Finding your Work Life Balance is key to longterm health!
Stress touches all corners of an individual’s life including work and relationships, with long-term alarming health consequences if left unaddressed.
Why is stress so bad for us? Normal stress is a state during which physiological changes occur in order to enable the body to perform its functions for survival in the world. Over short periods of time stress reactions can be productive; for instance, the bodily changes that take place before a competition or exam can release the necessary chemicals and hormones to support us into motion and focus our minds. If, however, this adrenaline rush is sustained over long periods, then the body is under a constant state of alarm, which will eventually cause a depletion of vital energy, and a person’s health will begin to deteriorate.
We take 'whole health approach' supporting aspects of everyday stress management and heres why!
Stress Management Tips & tactics:
1/ Stress takes many forms in our everyday life for instance diet, biochemical imbalances in the body, work overload, anxiety, lack of self esteem, personal power issues etc… But a stressor once identified can be turned to your advantage, as Eckhart Tolle explains in his first book “The Power of Now” you must detach from the stressor do not give it power and just become the observer!
A great way to help identify your stressors is to start journaling/ observing, and to just observe your thoughts & feelings to understand what meaning you are giving them! By doing this you will distinguish between healthy versus debilitating stress, interrupting patterns that do not serve you and dissolve the “drama” and bring your state of mind & body back balance & harmony. Check out our blogs on journaling in May & get some great tips & tactics on how to get started with a process.
2/ Diet & lifestyle is key in counteracting every day stressors. This is our speciality as we take a Functional Medicine and Nutritional Therapy approach to supporting your current health profile. Not many people realise that your nutritional profile is key to a comprehensive stress management approach. Prolonged stress without intervention can have devastating effects on health with symptoms such as disturbed sleep, impaired digestion, digestive discomfort, feelings of fatigue, apathy, waking unrefreshed but to name a few, and all of which could lead to more serious aliments such as chronic fatigue, adrenal fatigue/Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), fibromyalgia and more! Take your first step in gaging your current health profile and complete the online Nutritional Therapy Questionnaire below…
3/ Lifestyle: Integrating the mind and body into the healing space or process throughout the week is fundamental! You have to make an appointment with yourself and show up like you would with any other appointment. This can be as simple as taking a long soak in an epson salt bath mid week while focusing the mind listening to an ebook, meditation or relaxing music etc… It is proven that listening to music can effect heart rate & mood, listening to music with 60-80BPM is best… Rest the mind, consciously Relax and Reset your state of wellbeing!
4/ Lifestyle: We could go on and on about lifestyle but here are some really great tools for you to implement: Slow low stress yoga or a pilates class is great in supporting a stressful profile or a high cortisol profile. With this type of exercise you are engaging both the body & mind without raising your cortisol levels, and you will find yourself feeling more relaxed, centred and ready for a good nights sleep or energise for the day! Meditation is a crucial and practice exercise to implement into your stress management approach. If you are new to meditation or want to improve your experience I highly recommend you download the App called “Head Space” this is particularly great for wandering or busy minds, check it out as the first set of 10minute meditations are free! Once practiced and ready to move on there are many other apps to choose from to help build your mindfulness or awareness or to pave your path to your transcendent self!!
5/ Connection is key! Our current day model of family life, community spirit or self connection/development has changed so much over the past 100 years and the big questions is whether these changes are actually adding to the quality of our lives!
Information overload era, how does one manage daly digital time is a matter of time spent or time invested and to strike a balance between both. Digital investment time: Listen to an ebook, listening to a guided meditation, read an informative article etc this should be scheduled and coupled up with time spend for entertainment purposes… How do you want to manage “your investment piece of Digital time each day?”
One to One human connection, how much quality time are we spending/investing with our nearest & dearest, or the connection we have with ourselves and self development! This type of connection pays double fold as the quality of what you give, you really get back in return! Connection with family, friends, & community is key, take time to connect with the real you and take the time to invest in these spheres of influence that are key in a stress management and works life balance approach.
6/ Focus on the Drivers!
From an NLP point of view we have 6 human needs that act as our driving forces, They are somewhat contradictory which can explain human nature and why we are all so different, with different values, drivers and goals in life, from these needs we have primary questions that dive deep down into how & why our personal worlds are shaped, but those primary questions are for another day! Here we take a look at our 6 human needs…
The 6 Human Needs:
Certainty and Variety
Significance and Love/Connection,
Growth and Contribution.
We will be using these six human needs as part of a Journaling exercise later on, as well as using a fast tracking approach a necessary process for self growth, awareness which leads us onto our most empowering step “Where focus goes Energy flows” becoming the change in behaviour you would like to see is the key and eliminates the logic mind and gets to the core of what you really want in life, in you and in others!
7/ Self awareness. Every step we take in our Wellness Society is fundamentally about building awareness, one of the first current day masters of building self awareness & done so in the most humours way was by Anthony de Mello, my god this man was ahead of his time! You can find some of this stuff on Youtube and he is just fantastic, the key is listen to him a few times!! Other than that, awareness helps detach form stressors in life, you see drama as, just that! With practice detach from unnecessary stressors helping to bring about balance, harmony and dare I say Pure JOY to your everyday life…
Many people have become so accustomed to high levels of stress that they are in a constant reactive state, constantly ‘stressed out’, over time the body is put under extreme pressure with signs of physical and emotional in-balance. Studies suggesting that prolonged stress has a considerable impact upon the development of many illnesses.
Prolonged stress can contribute to the development of a myriad of health problems including:
- High Blood Pressure
- Compromised Immune System
- Hormonal Disruption
- Digestive Complaints
- Anxiety
- Panic Attacks
- Depression
- Insomnia
- Lack of Concentration & Performance.
- Lack of Energy
- Confusion
Find your stress free destination!
One to one support Programme
Its common in advertising a product or service sales to highlight a problem and than give/sell the solution… Classic sales! But here I hope you feel empowered enough to make necessary changes to support a better work life balance or rather an anti-stress life balance…
However sometimes people need to be supported, guided or directed to make necessary change or break a pattern support a nutrition or health profile and this is why we offer the following at our clinic:
- Take a one to one Nutritional Therapy Consultation and see how Nutritional therapy and functional medicine can help support your stressful profile. While we don’t claim to treat Stress we can support a high stress nutritional profile and help bring about a state of balance, dietary and nutritional support.
- Wellbeing with Reiki – At the clinic I have the privilege of sharing the beautiful healing energy of Reiki with any of my clients that feel drawn to it. It is truly an honour to share the healing benefits of Reiki every day, it it something I practice daily and personally feel an abundance of wellbeing from it. If you want to find out more you can follow this link to find out more
Find your stress free destination!
We hope our insight help you on your stress free path, if you have any questions please be sure to let us know and will facilitate or refer as best we can
Getting started can be difficult or tricky, but the key is to get started!
Get a nice journal, a pen and then gather your thoughts. Its great to start with a list of things you are grateful for… this exercise is a little eye opener as more often than not people can with no problem list all the things in life that they don’t like or are not grateful for… if this happens, then hello first step to awareness 🙂
Focusing on a work life balance, choosing ways to destress can yield massive rewards such as:
– Improved physical and Mental Well-being.
– Revitalised Energy & Productivity.
– Clarity of Thought & A More Optimistic Outlook.
– Confidence, Inspiration & A Renewed Sense of Purpose.
– Reduced Anxiety.
– Stronger Emotional Resilience.
– Practical every day self care – eating healthy, exercising, being kind etc
– Reconnect/connect with self love
– Enjoy the creativity of trying new things, meeting new people & going to new places.
