress of spinning, ruminating, or repeating cycles over and over again.