How Feeling More Stress Can Be a Good Thing

Relaxing is something most of us think about doing on the weekends. If there’s time. But why not aim to be relaxed perpetually? As I explained in my previous article, we can be mentally at ease even when the body is working hard, so, whether we’re eating, working, or exercising, relaxation is always available to us.

Previously, I explained how my tai ji quan teacher would make me engage every muscle while simultaneously maintaining a focused and peaceful mind. This really highlighted the difference between the conscious engagement of muscles as an act of exercise versus the subconscious clenching we do as an expression of mental stress. Because of the seamlessness between mind and body, whenever we have a stressful thought, there is a physical expression of this in the body. A tightening, bracing, clenching, or contracting.

Sometimes it’s very obvious: we have some anxious thoughts and before we know it, it seems like our throat is closing up or we’re having a heart attack. The sensations catalyze more anxious thoughts and the anxious thoughts catalyze more intense sensations. Other times the connection is not so clear. We just think something is wrong with our heart and aren’t even aware of the psychological component until someone tells us, “You were having a panic attack.” Or, maybe we have had stress-induced back pain for years, but never even thought of ourselves as stressed. John Sarno, a 91-year-old medical doctor and author, has helped a lot of back pain sufferers put this together. He once advocated invasive surgeries for back pain, but later in his career decided that most cases originated in the mind — and were able to be unraveled through the mind. I’ve had patients who read his books and experienced an immediate disappearance of their pain – just at the suggestion that it was under their control.

When someone comes to me for stress, anxiety, or depression, I’ll ask them to tell me where they feel it in their body. Many of them draw a blank. “I don’t really feel anything in my body,” they’ll say. I think this occurs either because our awareness is so habitually focused on our own thoughts that we’ve lost our sensitivity to subtle bodily sensations, or because the physical sensations that emanate from our stressful thoughts are so constant and longstanding that we just don’t perceive them anymore.

“Well,” I might try, “do you feel completely relaxed in your body?” Then I guide them to take their time to really “descend” into their body and get out of their mind.

“Hmm,” they might respond, “I guess not. I have this tightness in my [chest / jaw / throat / stomach / abdomen / neck / etc.].”

If they still seem unable to access the physical expression of their psychological unease, I might ask them to take a full, deep breath and then tell me if it feels like they are able to inflate their lungs completely. Frequently, people say, “Well, not completely,” as if that’s a tall order. When I have them quantify it, patients often report they’re able to inhale to what feels like 70 to 90 percent of their lung capacity. There are a handful of reasons why this could be happening, but most often it’s some sort of stress that has manifested as tension in the torso. The reason I know this is that after a minute or so of relaxation techniques, their capacity almost always improves to 90 to 100 percent.

Let’s go through this process now. Think about your to-do list, your boss, a problem you’re having, or if you have palpable stress, anxiety, or sadness, focus on that. Then shift part of your awareness into your body and feel what comes up. If you can’t feel anything uncomfortable, scan your body – your head, jaw, neck, throat, shoulders, upper back, chest, diaphragm, abdomen, lower back, pelvis, then your arms and hands, and your legs and feet. Where is there unease?

When you discover something, there are a number of ways to facilitate its resolution. We’ll start simple. Take a minute or so to try any or all of these approaches: (1) See if you can have no resistance whatsoever to experiencing this feeling. (2) See if you can even  invite the feeling to be felt and to expand. (3) Welcome the feeling to open and spread over your whole body. (4) Willingly explore all the characteristics of the feeling – its size, its shape, its texture, its weight. (5) Imagine you’re diving into the core of the feeling and experiencing it from the inside. (6) Imagine that you’re embracing, loving, and moving into the feeling, including it rather than excluding it. (7) Breathe into and through the feeling. (8) Imagine your body opening up like a book or a hand, and the feeling floating away.

Chances are, one or more of those techniques will greatly diminish not just the feeling itself, but also the sense of stress you experience around the associated thoughts. The thoughts themselves may even dissipate. Sometimes it’s worth spending several minutes bringing the issue to mind, exploring and releasing the sensations, then bringing the issue up again to see if you’re still tensing somewhere in your body, and repeating this for several rounds until you feel peaceful in your body when focusing on the issue. Ultimately, I hope you can move through your day with some of your awareness always in your body, letting go of these physical expressions of an uneasy mind in the very moment that they come up.

Be well,

Dr. Peter Borten

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