Simple Stress Relief – RELAX!

Crashing Wave

Ah, the joy of stress! For me, a sure-fire sign of stress is the tension that begins to form in the muscles of my upper shoulders and neck. If left unchecked, it tends to lead to a headache after a while. Not fun.



Fortunately, I know just how to deal with it. I've figured out that the tension is because of what I'm thinking. It's like, imagine someone in a boat, doing cookies. With every turn, the boat makes a wave. And that wave travels. And so, someone standing on the shore gets wet. And perhaps a tad bit irritated.



The boat doing cookies is like the thought that I'm thinking. The thought is a pattern of activation within the neurons of my brain. (Yes, I really do think in those terms…) A strong thought tends to create a wake, just like the boat, a literal spillage of signal to neighboring neurons. The stronger that gets, the stronger the wake.



Every prolonged thought is a CIRCULAR pattern of neuron activation. Literally, the signals travel in a loop, just like the boat doing cookies. It may not be a very clean and round circle, but it is a loop. And so with every turn through the loop, another wave gets tossed out. And with every wave, neighboring neurons get activated. For me, the neighboring neurons are the ones connected to the muscles in my upper back and neck.



Of course, that all depends on what I'm thinking. Every thought takes a different path. Some thoughts manifest in an accelerated heart rate. Others create butterflies in my stomach. Or a tightness in my chest. If you think about how you know when you are feeling scared, excited, anxious, or any other strong emotion, I bet you can point to some part in your body and say, "I feel something there." Now you know why.



There are actually two ways of dealing with the stress that I know of. Each are basically polar opposites, too.



One, the one that most people would think of first, is to eliminate the thought that leads to the tension. And you can do that by tuning in to the thought, and gradually shifting the thought into another form, changing its frequency, or its intensity. There are a myriad of techniques for that.



Another technique that I like, because it helps prevent it from happening again, is to re-wire your brain so that you can have that thought without having that same spill-over. It goes something like this:



First, don't fight the feeling or the thought. Instead, amplify it. Focus on it. Keep thinking about it even as you do the second part.



Second, activate your whole brain. An easy way to do this is to do a body scan. That is, turn all of your attention to a particular part of your body, and then move your attention from point to point, activating the part of the brain that processes signals from that point.



Another technique is to literally tap on that part of the body.



There is actually a technique called EFT which has figured out the minimum number of taps that you need to do, and where you need to do them, to get maximum activation. Google on it, and find the manual, and read it. It is a very potent technique.



What will happen is this: By focusing on the thought and making it stronger, you will begin to feel something, usually an emotion. As that emotion gets stronger, your brain goes into re-wire mode. Connections form between the active parts of your brain. By activating your whole brain while you do this, the connectivity rapidly increases throughout your brain. Now, when you think about whatever it is, the signal doesn't have to travel through such a narrow channel, and so the wake of any given thought gets spread out throughout your brain, and viola! No more side-effects! No more emotions, no more tension, no more discomfort!



Try it. See just how potent it can be!