How to Get Out of the Stress Response Loop

I've heard a lot of people are living in the overwhelm right at the moment. There's been so much going on, so many added stressors happening all the time, we’re all kind of under a crunch lately.

I think it's really important to know what's going on with our bodies, why we're in this stress response state, and how we can easily get out of it with a really simple life hack.

So stay with me if you want to learn how to de-stress yourself within two minutes just about every day.

The Stress Response is Normal

One of my favorite things to talk to my apprentice students about is why stress is a normal and necessary thing. It's a natural, built in response that our bodies have to any type of perceived threat.

“Perceived” just means that your body, whether it's physically, emotionally, mentally, whatever, sees something as a potential threat to your livelihood, to your body, to your sense of well-being.

And whenever that thermostat of what's okay and acceptable gets pressed on, our body naturally goes into that fight, flight or freeze response.

And that's our body's natural mechanism to increase blood flow to our brain and muscles so that we can fight or run away from something.

"And there's nothing wrong with that experience. That's our body's built in survival mechanism. It's supposed to do that."

When we're in fight or flight all the time, it starts wearing on our ability to adapt to

changes around us. Especially when we've been going through a lot of big changes, it's so important to help our body adapt to make those changes easier.

So by practicing really simple stress relieving techniques every day, you can actually rewire your brain to perceive less threats in your daily environment.

Rewire Your Habits to Rewire Your Brain

If you think about stress in terms of how our body naturally does it, being in a stress response all the time is actually a learned habit.

By focusing on something else, we can rewire our brains to not have the habit of being overwhelmed and freaked out all the time.

One of my favorite ways to de-stress and take the edge off is to get detachment or distance from the problem.

And we can do this really simply with a two-minute meditation.

I talk a lot in my Herbal Apprentice Program about all of the ways we can de-stress our bodies.