Ahhh…. STRESS, a term most of us are quite familiar with. What a stressful time we happen to be in right now. We each experience stress in different ways. Your mind may be overactive, obsessed with a problem, or worried about an individual. You may hold tension in your lower back, upper back, or neck and shoulders. You may tend to grind your teeth at night, have difficulty falling asleep, and wake up with jaw tension. Or, you may get a stomach ache or a headache when stressed. When under stress, often the problem areas of the body get worse.
Defining Stress
My observation as an acupuncturist in central Vermont is that stress is often clearly a contributing factor to illness, sometimes even considered the cause. Aside from a temporary headache or stomach ache or neck tension, it has been described that most chronic illness is due to loss of the body’s ability to adapt to stress, whether physical, emotional, or psychological. The body has an intrinsic ability to maintain a state of equilibrium that sustains health and prevents the development of disease. This state of equilibrium, or homeostasis, occurs as your body is in constant flux working to maintain an ideal condition for living. It has many various complex processes for homeostasis, like keeping a specific body temperature, blood pressure, or a certain range of hormones. Factors causing a body’s condition to diverge too far from that ideal point can be experienced as stress. In response to repetitive or severe stress, your body’s mechanisms may fail to maintain this balance and you may begin to see disease appear depending on your unique genetics or weakness.
Another View
The adrenal and other endocrine glands are known to mediate the body’s response to stress. Chinese Medicine uses a different perspective to describe the ability to maintain this sense of balance, or homeostasis. It is seen that the energy of the body must circulate properly and be of sufficient amount in order to allow for the proper functioning of our organs and structures. For the heart to continue pumping effectively or the skin to have proper nutrition or to not be overwhelmed by our emotions, there must be appropriate movement of energy through the body. Though our Western medical minds have recently learned much more about the details of the heart or skin or brain, viewing the body as it has been in China for the past four thousand years is still effective.
The Liver
In Chinese Medicine, along with helping detoxify the body and metabolize fats, the Liver is considered the organ system that manages the appropriate expression of emotions. When we become overwhelmed, the Liver system can become overwhelmed and may not function ideally. This may not necessarily affect the physical liver itself but may present symptoms of improper circulation of energy. This is when our weak areas show up: the headache, stomach ache, neck tension, or sleep difficulty, etc. And if this state of imbalance is not regulated over time, chronic illness may arise.
Ways to Help
The best way to relieve this stagnation in the Liver system is to move the body with exercise, in order to increase the circulation of blood. A moderate walk in these Fall woods with a good friend can go a long way. With acupressure, you can stimulate a point on the top of the foot to increase the circulation of energy and blood throughout the body. This is a specific point that improves the functioning of the Liver. It is located between the big toe and second toe about an inch up from the web and between the bones. Press down with a circular motion on both feet at this point for several minutes, multiple times throughout the day. This will help relieve the tension created by stress and bring the body closer to the balanced state it seeks. You are surely welcome to contact me to make sure you’re doing this correctly or to receive acupuncture for this purpose.
Of course, life is not always easy to handle each day. When challenges arise, our goal is to not become overwhelmed by them. We can remain objective to make decisions that need to be made, using our emotions and intuition to guide us as well. For many of us, our emotional response to stress is what overwhelms us. Even when we are dealing with many challenges at once, we can stay clear-minded as to what the best course of action is and take the steps that we can now. You can plan for the future while putting most of your attention on the actions of today. Let’s strive to find a sense of ease despite the various stressors that currently occupy our lives.