Stress is a physiological response to the events of our lives.<\/strong>\u00a0 How we respond to that stress and what happens to our bodies when we feel threatened dates back to times when life was more primitive and the responses to life events was simpler.\u00a0 When we feel threatened or endangered our body responds by producing adrenalin.\u00a0 Blood pumps away from the extremities into the muscles.\u00a0 This is why when you are feeling frightened or stressed your hands and feet are often cold.\u00a0 The heart rate accelerates, and the blood pressure increases.\u00a0 Muscles bunch preparing the body protect itself from the perceived danger by either fight or flight.\u00a0 This is called the fight flight response.<\/strong><\/p>\n Prior to the industrial revolution fighting or fleeing was an appropriate response to most risky life situations.\u00a0 Threats were clear and involved survival.\u00a0 The natural selection process of survival of the fittest worked well.\u00a0 If you were the strongest or the fastest you survived.\u00a0 This was accomplished by either overcoming your adversary physically or by fleeing to a safe place away from your adversary.\u00a0 It has only been since the industrial revolution and the development of modern society that this fight flight response became a part of the problem, rather than the solution.<\/p>\n Today, when a boss or a co-worker threatens you, it may be very subtle, but your body responds to the time honored response of generating the fight flight response.<\/strong>\u00a0 However, there you sit with your body primed for a physical fight or a survival flight and that is not appropriate to the situation.\u00a0 And you cope with the perceived threat by swallowing your anger and perhaps creating a pithy remark and go on with your day.\u00a0 But, your body still has that energy stored up for the fight or flight from the situation.\u00a0 That physiological response creates health problems if not released.\u00a0 Chronic high blood pressure, tension headaches, muscle cramping and pains are just a few of the body\u2019s responses to unreleased stress.<\/strong><\/p>\n Because the body creates the fight flight response as a part of the autonomic nervous system, you must use signals that the body recognizes to turn the fight flight response off.<\/strong>\u00a0 Walking away from a confrontation calmly but then reviewing the issue in your mind throughout the day then telling your friend or spouse about the threat only keeps the body in a constant state of readiness to fight or for flight.<\/p>\n In order to relax this response you need to use signals that are recognized by the autonomic nervous system, by the body.<\/strong>\u00a0 One of the reasons that running or aerobic exercise work well as a stress relief is that exercise is interpreted by the body as fulfilling what it prepared to do<\/strong>.\u00a0 Another way of signaling the body\u2019s autonomic nervous system is to consciously<\/strong> to control your breath<\/strong>.\u00a0 By doing a deep breathing exercise you signal your body that the threat is over and it is time to stand down.<\/strong>\u00a0 This is one of the reasons that regular use of relaxation exercises or meditation work to improve ones health and well being.<\/p>\n A simple exercise that you can use is to breathe deeply into the diaphragm and count your breath slowly by a count of ten.<\/strong>\u00a0 Begin by exhaling sharply and completely, then breath in slowly filling the lungs from the diaphragm up into the chest fully as you slowly count to 10; then release the breath slowly over a count of 10.\u00a0 Repeat this slow full count breathing for about 10 minutes.\u00a0 You will notice that this very simple exercise relaxes you and releases the body from the edge of the fight flight response.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n \u00a9 Copyright 2008-2018 Genevieve Gerard, All Rights Reserved<\/p>\n www.WhyStressOut.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Physiology of Stress Stress is a physiological response to the events of our lives.\u00a0 How we respond to that stress and what happens to our bodies when we feel threatened dates back to times when life was more primitive and the responses to life events was simpler.\u00a0 When we feel threatened or endangered our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[16,12,4,14,11,13,5],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whystressout.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whystressout.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whystressout.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whystressout.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whystressout.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/whystressout.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whystressout.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whystressout.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whystressout.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}