What pedal are we pushing, stress or recovery?

Choice is the driver, emotion is the steering wheel, stress is the accelerator pedal and recovery is the break.

What is driving our actions, is it sustained stress or reflective decisions from rest and recovery?

 In the west, we are currently moving towards uncontrollable increases in what’s called chronic non communicable diseases. This means disease that can not be passed from one person to another such as; cancer, heart attacks, obesity and diabetes, where diseases that are passed on from one person to another are called communicable diseases, such as bacterial or viral infection.  

 When looking at non communicable diseases, the underlying causes are; stress, genetics and lifestyle which includes nutrition, mindfulness and exercise. If we focus on stress then we need to understand that the brain responds to stimuli, either in the thoughts we think or the environment we are in. 

 Fear is one of the main drivers of human emotion which will result in a stress response from the brain, to deal with that stress. The two options we have when we are stressed is to either change our attitude to the stress or remove ourselves from the environment which created that stress.

 Fear of death and fear of public speaking are the two greatest causes of fear that we as humans try to avoid. Fear of death can be due to an few things: accidents, negligence/murder, disease or natural causes. Fear of public speaking is underpinned by the fear of public humiliation or failing in-front of our fellow human beings. 

 On one end of the spectrum is fear and the other is satisfaction or joy. Fear drives us away from something that could kill or harm us, whereas satisfaction or joy drives us towards recovery and healing. It is interesting that even the news channels and papers focus on the negative aspects of society or fear of what could go wrong because it sells headlines and grabs our attention. In effect, this focuses our attention on fear which will produce a stress response in the body.

 A simple question to ask ourselves is, are we helping ourselves with the choices we make day in and day out? These choices steer our emotions and depending on the choice, it will either push the break and move us towards recovery and rest, or steer us into stress and therefore a never ending accelerating that makes life feel out of control. To find out where you are currently, just check and see where you put your focus, is it fear based or recovery based? Where our focus goes our energy (attention) flows. When we adjust someone at Human Health it is with intent to shift their nervous systems focus from stress, to rest and recover. We adjust from this perspective because we know that if we help the brain calm down by changing the input to it, the brain will reduce the stress response in the body and in-turn help us make better decisions. This is one the ways Chiropractic is a sustainable and beneficial option for those dealing with highly stressful job or circumstances.