April is Stress Awareness Month

April is Stress Awareness Month in Canada. That feels odd to say. All of us are already very aware of stress. But the problem is that for the longest time, stress was seen as something to get rid of, to spend energy hammering away at purging it, eliminating it. Stress has always been known to cause headaches, stomach aches, insomnia and depression. Not so long ago, you were supposed to suck it up, do your work and not complain. But then researchers began to discover links between elevated levels of stress and all kinds of serious diseases, like heart disease and diabetes. We can not get rid of stress; your mind sees all stimulus as stress.

What we can do is choose better thinking styles about stress and practice the embodied exercises and breathing we teach at the studios to eliminate the negative effects of that stress. What strategies work for you, to keep you strong and resilient? Getting your cells to move, to create fluid exchange and then training the base muscle and then the bigger muscle and then doing cardio is a great 4 step recipe for success. Your mind will flow with your body; your body with your mind!

“Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you thought you couldn’t.” ~Rikki Rogers