For our body to heal, we have to be in a healing state. This is true for our physical body, but also for our emotional body.
Our bodies have an amazing capacity to heal. Wounds close, broken bones mend. We survive injuries, diseases, trauma, surgery.
Of course that depends on many factors. And we heal better and faster if the conditions are right for healing. What most often interferes with healing nowadays is something that has been very important as a survival tool since the beginning of time. Stress.
Stress can be useful
In an unsafe environment, stress is useful for us because it prepares us to confront what is before us. Stress gives us a hit of adrenaline and cortisol, the hormones of action, to be able to get out of the way of an approaching bus, to run to safety if we are threatened or to put up a fight if we need to. For that purpose, all the blood is diverted away from our digestion for example to our arms and legs to allow us to be ready for action. We need to go away from the danger, and we need stress hormones to do that. So, how does something so vital for us has become a threat to our wellbeing in itself?
Acute stress vs Chronic state
Let’s take that incidence of the bus tumbling towards us as an example. This is an immediate threat and short term stress because after we manage to avoid the bus, we can come back to a neutral state. Acute stress is appropriate response to danger after which we calm down and get on with our lives.
Prolonged stress, on the other hand, can make us be in a chronic state of sympathetic nervous system activation even when we are in a safe environment. Because the stress is ongoing, we become accustomed to it and it becomes a normal state for us to be in. We don’t even realise that we are stressed out. And even if the stress stops, our nervous system stays in that way, we normalise to the experience that we are having. It’s like the frog in a slowly heating water that boils in the end.
Chronic stress is just the opposite of a healing state.
The parasympathetic nervous system
A big part of the healing work actually happens while our nervous system is in a parasympathetic mode. When the parasympathetic nervous system is activated, our heartbeat and breathing slow down. Our blood pressure also lowers and digestion is promoted. Our body enters a state of relaxation, and this relaxation breeds recovery. The more time we spend in a parasympathetic state, the easier the healing.
The ability to come back to our baseline parasympathetic state, therefore, is of utmost importance.
There are many ways in which we can work to reduce our stress and down-regulate our nervous system. Yoga and Thai massage are two of them. Both practices have a calming and grounding effect that supports our bodies’ natural capacity for healing.
Moreover, switching our sympathetic nervous system off and coming into that parasympathetic “rest and digest” mode even just for a while through yoga or massage can help us to notice how our baseline has changed. We can observe the signs of stress, become aware of the tension in the body, of the preoccupation in the mind. And once we are aware that we are stressed, then we can choose to make a change.
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Photo by Ante Gudelj on Unsplash
