Blog— mongata

Stress and anxiety are on track to dominate society's emotional bandwidth in 2022…

This was a line that I read in a recent news report, and it struck me how one line could sum up what so much of the world is struggling with right now.

We live in a very stressful and anxiety-producing world. Most people live under daily stress 70% of the time. When you're living in stress mode, your survival instincts kick in. This means that we perceive threats and danger in our external environment or personal living environment.

When we perceive that situation could worsen, it deactivates our parasympathetic nervous system and fires up the primitive nervous system. We call this the flight or fight the nervous system. When we sense danger, we will either flee the situation, fight to get the upper hand of the threat, or become small and try to become invisible.

When in stress mode, we will likely do one of these three actions. When a person is in stress mode, the only acceptable action to the mind and body is to try and control and predict the outcome of the situation.

When we are under stress, our body secretes stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. This kicks the brain out of balance and has us looking from one thing to the next very rapidly. I have to go to this meeting, and then go to this place, then complete this task by this time.

Every time one of these rapid events impulses fire, it sends a message to the neurological networks in our brains. The message essentially tells our nervous system that there is an urgency and, “Please send more stress hormones so I can make it through this day ASAP!”

Under the influence of the emergency hormones, we begin to shift our attention to this thing and that thing, to this person and that appointment which activates individual circuits. These hormones and rapid-fire attention deficit make our brain fire out of order and incoherently. When the brain is out of order and incoherent, you are not functioning well either.

When our brains don't function, we don't work. It's that simple.

So, what healing modalities will soothe our stress and anxiety and bring us back to Center?

In my book, Thrive-Living A Self-Healed Life, I share what I call the Four Pillars of Healing. One of those Four Pillars is Movement.

What I know for sure:

● Our bodies want to move.

● My body wants to move.

● Your body wants to move.

Our bodies are designed to stay strong and vital, as well as pain-free, throughout our entire lives, regardless of how old we are or how old we're going to be.

Our bodies are programmed to continually heal and repair themselves after damage or an injury has happened. Whether we are recovering from broken bones, torn muscles, cuts, burns, or fighting off germs and bacteria, our body's primary objective is to heal.

The more you move, the more you charge and fuel the remarkable cells in your body to meet these challenges with a healing response.

The definition of a healing modality is that they are the therapeutic techniques that seek to balance the body, mind, emotions, and spirit. In the United States, these holistic healing techniques are categorized as alternative, complementary, or integrative methods. Healing modalities can take different forms for different people. Some focus on consciousness while others are more vibrational in nature.

These "techniques" include things like yoga, Qigong, meditation, forest bathing, Reiki, acupuncture, and even art, dance, and music.

For me, it’s been a combination of many of these for many years, but movement has always been my go-to for wellness and stress reduction. I am an avid hiker and being in nature is a healing modality for me. But there was a time when an autoimmune diagnosis made me take a hard look at how else I could move my body and heal my soul.

It was late 2019 and after months of struggling with a swollen and painful knee that made my usual hiking routine unbearable. This was also around the time when our world was just beginning to see the onset of a global pandemic that would literally shut my country down for months.

My Integrative physician in Santa Fe put me on anti-inflammatory teas and encouraged me to increase my water intake drastically. These homeopathic practices had an immediate effect on my discomfort level, and the swelling in my joints began to recede within a few days. Around the same time, I was scrolling through Instagram, and Sara Colquhoun popped up in my feed. I had never heard of her, but there she was!

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

Sara Colquhoun, a Pilates instructor from Australia, was in lockdown like the rest of the world. Unable to hold in-person classes, she did the next best thing and began doing this straightforward exercise in her kitchen and sharing them on Instagram. At that moment, the light bulb went on in my head, and I was mesmerized by her energy and teachings.

One of her recommended activities consisted of standing with a foot on a kitchen dish towel, moving it back and forth behind her. Then she repeated this move, but to the side.

"I can do that," I remember thinking. So, I did. I got up and did it on both legs three times, holding onto a kitchen counter on either side of me.

The next day I did it again and then scrolled on her feed to list the exercises I could do. Each day's movement consisted of repeating these moves, and each day, she would post new things to do. Before too long, I was moving for 30 minutes each day.

I repeated these standing exercises day after day, and soon my body, my swelling, and my joints began showing a better range of motion. By the end of the summer, I was walking three miles every other day.

Since then, I’ve also integrated Qigong into my Movement routine and am in love with the mindset, breathwork, and pattern movement.

I will be sharing more of my Qigong routine and thoughts in an upcoming podcast (along with many other relevant topics!) on The Mongata Podcast. Go here to subscribe via Apple Podcasts or Spotify.