"There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation."
- Lin Yutang

 Withdrawal of the senses. In yoga this is called Pratyahara. This is a space of internal stability and a deepened awareness of self.

 I always know it. It's when I outwardly expel energy for too long, in too many directions, in too many spaces. I lose pieces. Not in the sense that they're gone forever - these days there is an awareness attached to this "slipping of self" that quietly reminds me, it's time to draw in. 

 It's taken years of contemplation and personal reflection to cultivate this awareness, today I'm grateful for the safe space it offers. It's an awareness that something doesn't feel at home internally. The depth of my soul is stumbling over blocks that are withholding fulfillment. It's a call for realignment. 

 It's funny, how clearing space in our "go, go, go" worlds uncovers a intuitive simplicity. The path to "what's next" is tangible because with self-awareness, we've recalibrated ourselves with the things we already know. We've guided ourselves exactly, where we're meant to be.

 Like most things, we all respond to stress differently. It's pretty safe to say that the way you experience stress, is not the same way someone else experiences it and what works for you likely won't work for everyone. When we tune into our own unique "Stress Style" we can take steps to deal with our own overwhelm in a way that actually works for us personally. Check the stress styles below and some tools you can use to relax and recharge!

THE "FIGHT" RESPONSE:
 If stress makes you agitated, frustrated, anxious or irritated, try stress reducing techniques that slow and quiet things down. Things like deep breathing, meditation or muscle relaxation will work to bring about the calm you crave! Gentle massages, bath tub soaks and slower forms of yoga are all excellent fits.
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THE "FLIGHT" RESPONSE:
 If you experience depression, withdrawal and disconnect or "spaceiness" as a result of the stress in your life, techniques that work to stimulate your nervous system will help re-energize and refocus you. Try activities like power or more active styles of yoga, brisk walking your favorite forms of exercise and invigorating massages.

 You may have written a 90-day commitment letter to yourself before. Things that outline the changes you’re going to implement in your business, how you’re going to stick to it for 90-days and really commit to seeing the results unfold. Because without a firm commitment that reaches beyond that,
​“results NOW” thinking, we not likely to see real and profound change.

 So here’s a quickie thought. What about writing that same type of 90-day commitment letter to yourself but doing a bit of a script flip and basing it all around the mindset changes you’re ready to make in your life. Map them out, acknowledge your weakness, your strengths and get into action.
​Ask for help if you need it but give your plan and yourself a chance!

 I did stress. Like full time, stress and I were besties. I played the “ALL THE THINGS need to be perfect” game and inevitably, it did exactly to me, what I see it doing to my client's WAY too often. Because here’s the thing, our bodies aren’t meant to be in a constant state of stress. It wreaks havoc on health, our minds and our ability to actually show up in our lives. Long term, stress is seriously at the root of almost ALL of our wellness concerns.

 So instead of hanging out in the dark about the whole thing (which I was a total pro at), I finally decided to stand up to the “S” word, dig into it and kindly excuse it from my life. Here’s what I learned. Stress and overwhelm? They’re choices. And they’re ones we make every day. Here’s what else I learned, there ARE ways to actually ditch the stress and they don't require a tireless search to find that magic pill!

 Check out the few tips below, make your own decision to break up with stress and end that crummy relationship for good! When it gets big and scary, step back and ask yourself, “am I choosing overwhelm here?!”

1. Recognize and get in tune with what stress looks like for you (it’s different for each one of us!) Do you need to withdraw and nurture yourself or get out there and blow off some steam? Do that and do it BEFORE the overwhelm has totally consumed you!

2. Be aware of how your environment and the people in it affect you. Environment is a huge part of managing our energy and our emotions!

3. Stop with the should, need to, have to and endless DOING. Create a schedule that feels manageable, is aligned with your plans and stick to it! When you’ve ticked the (reasonable) amount of boxes off at the end of the day, let it be. Get back to those other amazing areas of your life that deserve the best parts of you too!

4. Schedule “YOU” time into the books, EVERY day. These are your magical moments of recharge. They boost inspiration, creation and allow you to thrive as the total rockstar that you are!

So here’s the thing about self care, sometimes we all just plain suck at it. Life happens, and it’s pretty natural to put our own wellbeing on the back burner when there are a million things pulling at us in a million directions. Here’s the other thing about self care, it’s the old “oxygen mask” reference. You can’t help someone else when the plane is going down if you aren’t breathing yourself. It just doesn’t work, ever. We wind up burnt out, exhausted, frustrated, bitter, resentful…. The list goes on and on and none of the things on it, are usually positive qualities or aspects of ourselves we’re particularly fond of.

At the end of the day, we all know better, like in our heads we really know what we’re doing and the way we’re pushing ourselves, our bodies and our minds can’t possibly result in much good in our lives. But do we really understand the actual impact all this stress and lack of connection to ourselves is doing to us? 
Stress affects nearly every area of our physical wellness, it causes sleep dysfunction, anxiety, depression and worst of all, it takes us out of the present moment. It keeps us riddled with worry about the future, lost in what we can't control from the past or just too hung up on ALL. THE. THINGS. in the moment.

I’m pretty confident at least one or two of the above relationships with stress rings true for most of us, or has at some point in our lives. Those times when things have gotten really tough and we find ourselves going down, with absolutely no oxygen mask in sight.

Fun fact about stress that I’m also confident you’re aware of: It’s not going anywhere, anytime soon. You may have an inclination about where I’m going with all of this.... It’s not about playing hide and seek with stress, finding a really good hole to hide in and avoiding it for life. We all know that doesn’t work, but neither does letting it tear us down and wear us out, while ultimately playing the “wait and see” game when it comes to the toll it’s going to take on us. Most of us have probably played witness to the ineffectiveness of this approach, either in our own lives or the lives of those closest to us.

So what’s the answer, what’s the magic pill?! I’m going to be blunt and at the risk of bursting a few bubbles, divulge: there isn’t one. It’s not about running away from stress and life, it’s about embracing it. Yes you heard me correctly, it’s about building a relationship with stress, adversity and challenge, and all the other “unknowns” life offers us. It’s learning to live in the “here and the now” and being present only to what is actually going on and affecting us at the current time. It’s called “mindfulness.”

“Here and now” are the only real things any of us have. Yesterday is gone. From it, the best we can do is take its lessons, embrace them and employ them in making the best decisions for our current lives. The guilt, the “should haves” and the “could haves” do absolutely nothing to serve us today. The lessons we’ve taken from them however, do. These are “tools” and there’s a belt called “your life” they’re actually useful in.

And tomorrow? Tomorrow will always offer new challenges and situations we can not fully anticipate, we can prepare for them but we can’t foresee them. It’s unfortunately not one of those "tools" currently available to any of us. So here’s the decision we have when stress and life happen and all the preparing in the world couldn’t have done a damn thing to help us out. You may have heard me discuss it in the past, because it’s a concept near and dear to my heart. It’s become the way I embrace life.

“Two Paths, Two Choices.”

​ If we can train ourselves to simplify everything in our lives, it all breaks down to this concept. In each and every situation there will always exist, two paths and two choices, and they both boil down to Mindset. One is an entirely unproductive path of resistance, negativity, blame, guilt, excuses, “woe is me” and stagnancy. The other is one of opportunity, optimism, growth, embracement of ourselves and loved ones and learning from each and every one of those kinks in the path life throws at us. This is where we cultivate the real ability to create a healthier and happier space for ourselves and those around us, this is the effectiveness of putting our own oxygen masks on first.

It’s from this second path, an amazing thing called gratitude strikes us in the most unusual of ways. We learn to actually become grateful for the difficulties in our lives. We grow to understand how they have contributed to and created the soulful, wise and enriched people we are today. From this all, derives my other favorite concept and that's simply:

“Resiliency.”

​ Choosing the second path certainly doesn’t mean we don’t fall down and it doesn’t mean that when we are down life won’t hand it to us threefold, because let’s face it, that’s often how things go. What it does mean, is that we have evolved into this beautiful place of resiliency, where all the adversity has built stronger versions of ourselves. Where we know how to slow down, breathe and evaluate the role our minds and our attitudes can play in the outcomes of life’s challenges. We learn to no longer look at our own lives with those “woe is me goggles.”

Empathy towards the world around us and the struggle endured by others every day offers us perspective. It makes us desire to be a part of our own solution and the solution for others. It builds community, it enforces our personal strength and it creates character as we learn to open up, share, listen to and really nurture what our hearts and our souls desire.

This is the space we learn to practice real and authentic “self care.” It’s a place where we become our own greatest teachers, where we are in tune to our actual needs. We don’t repress and just keep throwing more wood on the fire, hoping for some odd reason this time it won’t burn. We learn to see our lives from an objective place and we find clarity. Life and it’s demands don’t seem so huge and overwhelming anymore. We know, in a deep and connected way, in each and every challenge we face, lies an opportunity for personal growth.

With this gift, we find a real chance to offer our lives a reprieve from the toll mounting stress and our reactions to it can play on us personally, our dreams and our place in this world. We learn to turn our challenges into actual tools we can use moving forward, to create lives that we are equip to deal with and thrive in doing so. In it all, we become the absolute purveyors of our own self mastery and that in my books, is the ultimate form of “self care.”