We are hardwired to contract our muscles, release adrenaline and fire up our central nervous system when we perceive danger = our fight or flight response. But when not living in situations of great physical danger as our ancestors once may have, these responses are most often unhelpful to us now. However in spite of this not only does fight or flight remain as our go-to when perceiving any sense of danger, threat or discomfort, for so many it is just a permanent state of hyper-arousal, which we have become so use to we don’t even remember what calm feels like.

So many clients have expressed the feeling of needing to be on alert. If we are alert maybe the thoughts won’t get us, the binge won’t happen, we won’t say something stupid, we’ll force our self to eat normally in a dominance of will over illness. It is such an easy trap to fall into because our society is invested in this way of being, it is what success is often framed as, what those who are admired are presented as – controlled, forces of will power and discipline.

But the truth is – and we will learn it over and over again – it just doesn’t work. You can’t sustain that intensity of contraction and be well. Even for those who do achieve some things with it, there will be some form of compensation to balance it, and usually the compensation is significantly damaging. The body suffers. You can’t maintain prolonged stress without it having an impact on the body – no one is an exception to that. When we are stressed our thinking is shallow and reactive, we don’t have the opportunity to shift patterns or make conscious choices, we are possessed by the momentum of what we have done before, what will meet our needs in the moment. We repeat the very behaviours we are trying to overcome.

But when we are grounded and self-connected we actually have more power. We have choice. Sometimes calm is associated with laziness, because of the way we have constructed ideals of busy-ness. But perhaps the opposite is more true –  letting the sympathetic (fight or flight) nervous system rest and allowing us to function from where we are meant to most of the time, from our parasympathetic nervous system. From a slower heart-beat, and more spherical thinking. We have access to parts of our brain that short circuit when we are stressed. We can be innovative, creative, expansive, keep boundaries and speak our truth because we have more space within which to notice and work with patterns we go into, reactions we call on, roles we play. We beging to live our life and not have life live us, feeling thrown around by the gusts and churns of day after day.

We also offer others a powerful gift. Because we are all connected. Our mood, our heart rate, affects those in our company. So when we chose gentleness, when we chose us, we allow an opportunity for others around us to feel into this as well.

Make the decision to be responsible for your own chemistry. To take power back from habit not by being on high alert, but by dropping back into what you already are. And discovering there a well of power and strength that dwarfs anything nervous energy can temporarily provide.