A few weeks ago in my Kundalini Yoga class, my teacher Tony Frescura talked about elemental stress and how to combat it with physical exercise and breath work. Elemental stresses are the underlying stresses we have in our lives day after day. It can be as simple as the traffic you sit in every morning, the spouse or partner that aggravates you, children demanding your attention, bills that are piling up, neighbors that annoy you, subtle depression for no apparent reason, finding a job, losing a job, or even left-over fear from the pandemic. Fear of anything is stressful. Fear of god, fear of dying, fear of not being pretty, or good enough, or big enough, or thin enough.
It doesn’t matter how small or how great your stress is, it is your stress. NEVER minimize that! Just because someone else has different stress than you doesn’t take away your stress.
Unless we physically address these stresses, they can manifest themselves into disease, depression, and other mental health problems. I found two great articles (see below) that talk about stress and anxiety and how they can be more physical than mental. Both articles discuss how to reduce stress and anxiety through physical movement and breathwork.
Articles:
4 Types of Stress by FullStrength.org
Anxiety is in Your Body Not Your Mind by Elemental Medium
The mind-body connection is so much greater than we give it credit. Yet, as a society, we primarily address stress and anxiety with talk therapy. Now, I am not minimizing talk therapy, but sometimes it just keeps us reliving the stress and anxiety without giving us a way to move it out of our bodies and our cells. Talk therapy must be combined with physical stress release and breathwork to move forward.
To get you started here is a quick 5-second breath, that really reduces stress, and anxiety and even raises your DHEA (basically the opposite of Cortisol, it decreases heart rate, lowers blood pressure, and stress).
The 5-Second Breath
- Sit comfortably on the floor, in a chair, on a sofa, it doesn’t matter.
- Close your eyes and notice your breath. Begin to breathe through your nose only.
- Keep your breath gentle and relaxed.
- After 30-60 seconds, breathe in for 5 seconds and breathe out for 5 seconds, through your nose only.
- Continue this breath for 5 cycles. If you feel comfortable, begin inhaling for 5 seconds, exhaling for 5 seconds, and then holding your breath out for 5 seconds before inhaling again.
- Repeat this breath pattern for another 5 cycles.
This breath pattern can be done anywhere, anytime, and for any length of time. If you are super stressed, go into a bathroom stall and just work on the 5-second breath. You can do this while you drive, just keep your eyes open ?
Here is a great video by Carolyn Cowen talking you through the breath.
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