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The word stress is familiar to all of us, yet many people do not fully understand the underlying cause. The World Health Organization describes it as the following:
“Stress can be defined as a state of worry or mental tension caused by a difficult situation. Stress is a natural human response that prompts us to address challenges and threats in our lives.”
Everybody experiences varying degrees of stress from time to time. How we manage it will determine our experience of life and our level of health. Are you constantly feeling tired, overwhelmed, fearful, or angry? Are you finding it difficult to focus and concentrate for long periods of time? There are many red flags when it comes to identifying this condition. Listen to your body - is it trying to tell you something?
Stress and anxiety have a tendency to go hand in hand. It is almost like the old saying, “you can’t have one without the other”. What happens to our bodies when we are anxious and stressed? Our muscles tense up and we are like a coiled spring. The oxygen that we breathe cannot flow freely through our body and we could eventually experience ill-health.
Complementary therapies can help people to become calm and relaxed and assist the body to function in a healthy way
In ancient times, people were frequently in danger of being attacked by wild animals as they foraged for food to bring back to their families in their cave. Any sign of danger caused the limbic system in the brain to go into action, extra adrenaline was secreted around the body to help the caveman run to safety and as he ran, that extra adrenaline was burned up and everything went back to normal on his safe return home.
In modern day living, when we are stressed, that old limbic part of the brain continues to sense we are in danger and the extra flow of adrenaline is released, “to help us run to safety”. As we are not physically running anywhere, the body eventually becomes flooded and has to try and get rid of the surplus adrenaline. We can experience this in various ways. Examples are trembling, upset stomach, headaches, migraine or fatigue, or heart palpitations.
Complementary therapies can help people to become calm and relaxed and assist the body to function in a healthy way. As we calm down, the adrenal glands return to their normal level of activity as the body no longer feels it is in danger.
Note I have said complementary, not alternative. There is a difference. Complementary will do what it says on the tin. They complement any other medications you may have been prescribed by a doctor.
Three aspects
It is really important to continue whatever medications you are on, not to replace them with therapies. The medications help treat the symptoms while complementary therapies can help address the underlying emotional cause. We are mind, body and spirit, and all three aspects of who we are need to be cared for.
There are many complementary therapies to choose from including: reflexology, mindfulness, yoga, homeopathy, aromatherapy and acupuncture. Below are descriptions of how three of these approaches work.
Reflexology
Reflexology is a healing approach whereby special techniques are employed to massage and stimulate both the soles of the feet and the hands. It is believed that these areas contain specific pressure points that connect to the various organs and glands and different parts of our body. A trained reflexologist can identify problems as they work on these pressure points.
Kerry based reflexologist and farmer, Laura Fee says, “Reflexology helps the whole body. Proven to reduce the stress hormone cortisol, it improves sleep and makes you feel less stressed. It also helps ease body pains that are a common ailment of farmers undertaking daily physical tasks. By sleeping well, our anxiety and stress dramatically decreases. A lot of our farming stressors can be outside of our own control e.g. weather, feed costs, milk prices. You might not think these would have an impact on our physical health, but a busy mind of worry can lead to unclear thinking and accidents happen easier in an already high risk industry where we commonly work alone. Reflexology helps to rebalance, refresh and relax our bodies and mind.”
Mindfulness
Mindfulness based practice helps us remain focused on the present moment. Generally, people have a tendency to dwell too much on the past, or worry too much about the future. Being mindful allows the body to relax and concentrate on the job at hand. The reality is that life is always going to present us with challenges. We have a choice in how to deal with them.
Remember the opposite to fear is faith. Both demand we believe in something we cannot see, i.e. the future. Fear demands that we believe that the worst possible scenario is about to unfold. Faith demands that whilst we may experience difficult times, to trust that we will get through them and that we have an inner resilience to help us cope.
Many farm accidents occur when the farmer is full of worry and not focusing on the job at hand. Mindfulness allows people to step off the worry path and be in the moment. Try and focus on the solution, not the problem.
Mindfulness will not wipe our worries away, but it will help clear our mind and enable us to look more clearly at our situation and eventually find the solutions. Breath work is the first step. When we focus on the breath, we are in the moment. It is both grounding and calming and this is the first step in being mindful.
Yoga
I remember many years ago, a yoga teacher explaining how yoga helps us to release, “issues in our tissues”. She explained how the body can store trauma in the cells (cellular memory), and as it builds up over the years we can become unwell.
The breathwork and various stretches that are part of yoga practice help us to breathe them out of our bodies. It helps restore calm and tranquility and keep us stay fit and healthy.
Both yoga and mindfulness can be practiced at home. As farming life can be very busy, being able to partake in these approaches from home makes it easier to incorporate them into your life. There are many guided teachings on apps and online, if it is difficult to join classes locally. Give it a go, you have nothing to lose, but so much to gain.
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