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Just what does it take to change your life? Where do you start? What do you do? I get asked these questions by those who never gave it a thought before that moment, and by those who have read every self-help book they’ve come across and still couldn’t find the starting point that worked for them.There are definitely some concepts to understand and accept if you want to change something in yourself and your life. Over the next few weeks, I’ll tell you about some of them, beginning this week with The Mind/Body Connection.

The mind/body connection is created by naturally occurring chemicals in the brain called neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters communicate your emotions, among other things, to every one of the trillions of cells in your body. Each cell has a physical reaction to every thought and feeling; subsequently, your thoughts and feelings have a direct impact on your physical well-being as well as your reality.

If you experience very strong negative feelings (emotions) often enough and for prolonged periods of time, your immune system can be compromised - things happen in your body that can result in a weakened ability to fight off disease or other health-related problems.

Consider this: physical pain is your unconscious mind screaming that there’s a negative emotion that you’ve ignored long enough to push it into physical manifestation. So remember that negativity is unhealthy for mind and spirit, and also for the physical body. When you experience it, ask yourself if it’s worth it - you may find that it’s not, & you’ll know that you’re on the path to change.

You’ve been practicing the first three steps in managing stress quickly when you’re on the run. BREATHING oxygenates your brain and body, having the DESIRE to deal with the stressful situation rather than hide from it shifts your energy into a more active state, and LETTING GO OF THE EMOTIONAL CHARGE of the situation helps you calm and center yourself; it also helps you obtain OBJECTIVITY. Now, let’s do something!

Feel yourself re-asserting control, and know that you’re in control of the elements of the situation that are yours to control. Picture yourself taking the appropriate action and dealing with the situation objectively, with impartial thoughts instead of emotional ones. See yourself getting the results you want; feel what that would feel like. You can do this is in the same way you imagined the water clearing the emotions from your body.

This is the point at which you move forward to TAKE ACTION - using what’s available to you for dealing with the situation in some constructive way. Remember, this is stress management on the run, so an interim, short-term improvement may be all that’s possible at the moment. That’s better than no improvement at all, and it’s certainly better than being drained by the mental/emotional/physical roller-coaster ride of stress!

This segment completes the series Stress 101 - Managing Stress on the Run. Use it in good health!

You’ve been making sure to BREATHE and face up to the situation causing the stress, and you have the DESIRE to deal with it effectively, thereby freeing yourself from its unhealthy aspects. What’s next?We’re generally not too effective when we’re letting our emotions run wild, and emotions are experienced by both mind and body. If you’re in a situation that’s putting you under severe stress you’re most likely experiencing emotions, even if you’re not consciously aware of them.

Anger, resentment, fear, guilt….any or all negative emotions can be running rampant through your mind and body, making you feel awful and having an unhealthy impact on you physically and emotionally. Also, thinking clearly and objectively is impossible when on an emotional ride, so LETTING THE EMOTIONS GO is step three in managing stress on the run.

How you let the emotions go depends on your relationship with your unconscious mind. Sometimes you can just ask it to release the emotions. Other times you need to give it a visual - a picture - to help it understand what you want. Try this while you’re taking some deep, lung-filling breaths: visualize light coming in to your body as you inhale, then when you exhale, envision the light coming out of the top of your head like a fountain, then falling down around your body, washing your body clean of emotion. Another technique is to imagine that you’re under gently running warm water that washes the emotions off your body and carries them away.

Create your own representation - it will be perfect for you. Do you think you can’t visualize? That’s OK - use your imagination to sense one of those scenarios, imagining what it feels like, sounds like, smells like, tastes like, to have your emotions washed away from you. Your unconscious mind will get the message.

Once the emotional charge is gone, notice how different the situation looks, and how much easier it is to consider solutions now that you’ve used the first three steps to move yourself toward a calm and centered state of mind, free of unpleasant emotional distress.

You now have 3 sequential steps to use in conquering the stress of the moment. BREATHE, take ownership of the issue and acknowledge your DESIRE to address it, and LET THE EMOTIONS GO so you can be calm and centered.

Part Four will let you know what to do next. Until then, practice handling your stress using these tips.

The first step of managing stress on the run is to BREATHE, deeply and fully, so brain and body are supported by the breath to function optimally. The next step is a little more personal, and it involves the DESIRE to resolve the stressful situation.It’s tempting to think that if you ignore something it will go away, and sometimes it even works that way, at least for a while. Not so much with stress. Stress may seem to go away if you ignore it, but what really happens is it goes “underground,” perhaps lurking somewhere in your body where it can cause long term damage. Like it or not, once you’ve become stressed, whatever the cause of that stress is now owned by you. There’s no way around it - you let it in, now you have to deal with it.

This is where DESIRE comes in. In order to deal with something effectively (note the word “effectively”), you need to want to handle it; it must be your intention to deal with the situation and put it to rest. To do this you need to acknowledge the issue, face up to it, accept that it’s real for you (regardless of what others think or feel), and know that you can handle it and find the best possible way to do so.

The next time you realize you’re experiencing signs of stress, stop and BREATHE, and open yourself up to the DESIRE to resolve the cause easily, effortlessly, and effectively, and save your mind and body from the unpleasant effects of stress.

Meditation is incredibly effective in managing stress overall, and I highly recommend it, but it takes some time, some quiet, & a setting conducive to going within and listening to the silence. What can you do, “in the moment,” to get through stressful situations? Stress 101 is a series of easy tips for dealing with stress when chaos strikes.

You know how stress makes you feel - the rapid heartbeat that seems to make it hard to breathe, perhaps a mild shaking of the hands, or sweaty palms; the feeling that you can’t think straight, and if you’ve carried the stress long enough, you may have lost sleep because of it. Stress begins in the mind, but what you may not realize is that due to the mind/body connection, your entire body experiences it too, within seconds after you become aware that you’re stressed. Stress can eventually compromise your body’s defenses in many ways, and it can kill, as the American Medical Association noted in the 1960’s.

One of the first things many people do when they become stressed, is “chest-breathe,” breathing in a shallow way that brings air into the very top of the chest, but doesn’t inflate the lungs fully. When you do this, you don’t bring in the amount of oxygen your body needs to function optimally, and this especially affects your brain, which uses a large amount of oxygen. If the brain doesn’t get the oxygen it needs for optimal operation, even more stress is created, coping with it becomes even more difficult, and there can be a tendency to react with more emotion than reason.

So the first rule of dealing with stress on the run is BREATHE. Fill your lungs as much as you can, breathing in deeply and slowly, then exhale slowly and completely, picturing tension leaving your body as the breath leaves your lungs. Do this three or four times, or until you start to feel calmer. This helps prepare you for taking the next step, but is itself a powerful way to help your body cope with a situation that it finds uncomfortable.

From now on, when you realize you’re feeling “stressed out,” take a moment to breathe mindfully, with deliberation and the intent to rid your physical body of tension and bring light and air in to every cell. And stay tuned for Part Two of Stress 101: DESIRE.