How stressed are you? What is it that tells you that you are stressed? Are you destined for a health breakdown?
Do you recognize your stress in your impatience and irritability, in the sinking feeling or the emotional numbness that comes on or in the explosion of anger, in the headache that gets worse as the deadline gets closer, by the tension in your muscles, the shoulder pain when you feel you can’t carry any more load, the back ache when you feel unsupported so feel the strain of having to do everything yourself?
It seems that many of us are so used to being in some degree of stress that we don’t even recognize it any more. It has become our norm, and we only register when the stress increases above our usual level.
Alexander Loyd, PhD, ND, and Ben Johnson MD, DO, NMD tested hundreds of people in various parts of the world using the Heart Rate Variability (HRV) test, the ‘gold standard’ medical test for measuring stress in the autonomic nervous system.
Heart Rate Variability test has been used for over 30 years in mainstream medicine and is in the same category as CT scans and MRIs that create images of internal structures.
You cannot have good heart function and poor nerve system function. So monitoring the heart rate variability (the more varied the better) gives immediate feedback on the state of your Autonomic Nervous System too. And your ANS controls and co-ordinates all organs and cells in your body. So this is a reliable way of measuring stress in the body.
As Loyd and Johnson were doing the Heart Rate Variability testing a fascinating and relevant phenomenon emerged. Before testing they would ask people “Are you stressed?” About 50 percent of people replied “yes” and 50 percent replied “no”.
But, of the 50 percent who replied “no”, their Heart Rate Variability test showed that 90 percent of them registered as stressed!!! They didn’t realize their nervous system was working in stress mode!
Over all, that means 95 percent of people they tested were stressed! But only just over half knew it. The others were totally unaware of their state.
That’s scary. Prolonged stress plays havoc with energy and health. As time goes along 95 percent of us could be destined for a health breakdown. The weakest health link can break and become a health issue. This is a possible future for 95 percent of people right now. Are you one of them?
It really pays to know your stress level consciously, as then you can take steps to reduce stress, influence your destiny and stay on the track for wellness. Is there a way to ensure you are not destined for a health breakdown? If there is, what is it?
“Stress is at the root of every problem, emotional and physical,” according to Alexander Loyd, PhD, ND, and Ben Johnson MD, DO, NMD. They co-authored The Healing Code and provide their evidence to support this bold statement. To natural therapists the world over, this is the underlying belief that guides their approach to supporting clients to get better.
Kinesiology health care practitioners focus is on reducing stress and activating the energy production that improves the body’s functioning. Loyd and Johnson articulated that when stressed the nervous system is in defence mode, directing its resources to defending against an enemy or escaping a life threatening circumstance.
This means the body’s everyday functioning is on emergency energy rations, minimal, just ticking over. Your digestion and elimination is shut down, your reproductive system is shut down, your immune system is shut down. There is no point in defending internal cells if the outer world threat could kill you in an instant. We are set up to “fight the tiger or run from it.” When the stress has passed, then body functions can return to normal.
Prolonged stress is prolonged shut down of digestion and elimination. That means ability to extract nutrition from food is very limited. Elimination becomes sluggish and pollution builds up inside cells and around cells. Your cells are suffocating in toxic waste with too little oxygen or nutrition for efficient performance. Cells get more and more sluggish and eventually become sick. You become sick.
Prolonged stress is prolonged shut down of immune response. Energy is funneled to protecting from a real or perceived enemy when under stress and little is allocated to inside invaders like bacteria or virus. You become run down and susceptible to colds and flu and tummy bugs and everything going round.
Prolonged stress is prolonged energy focus on “the enemy” be that deadlines, peoples opinions or expectations, day to day demands, too little time and too much to do.
If you live every day stressed to your eyeballs, or even mildly stressed all day, you will not fully digest your breakfast or lunch, you will not extract necessary nutrients out of your food, you will be drawing on emergency rations without realizing the cumulative impact on your wellness.
So stress is an energy problem. Under stress your energy is withdrawn from running your body efficiently, from repairing and replacing worn out cells, from destroying unfriendly bacteria and other cellular invaders, from optimum energy use in cells for fueling and maintaining your “vehicle” in a state of wellness.
Only when stress has passed can your body return to catch up on internal housekeeping tasks. If stress is continuous and there is no respite there will be breakdown in the most vulnerable system and now the body and you are in trouble.
So if scientists are right and at least half of us, or maybe all of us at different times, are unaware of how much stress our body and nervous system is registering, how can you check your stress level? How can you discover from the body, and not just the conscious mind, what level of stress you are carrying on any issue or situation or experience in your life at any given time?
Well, thank goodness, you don’t need to invest in a Heart Rate Variable test machine. There is another way that is safe, easy and effective.
Kinesiology Muscle response testing for stress
A readily available alternative to Heart Rate Variability testing for stress level is to use Kinesiology muscle response testing.
Often when gathering information from a client in a clinic session, some event may be mentioned in passing as having been dealt with already and no longer a problem. I often suggest we muscle test to ensure the body memory has been cleared of the stress. All too often muscle testing shows a high percentage of stress still exists in the body, remaining in the subconscious, waiting to be triggered by a sound, a voice, a word, a song, a comment, a look, a smell, a body position, an environment – and the old stress or wound opens again.
It takes energy to keep a lid on those memories. As the years go by more and more of our energy is locked up in the job of keeping certain memories of pain and hurt and helplessness and fears below awareness level so that we can get on with every day life. But there is a cost for this protection from old pain. We have less energy for present day living. Stress is an energy drain, even when it is out of our awareness.
Take the steps to develop your awareness, to recognize how the body “tells” you of stress building up, and learn which stress reduction strategies work for you. Then develop the habit of regularly taking time out for your self to consciously de-stress.
Meditation, yoga, martial arts, singing, dancing, toning, music, painting – there are many ways to move your energy and find an expression for the subconscious aspects of your life experiences.
Touch For Health Kinesiology provides specific energy balancing strategies and emotional stress release techniques and you can muscle test to ensure your body and nervous system are actually able to respond to the strategies being applied. You can easily and readily reduce stress with TFH and align your energy with your goals and dreams.
Protect your health and ensure you are not destined for a health breakdown.
Register now to learn Touch For Health or make an appointment for a Kinesiology balance.