UNWINDING VIGILANCE
Stress response & restful nourishment
There is a tightness, a tension, a hyper-awareness or hyper-arousal that nearly all people feel on some level. A survival mechanism to keep one’s self safe and alive. For some this vigilance is pronounced, ever present and in the forefront of their everyday existence. For others it lies quietly in the background, only coming out when needed in times of true threat to one’s life. Vigilance is a protective mechanism that is reactionary to perceived or actual threats. It gears us up and activates our bodily resources to fight or flight. Many people know this as the “stress” response. When we are geared up repetitively without rest from vigilance, we eventually burn up all of our energetic resources. This is called adrenal fatigue, which is how the body responds to constant perceived threat. From this place of depletion we might develop a myriad of symptoms or conditions, from autoimmune to musculoskeletal ailments, heart disease, cancer and the like. When the body expends all of its energy protecting itself from threat, it doesn’t have what it needs to function well and breakdown occurs. This breakdown is what we call disease.
Going from vigilance to disease can be a quick or slow process. It all depends on your energy state, capacity for self-awareness, and the divine timing of life, but everything that is repeatedly stressed without rest will breakdown. In general we tend to not be a very restful oriented society. We are constantly putting ourselves in a hyper-aroused state. Between the overstimulation we consume through technology, the incessant thoughts about our past or future, our need to be productive and get things done all of the time, we are almost incapable of being still and at ease while we are awake. Even when we sit down to relax or meditate we are still often doing stuff in our minds. Thank goodness we sleep, because without sleep we would have incredibly short lifespans. During sleep our body releases stress chemicals and it gets the opportunity to rejuvenate, get nourishment and heal itself through resting.
Underlying stress or tension on our body can feel out of our control. We often recognize it, but feel challenged in our capacity to change our state of being. Many times we feel like we just don’t know what to do about the stress, tension and vigilance we feel. We can’t figure out how to address it, so we try to numb it, avoid it or get rid of it. We may feel that certainly something can be done to change it, but the recognition of our capacity to change it isn’t there. So we just keep doing ourselves the same way hoping for some miraculous thing to appear that will make it better.
MOVING BEYOND HOPE
Feeling & healing
When we get tired of hoping that something will magically appear to make us feel less stressed and more at ease, we realize that something must be done differently. That we must be the one to become different in our approach to our life, and in the ways we see, view and perceive what is happening. We must investigate our thoughts, beliefs, meanings and definitions, and everything in between, in order to reorganize how we are orienting to life. In addition to this inner investigation and reorganization, we must also feel. Feel the thing(s) that we avoid, numb and move away from. The things that we guard, protect and create vigilance and hyper alertness about in the first place.
In a nutshell stress is simply avoidance of feeling what it is, that which is present in your life that you don’t want to feel. It could be things that happened to you in the past, such as traumas or other unpleasantries. It could be things that you are afraid might happen in the future, particularly if you do or don’t do this thing or that thing. What we don’t want to feel, we create protective mechanisms for, and then as a downstream effect our body takes the toll. Organizationally it’s this simple, and the expression of this can feel much more complex and intense. There are reasons why we don’t want to feel some things. In fact we may even block certain experiences from our conscious awareness as part of our protective strategy. This might be occuring when we feel vigilant, but we have no idea why we are so vigilant. It could also be when we felt a sudden shift in our state of being that seemed to happen overnight, has last for many years, and of which we can’t attribute to anything in particular.
Some things are really, really hard and we don’t always have the capacity to feel them. We may not be at a place where we can feel and integrate all the way through some experiences. So rather we fragment ourselves and this fragmentation, while not “ideal”, does allow us to function to some degree and survive. The thing is though that in order to release the tension, guard and vigilance we have to feel the thing. The tension we feel is because we aren’t feeling the thing we need to feel, but when we do feel the thing, we release the tension, along with the hyper-alertness.
There is a song by Trevor Hall whose lyrics say “you can’t rush your healing”. To feel is to heal and you also can’t rush your feeling either. As much as we often want to be on the other side of whatever it is that we are on, there is a timing to everything. There is a learning and an organization that is occurring, beyond what our minds know. You can however create the invitation, the space in your body and being, the clearing of your mind, and an outer environment and container that is conducive to feeling, but the arising of feeling is organic. Feeling occurs when you are ready in all of the ways. When you have the inner resources to work with, move through and let go. In letting go you feel free and safe to just be. You can trust your inner impulses, discernment and knowing. You can appropriately respond to your inner and outer worlds. You live innerly rested while being in outer action. You become the peace and ease you seek.
Dr. Amanda Love, Network Chiropractic, Boulder, Colorado
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