Did you know that a certain amount of stress is completely normal, and in fact a necessary component for a healthy, fulfilling life?
Its true, stress only becomes a problem when it becomes excessive, overwhelming your natural state of equilibrium, wreaking havoc on your body’s systems, eventually leading to mental, emotional, & physical turmoil.
Unfortunately, many people in modern society lead lives with stress levels far beyond what would be considered “healthy”.
What is the secret to stress relief?
Meditation. There are an unlimited number of reasons meditation is being recommended by doctors as a top stress relief tool, here are a couple:
1. Meditation directly counteracts the effects of stress. When stress destabilizes your nervous system’s natural equilibrium by initiating its ”flight or fight” response, flooding your body with a number of harmful chemicals (like cortisol), meditation brings it right back to a state of balance by producing your body’s powerful “relaxation response”, releasing counteractive chemicals (GABA, DHEA, melatonin, serotonin, endorphins, etc) negating the effects of excessive stress.
2. Meditation raises your stress tolerance level. Life has a way of testing each person with their share of stress, obstacles and difficulties – and everybody has a maximum limit for what they can handle.
Crossing this limit forces us to manage with an assortment of coping mechanisms, displayed in the form of anxiety, depression, anger, sadness, and addictions.
Meditation presents a safe and careful stimulus to the nervous system and brain, forcing that maximum limit higher, making you impenetrable to the stress that had you depressed, anxious, and possibly reaching for your favorite escape mechanism (addiction) just days and weeks earlier.
Meditation gives you a certain mastery of mind that completely changes your stress tolerance.
