Are you seeking stress relief? Stress is a universal and pervasive dis-ease of modern culture. Most people accept stress as a fact of life, and live far below their optimal state of self-empowerment. The good news, however, is that you have within yourself the tools to be able to reduce and even eliminate your own stress. To do so, you need a clear understanding of what stress is; why people suffer from it; and how to conquer it. What is stress?  Stress always has three components. When you feel stress, you feel it physically, mentally and emotionally.

• Physically, stress involves physical tension: headaches, back pain, shortness of breath, churning gut, nausea, and so on. These all manifest what is called the fight-or-flight response, or the tension response characteristic of living in a society full of constant demands and sudden change. If you suffer the physical symptoms of stress frequently, they eventually weaken your immune system and tax your muscles and nerves so much that you experience chronic illness and/or chronic pain.
• Mentally, when you feel stress your mind starts talking too much, you become a victim of mental chatter, or you feel disoriented and confused. What you don’t feel is clear, calm and focused. You function under par.
• Emotionally, stress creates a host of negative emotions: fear, anxiety, nervousness, impatience, frustration, and so on. These make it harder for you to be at your best. They impair the overall quality of your life.

Why do people suffer from stress? The easy answer to this question is “People suffer from stress because life is stressful.” But that answer is neither accurate nor useful for two reasons. It doesn’t provide tools for reducing stress, tools that virtually everyone needs. And it assumes that stress is productive, whereas in most situations the opposite is the case. Mental, emotional and physical tension (the classic signs of stress) generally make you not more but less efficient, successful and creative, whether that is in dealing with work issues or with family, on the golf course or on the tennis court.  Stress is actually a physical, mental and emotional addiction. It involves habitual disempowered behavior based on your past conditioning and experiences when you were very young. As a child you were dependent, so you learned to perform for others instead of for yourself. That made you physically tense, emotionally vulnerable and mentally hyperactive or out of focus. When you feel stress today, you continue that disempowered pattern. That makes you underperform. (For a free one hour talk by Ingrid Bacci on why stress reduces performance and how to let go of stress, subscribe to her free downloads and emails.). It’s the calm, balanced, relaxed person who is also the most productive in challenging situations. Training yourself to let go of physical, mental and emotional stress reactions in daily life not only helps you to feel better. It also makes you more efficient, more productive, more creative, and a lot more fun. You begin to make a priority of studying mental, emotional and physical relaxation tools when you realize that these optimize your chances for both a calm and a successful life. How can you conquer stress? Conquering stress is a step-by-step process of reconditioning yourself to optimal functioning. You practice training yourself to feel more calm, balanced, and focused, as opposed to agitated, off balance, or poorly focused. Since stress always affects you physically, mentally, and emotionally, to conquer stress you commit yourself to a holistic healing approach that uses both mind and body. On a physical level, you practice mind-body calming and centering techniques such as breath awareness, the Alexander Technique, meditation, craniosacral therapy, and other mind-body tools that are useful key for stress relief. On a mental and emotional level, you practice visualization tools, focusing your intention, meditative awareness, and other tools that are part of overall self-empowerment. These techniques are all covered extensively in Ingrid Bacci’s books, CDs, MP3 downloads, and DVDs.  To receive a free email series introducing you to stress relief techniques, click here.