Stress was proclaimed the “Health Epidemic of the 21st Century” by the World Health Organization. Common causes of stress include work, money, politics, relationships, physical health, personal safety, and daily responsibilities. A large body of literature supports the possible role of stress in the causation or exacerbation of disease in most organ systems of the body. Stress also plays a pivotal role in mental disorders such as phobias, major depression, and anxiety.
Experiencing stress during our daily lives is likely unavoidable. Not all stress is bad for us, especially if we have effective tools to help us process and release it from our bodies and minds. In this blog post, we will explore the potential of using the physical practice of yoga as one tool to offload our stress and enhance our overall well-being.
Missing Built-In Stress Release System
Humans face a unique challenge in managing stressful emotions such as anger, frustration, overwhelm, or fear. We lack an automatic stress release system to help us manage the effects of stress. Instead we must be aware of our stress levels and proactively take measures to release stored tension in our bodies and minds.
This automatic stress release mechanism is something that other species in the animal kingdom have as part of their built-in system. In his research on trauma, Peter A. Levine, PhD, studied animals in the wild, who face a variety of daily stressors and mortal threats. He found that an animal expends excess energy by shaking, bucking, or running after drawing on heightened amounts of energy to escape or overcome a dangerous situation.
For instance, Eckhart Tolle describes in his book, A New Earth, that after two ducks engage in an altercation, they fly off in separate directions and flap their wings vigorously several times before continuing on their way. So, how can humans effectively release built-up stress?
Adaptation Energy
The design of our bodily systems lack the automaticity to run like a deer or buck like a horse is response to rising stress levels. Instead, we tap into what meditation teacher Emily Fletcher terms ‘adaptation energy.’ Adaptation energy is our ability to handle a demand or change of expectation. This energy is our capacity to cope with demands or adjust to changing expectations. It is the well we draw from to navigate the challenges of our day. Unfortunately, this energy source is limited, and many of us are already running on empty.
Take, for instance, a workday scenario. It is Tuesday morning, and you overslept your alarm after a terrible nights sleep. You rush out of bed and hurry to get ready. There is no time for your morning routine or long hot shower. Oh well. Your adaptation energy stores help you be flexible despite your grogginess.
Then your toddler wakes up, screaming and kicking as you try to dress him. This behavior is familiar, but it still requires a draw on your adaptation energy to stay calm amidst the chaos. The morning rush continues as you prepare lunches, make breakfast, and handle the routine tasks. Each moment demands a bit more from your adaptation energy reserves. Patience wears thin as your toddler throws a tantrum, but you press on.
Packing up the car, you’re unaware of the tension building up in your body as you continuously tap into your adaptation energy. Wrestling your toddler into his car seat adds to the physical and emotional drain. Finally, you drop your child off at the nanny’s house, putting on a smile as the persistent yelling fades away with distance.
Just when you think you are in the clear, you encounter school traffic. Your hands tighten on the steering wheel when you are forced to drive 20 miles under the speed limit. Your mind creates stories of how life is unfair and you begin feeling sorry for yourself. By the time you make it to work your adaptation energy stores have been depleted, you feel exhausted and stressed, and the day has just begun.
While our adaptation energy helps us overcome life’s demands, we only have a finite amount, and this energy is just a band aid in the face of daily stress. We can replenish these energy stores and release tension from our bodies and minds to avoid being overloaded by our daily stressors.
Stress Overload
According to Fletcher, it’s not bad for your body to get stressed; however, it is toxic for your body to stay stressed. Over time, chronic stress may reduce our stress resilience, which is our ability to bounce back from difficulties.
Chronic stress also adds to the body’s allostatic load. Allostatic Load is the cumulative burden of ongoing tension, anxiety, and challenge.
When a stressor never passes—due to external events or to our internal reactions to those events—the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) gets activated and remains active. This perpetual activation results in allostatic overload, which is related to declining mental and physical health.
A potential solution to prevent chronic stress and avoid allostatic overload is to intentionally move our bodies, much like the duck who vigorously flaps her wings after facing adversity.
Duck With A Human Mind
Unlike the duck, humans don’t have an automatic, built-in system for releasing emotional stress. We accumulate tension from life’s demands, depleting our adaptation stores throughout our day.
We also tend to escalate our stress levels by attaching stories to our experiences. Eckhart Tolle says, “If the duck had a human mind, it would keep the fight alive by thinking, by story making.”
The duck’s story after getting into an altracation with another duck would go something like this, “I don’t believe what he just did. He came within five inches of me. He thinks he owns this pond. He has no consideration for my private space. I’ll never trust him again. I’ll show him!”
Instead of quickly moving on like the duck, we often hold on to our stress, ruminating on what should have happened or how others should have behaved. Our minds engage in story-making rather than energetically flapping our wings and moving on from the situation.
Flap Your Wings On Your Mat
How do we refill our adaptation energy reservoirs and learn to fly about our day with greater ease and well-being? Asana.
The physical practice of yoga, known as yoga asana, is designed to be a period of unwinding from all that creates heaviness in our bodies and minds. During the practice, we can ‘flap our wings’ and get out of our heads.
A significant portion of our day is consumed by our thinking minds. While this faucet of our mind is essential for our survival and functioning, it also has a tendency to create drama-filled stories that add to our stress levels and deplete our adaptation energy reserves. Engaging in the physical practice of yoga redirects our mental focus towards our current bodily sensations. This redirection helps shift our minds away from generating worrisome stories about past or future occurrences, allowing us to spend our energy replenishing our body’s reserves
Unlike other forms of movement, asana practice places great emphasis on body awareness. We can use this practice to learn where we commonly tense up or brace ourselves in our bodies, and scan for areas of stored and bulit-up tension and stress.
Postural yoga also teaches us to take voluntary control of our breathing to effect change in both the body and mind. We can breathe into areas of tightness for greater openings in the body. Then we can breathe out and release stored-up tension.
We can also manipulate how we breathe to effect changes in our nervous system. Slowing down our breath can help us rebalance our nervous system and deactivate the reactive portion while activating our relaxation response. Consciously taking slower, deeper breaths creates a feeling of alert relaxation where we can experience increased states of presence, contentment, and calm.
Lastly, engaging in the practice of postural yoga helps us train our minds to be present with what is rather than ruminate on past events or worry about what lies ahead. Instead, we can focus on what is happening in our bodies, breath, and the surrounding environment. Then we can let go of the stories that create tension in our bodies and heaviness in our minds.
Less Stress Off The Mat
The practice of postural yoga does not end when the class ends. Focused practice aims to guide us in reconnecting with our bodies, breathing, and the world around us when we step off our yoga mats. This helps us stay centered, less reactive, and better equipped to navigate life’s diverse circumstances.
Yoga’s physical practice trains us to concentrate on what we can influence. For instance, when we notice our stress levels rise when attempting to make our way to work, we can tune into our internal environment and gain control over our thinking, feelings, and actions. We can become aware of how we feel and think when our toddler yells at us.
Rather than react to his behavior or add to the story of it, we can breathe into these emotions and let them pass through.
We can also practice releasing built-up tension as we drive to work and use our breath to help us stay calm and present as we sit in school traffic. These uncontrollable circumstances can the perfect opportunities to practice breathing into our bodies for greater expansion and breathing out to help soften areas of tension.
Taking this practice off your mat and applying it to all aspects of our lives empowers us to release and recover from stress rather than deplete or immobilize us. Then we can show up in live with less physical and mental tension and sufficient adaptation energy reserves to carry us through our day.
Be The Duck
Postural yoga is one way to voluntarily activate our internal stress release system and unload our stress to overcome challenges. Asana can be a valuable tool in managing and mitigating stress and filling our adaptation reserves, offering a pathway to physical and mental well-being by promoting mindfulness, body awareness, and the release of tension and stress.
Through the practice of yoga, we can aim to emulate the natural stress release mechanisms observed in animals and cultivate a healthier response to the stressors of the modern world. Releasing bodily tension helps us release mental tension, making it easier to let go of unnecessary stories that induce stress.
When we have effective ways to manage our stress, instead of letting our stressors manage us, our bodies and minds can take all that energy previously wasted on imaginary attacks and channel it into the things we want to create in our lives.
So, let’s strive to “Be The Duck” and learn to flap our wings on the yoga mat, releasing the stress that burdens us. Letting go of the heavy stories that our minds create (delusion) will allow us to live lighter, healthier lives and enhance our overall well-being.
Contemplation Points:
- What are some tools you use to help you effectively release physical and mental stress?
- What does stress feel like in your body? Where do you tend to hold tension and tightness?
- Can you think of a recent stressful experience you had? How did you respond? Were you able to let it go after is passed? If not, do you add to the story of the experience by creating further narratives in your mind? Did adding to this story make you feel more or less stressed?
- Brieftly direct your mind to your body. Scan your body from your head to your toes. Notice how your body feels. Then see if you can breathe in to areas of tightness. Let these areas soften as you breathe out. Repeate 5-10 times or as many times as necessary until you feel lighter in your body and mind.
