Rich, Poor, Overweight, Skinny, Black, White, Asian, Hispanic it does not matter. Stress will be beat you if you let it.
Stress attacks the body in many different ways ranging from tense shoulders to headaches to back pain. Stress can make you feel sick and nauseous. Stress can even put you into a state of chronic exhaustion and fatigue. The symptoms of stress can even leave you in the hospital.
If you are a creative, stress will zap you of your creative flow and juices. If you are an athlete, a sharp decline in performance is usually right around the corner. For the high stress, over achieving type A businessman or businesswomen, heart disease and a cardiac episode may be in your future if you sacrifice your rest for the next big deal.
Nobody is immune to it. I have found through the years that stress comes in many levels. I find in my younger clients stress leads to simply a lack of focus and irritability or frequent runs to the school bathroom. For my clients that are a bit older with moderate stress- they often feel fatigued, headaches, upset stomach and tension in their neck/ shoulders.
Now.. for my top performers, they come to the table often times with all of the above, also bringing with them brain fog, mood swings, extreme fatigue, tightness in their chest , chest pains, teeth grinding at night, insomnia and daily aches and pains throughout their body. Panic attacks are also a part of the game by this point. Fear begins to dominate- forcing them out of public situations and public environments leading to an altered way of life.
Before I work with anybody understanding their stress levels is key.
As a High Performance Coach, I will be unable to obtain a long term result and long term accountability/ commitment to my program if I do not reduce stress dramatically before engaging in a physical wellness/ performance program.
I start releasing stress by working on the bodies larger, more dense muscles: quads, glutes, traps and then move into the neck and abdomen.
I have found that many people hold stress along their digestive track often times leading to weight gain due to food not being digested properly. Bloating, gas and abdominal stress are also results of poor digestion due to stress.
Using high heat and trigger point therapy, along with other forms of vibration I am able to reduce tension in key structures allowing the body to feel "released" from an outside source for the first time in a while.
Basically, I am manually shutting down the bodies defense system which then allows me to inhibit the physical and mental state of the client. Once the bodies defense system is inhibited, basic talk therapy along with stretching and low level, steady state cardio allows for immediate results.
Alongside the treatments I give, a nightly prescription of salt baths followed by deep breathing, reduced lighting, tech detox and a cocktail of valerian root, melatonin and magnesium seems to work quite well until symptoms of stress are deemed "under control".
I have found that hard core, high intensity exercise is one of the worst things one can do when they suffer from high stress as the body interprets this a more "Stressful Engagement" and continues to play defense rather than offense.
Stress is a topic that has many layers. For today, I wanted to open the dialogue and over the coming days and weeks I will provide more strategies to identify and reduce stress within your system.
Tension is what I call "The Squeeze". If you were to squeeze your arm it would eventually cut blood flow to your hand. Over time the hand would eventually be compromised. Stress causes tension. Stress causes "The Squeeze".. so left unaddressed, this will eventually contract and constrict your body in its entirety leading to systemic shut-down, breakdown and defense of the bodies key structures- leading to a very poor end results.
Cut the stress. Most stress starts in your mind- so find what you are truly worried about or trying to protect yourself from and you will begin to release "The Squeeze Effect".#livelikeapro
