Where is the release valve to let ‘it’ go?
Its a little known secret that your autonomic nervous system holds the key to your highest functioning and health. The nervous system is what is in charge of everything in your body. It controls everything in the body all vital functions. Wow.. digestion, breathing and heart rate, even our ability to relate to others, and how we perceive the world.
Wait there is more.. hormone balance and our mental and physical vitality.
Our amazing autonomic nervous system is keeping track of us moment to moment without our even knowing about it. It does all this for us without our conscious control. Because our fine tuned and acutely aware nervous system we were able to escape from the sabre tooth tigers in the not so distant past.
Our ancestors would either run away in terror, fight the creature or freeze in place. After the danger passed they would then shake, recover and return to functioning in their environment. This is a natural response encoded in the body to deal with stress or threat.
In our modern world, the “threats” are not as obvious as those in pre-modern times. Our ancient nervous systems can collide with the events of modern world. Daily, we encounter “traumas” and stress that accumulate in our body. The accumulation of these small events or “traumas” can result in big changes how the nervous system functions. It also has a huge impact on how our whole body functions.
This over accumulation of many events over time is “traumatic stress”. As the stress builds, the symptoms continue to worsen. Our muscles get wound up tighter and tighter as the world goes faster and faster. The nervous system gets stuck in the “ON” or “OVERDRIVE” position and this affects how we function in our day to day lives.
A continued high level of stress can threaten the ability to function and creates havoc with the entire body. Its hard to sleep, anxiety levels get higher, concentration suffers and irritability ramps up. Unless this this stress can release from the body it continues to build.
Solutions offered might be to meditate, relax or “take it easy”. Often prescription medications such as antidepressants or antianxiety medications are prescribed. Seeking a solution is great….
Here’s the bad news. You can’t medicate, meditate or or talk away this over activation. The system has “too much charge”. The medications mask the symptoms but do not get to the root cause of the problem. The change or release needs to take place at a nervous system level. One way to access this nervous system charge is through Somatic or body based work.
Enter Somatic Experiencing (SE) and the Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) process. Grounded in science, both TRE and SE get to the root of the problem of accumulated stress, tension patterns and whole lot more. Both are a natural, effective and drug free ways to reduce the effects of stress, trauma and create a sense of ease and deep relaxation in the body.
