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Take a moment to think about how you are feeling.
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Bring your awareness to your feet. How do they
feel? Relaxed or tense?
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Focus on your legs and move your awareness up your legs to
the top of your thighs. How do they feel?
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Now notice how your back feels. Move your focus
up the spine, in and out of each vertebra. Now
soften your focus so that you are aware of the whole of your
back. How does your back feel?
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Bring your attention down and around into your abdomen and
notice how it feels.
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Move up from the abdomen, into the chest and around the
muscles of the heart. How does your chest feel?
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Now zero in on your throat. How does it feel?
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Move your attention through the throat to the back of the
neck, across the shoulders and down the arms to your
fingertips. Notice how your neck, shoulders and
arms feel.
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Now move your attention back up your arms, across your
shoulders to the back of your neck and up over the back of
your head. How does your head feel?
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Well done, you have just created a map of your tension areas.
You can use this map to check in at any time and assess the
amount of tension you are carrying. This is a great
thing to do just before going to sleep at night. Your
mind is very skilled at getting your attention. When
you are stressed, your mind is primarily concerned with getting
you to slow down and relax, so that your mind can direct the orchestra of your
body to bring about balance or homeostasis.
Would you like to know how your mind does this?
It will use different symptoms at different times to get your
attention. So for example, you might find one day you
have a headache, a few days later a sore back, a few days after
that a pain in your elbow, perhaps a tight jaw. These
symptoms are very different so we don't tend to tie them together.
Please consult with your Doctor should you be
experiencing a variety of symptoms or generally feeling unwell.
Check out the symptoms of stress in the table below.
Whilst the symptoms outlined above might seem unrelated, when we
are aware of the symptoms of stress we can see that the mind is
trying to get our attention. It's trying to get you to rest so
that the co-coordinated process of restoring balance can begin
without the distraction of having to deal with additional stress
-related inputs.
Interestingly, if you have a structural weakness, for example
you strained your knee playing basketball at school when you
were younger, the mind will also use that to get your attention.
This is because it has stored the experience and remembers that
a painful knee if a very effective way of getting you to rest.
So what can you do if you're experiencing a variety of stress-
related symptoms on a regular basis. Well the first
thing is to consult your Doctor to make sure everything is in
order. The next step is to use your knowledge of
stress to reduce the stress-related inputs.
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Focus on relaxation - mental and physical.
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Increase your level of physical activity.
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Try to minimise the use of relaxants and stimulants (e.g.
alcohol, tobacco or caffeine) as this can trigger a similar
response to the stress response.
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Manage your emotions and weed out those trigger thoughts.
To find out more about stress and how to minimise the impact
stress has on your health and well-being, sign up for our Free
Guide to Managing Stress at Home and at Work.
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Enter Your Details Here to Request Your FREE eBook, Your Guide to Managing Stress
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Symptoms of Stress