Absolutely everything is energy, and your feelings of stress are no exception. When thoughts or external events trigger stress, a resulting surge of energy prepares your body to react to a perceived threat. This fight-or-flight response, triggered by the sympathetic nervous system to increase the chances of surviving emergencies, manifests as increased heart rate, muscle tension, shallow breathing, and elevated stress hormones. Energetically, it can be seen as an overload or imbalance, where energy is not flowing naturally but rather is hyper-stimulated or stuck. Fortunately, several self-help energy medicine techniques can provide restorative serenity to empower you to live more vibrantly and effectively.
Practical and Spiritual Drawbacks to Stress
If your fight-or-flight response becomes overactive or chronic, you could experience physical and mental health problems (severe muscle tension, back, neck, and joint pain, cardiovascular, digestive, memory, and cognitive issues, anxiety, or depression), behavioral changes (sleep or eating disorders, substance abuse), relationship difficulties, and reduced quality of life (clouded judgment and impaired decision making).
An unbridled stress response can also lower your vibration (the energy frequency you emit) and negatively impact your spiritual connection and growth. It can block:
- your intuition and receptiveness to transcendental guidance.
- your ability to be physically and energetically stable and balanced (grounded) so you remain connected to Earth’s life-sustaining energies.
- your mental clarity and ability to reflect deeply or maintain a meditative or mindful state, and your body’s energy centers (chakras), resulting in various physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges, including a reduced capacity for compassion and empathy.
The Traditional Medical Approach
Though necessary and supportive in certain circumstances, the prescription medications that conventional practitioners commonly prescribe for stress and resulting anxiety and depression all have potential side effects and risks. These include memory impairment, fatigue, addiction, increased anxiety, decreased libido, and insomnia.
Since medications force your cells, tissues, and organs to behave in ways they would not otherwise, they also interfere with the natural flow of your body’s energy. For example, chemical alteration of your organs’ functions can imbalance your chakras associated with those organs. Second, medications can leave an energetic residue that introduces dissonance into your energetic field (aura), negatively affecting your mood, energy levels, and other aspects of your health and well-being. A critical third reason drugs can be viewed as energetically toxic is that they often address disease symptoms and not root causes. This generally leaves the underlying energetic imbalance unaddressed and can cause chronic and degenerative diseases due to long-term disruptions in energy flow.
Some DIY Energy Medicine Stress Solutions
Since your stress can be viewed as a disruption in your body’s energy systems, energy medicine techniques that you can practice on your own can restore your balance, foster relaxation, and enhance your overall well-being. Some of these are provided below.
Diet Modification and Dietary Supplements
Given that everything is interconnected, high-vibration foods and supplements can support the body’s energy systems and, in turn, its physical function. Foods with the highest energy vibration that support stress management include those that reduce inflammation, stabilize blood sugar, and enhance brain health and mood.
For optimal mental health, focus on eating dark green and cruciferous vegetables, wild-caught fatty fish, fermented foods, nuts and seeds, pure filtered water, calming herbal teas, whole grains in moderation, anti-inflammatory spices (turmeric, ginger), various superfoods, and organic chicken, turkey, and eggs (note, however, that some holistic experts view all animal-sourced foods as low vibration).
Natural remedies that can help manage moderate levels of stress and anxiety safely and without side effects (when taken in proper therapeutic doses and not in conflict with prescription medications) include:
- the amino acids L-theanine, L-tyrosine, and 5HTP
- activated B complex, especially in a powdered isotonic delivery system
- herbs such as ashwagandha, Echinacea angustifolia (as Anxiocalm), and lavender (as an ingestible essential oil)
- wild yam progesterone cream (especially for menopausal women)
Consciousness Management
Consciousness management, which encompasses cognitive awareness and mindfulness, is particularly critical for stress management. By developing a keen awareness, without judgment, of your beliefs, emotions, and bodily sensations in response to stressors, you can gain critical insights into how you perceive and react to stress. Your increased awareness, in turn, can enable you to identify stress triggers and your habitual reactions to them and thus empower you to interrupt those cycles and choose more deliberate responses. Managing your consciousness and beliefs can ultimately transform your relationship with stress so that you will see it as an opportunity for growth and learning rather than an insurmountable obstacle. This approach can be particularly empowering and life-changing if you are in menopause or andropause (male menopause).
You can begin to control your mind and its perception of stress by asking yourself, “What people, events, and situations am I afraid of?” Create a list of all your negative beliefs about those stressors and then consider how they might be viewed differently. How, for example, might they present valuable opportunities, lessons, or awakenings or be seen as less important? Write down the possible positive beliefs for each stressor that you can then work to adopt over time. “Ten Actions You Can Do Today to Start Taking Back Your Life,” from The Avatar Course, is another valuable starting place.
Deep Belly Breathing
Basic deep belly (diaphragmatic) breathing involves inhaling deeply through the nose, allowing the abdomen to expand fully, and then exhaling slowly through the mouth. By shifting you from fight-or-flight to rest-and-digest, you can rebalance your energy and gain control of your reactions to stress.
This type of slow, mindful breathing lowers your heart rate and blood pressure, maximizes the energizing, nourishing oxygen you take into your bloodstream and the toxic carbon dioxide you expel, enhances digestion, improves concentration, and increases mood-elevating chemicals in the brain.
Humming Bee Meditation (Bhramari Pranayama)
Yogic humming bee breath, known in Sanskrit as bhramari pranayama, is a powerful stress-relieving meditative practice that can positively impact your body’s energy fields and overall wellness through sound vibration. It is an especially ideal sound healing alternative for those who find traditional meditation difficult. It can also be performed directly before silent meditation.
Pranayama translates to an act that controls the flow of vital energy that governs all physiological processes. Bhramari is one form of pranayama, ideally performed for five minutes in the morning and night. It involves a deep belly breath (see above), blocking the ears, and exhaling with a high nasal humming pitch like a bee. You should feel this tone across your face and skull. Different tones can be used with various intentions to produce other physiological changes.
Among other benefits, self-created vibrational humming can calm your mind and support your stress management by:
- diverting attention from your stressful thoughts.
- soothing the parts of your brain involved in emotional regulation.
- improving your sleep patterns by increasing melatonin.
- lowering your blood pressure and heart rate by increasing nitric oxide and vascular dilation and stimulating the vagus nerve, a critical part of the parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) nervous system.
- increasing the levels of beneficial hormones (endorphins/pain, stress, sense of well-being, and oxytocin/trust or love).
- increasing lymphatic circulation.
- reducing cortisol, your primary stress hormone, to relieve anxiety, depression, and irritability.
By working these or other self-help practices (visualization, sleep regulation, yoga, sound bowl, and crystal healing, or Chinese tai chi) into your daily regimen, you will leverage the widely accepted principle that managing your body’s energy can control your emotional and physical health. These practical, accessible techniques will provide you with immediate ways to mitigate stress and contribute to your long-term spiritual and energetic well-being.
If you’d like personalized guidance in managing your stress and the many health conditions it causes, please reach out to me for guidance through www.vitathenawellness.com or text STRESSFREEME to 202.270.5612.
Learn how you can harness the magic of energy healing at the upcoming Second Annual Energy Medicine Retreat, October 3–6, 2024, at Crystal Dragon Retreats in Arlington, VT.
Visit bit.ly/EnergyRetreat2024 to learn more.
Submitted by Erika Dworkin, BCHN, Board Certified in Holistic Nutritionist, Dietary Supplements Specialist, Intuitive Wellness Guide, and former owner of the Manchester Parkade Health Shoppe in Manchester, CT, which operated for 65 years..
All statements in this article are practice- or scientific evidence-based, and references are available upon request. The statements in this article have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, are solely for educational purposes, and are not intended to take the place of a physician’s advice.
Erika is available for nutrition consultations and to speak to groups, in person or via Telehealth or Zoom. She can be contacted by phone at 860.646.8178. Office hours by request at 449 Silas Deane Highway, Suite 302C, Wethersfield, CT. Visit: www.vitathenawellness.com to request a Connect-With-Me Call.