Notice your breath. It’s physiologically impossible to be anxious and to breathe deeply at the same time. Think about it. What’s your breath like when you’re sobbing or upset?How do you respond to a shocking surprise? What does it mean to “wait with bated breath?” Inhale for a count of four. Exhale for a count of four. Focus your mind on this eight-second count and feel anxiety melt away.
Lars Gustafsson, founder of BodyMind Institute, shares the “stress cascade” concept, a sequence of global physical and mental results from stress, with hints and tips on what you can do to calm your stress instant.
Is this an expression you were brought up on? Do you believe it? In this blog I’ll be unpacking it a bit and helping you to better understand your real rest needs . . . and shed some light on some conditioning that might be getting in the way.
The Greek philosopher Heraculutus compared the human body to a river. He said a river is a very mysterious thing. When you look at a river it looks the same to you in every second of its existence but in fact it’s not the same river. He said you cannot step into the same river twice because new water flows in all the time.
In part one of “The ‘Pebble’ Series”, we discussed how each piece of stress in our lives can be represented by a pebble in a bucket. As our stress load increases, our bucket fills. With Cascade Choices, a single pebble removed from your bucket, can have an effect equal to having removed ten or twenty.
In this analogy, water represents health, abundance and a life filled with joy and vitality. The pebbles represent all the levels of stresses we take on in our bodies, minds, consciousness and hearts whether consciously or unconsciously. The inner emotional aspects to pebbles in the bucket are the most profound limitations in our lives… keeping us from expressing our highest and greatest selves.
As Jeff Sutton – my close friend and health mentor – said these words in our last bio-feedback consulting session, I was instantly struck with the profound nature of his comment.
Cacao or chocolate is probably one of the best-loved superfoods out there. Yes, chocolate can be a superfood! Chocolate comes with a whole host of surprising health benefits. The cacao beans in the chocolate are really where all the benefits come from, and cacao contains chemicals such as theobromine and flavonoids that help keep us healthy and promote longevity.