These days there are countless stressors affecting our lives, collectively and individually. It can feel overwhelming. We can often feel powerless to deal with the effects from these stressors, it can often feel out of our control. What can we do to build our resiliency to influences we cannot control? There are tools to help us during times of stress and to build our resiliency overall, and these days, we have to shore up more than usual.
Foundations of Health: Foundations of health are the basic things needed to support live and health. These are foundational to our wellbeing as humans. This includes clean water, healthy food, fresh air, movement/exercise, quality sleep. These basic daily habits help to build the foundation for resiliency and overall health. When we feel stressed or overwhelmed, it can feel overwhelming to take care of ourselves, to cook healthy meals or get exercise. Yet it is during these times of overwhelm and anxiety that we need to attend to these basic daily habits with diligence, as they truly do help to build and maintain a strong foundation of health and resiliency. Keep it simple, focus on nourishing meals, water, daily movement, quality sleep.
Community: Research is clear that contact with community, friends, & family directly helps to regulate the nervous system. Being alone, or loneliness is known to contribute to worse health outcomes and worsening of depression and anxiety. During these times of social isolation finding ways to come together is even more critical and it demands creativity. Taking extra effort to reach out when you are in need and reaching out to those who you know may be more isolated, is of the utmost importance. When we can engage socially in a safe setting our nervous system immediately begins to regulate, thus lowering our perception of stress, and therefor lessening depression and anxiety.
Herbs: Herbal medicine can have profound impacts on our nervous system, helping to calm us during times of acute trauma or help to build overall resilience to stressors. Adaptogens are a category of herbs that helps us to be more “adaptable” to stressors, especially helping our adrenal glands. Nervines is a broad category of herbs that affect the nervous system, helping to calm us when we are worked up, helping us combat insomnia, soothe a frayed nervous system, and build overall resilience. There is a diversity of herbs to help build resiliency to stress. I will post another writeup devoted solely to these types of herbal medicines.
Breathing/Mindbody Medicine: Our breath is with us wherever we go, wherever we are, in every moment. I find this concept very empowering. We always have our breath to rely on. There are many ways to use the breath as a tool to affect our mental and emotional state. The yogic traditions teach us many diverse pranayama techniques for a variety of outcomes. Mantras or prayers provide yet another form of intentional breath work. Functional breathing, anatomical forms of breathing into the abdomen, can also help regulate our nervous system. Something as simple as breathing in with a count of 4 and breathing out with a count of 6 can directly lower our stress response. Lengthening the exhalation is an effective and outright profound way to calm ourselves down in an acute situation, such as a panic attack.
Hydrotherapy: The application of hot and cold water to the body is a simple yet very profound way to build our resilience to many things, strengthening our immune system, blood flow, and directly regulating our nervous system. The simple act of ending a hot shower with a flush of cool or cold water, when done regularly, is a powerful tool to “harden” our system leaving us more resilient to anything we encounter, including temperature regulation.