How stress affects the body

Stress is mental and physical. They are also not two separate things. Our mind is physical. Our awareness exists because of our physical body. Our awareness is the noticing of our physical body, whether it registers on our conscious mind or not.

Read that again.

Now, the body being our physical expression of our world, it is shaped every single day by every single stress we experience. The stress of growing from infant to adult, gives us the ability to walk, and talk. Those were stressors. Not necessarily bad, but life and body changing. The way we talk impacts the shape of our mouth and the strength of our tongue and lips and cheeks. This is how people have accents even within a second language they have learned. This is how making sounds of a foreign language can be so hard. Our throat and mouth have not gone through those stresses, and it cannot yet fulfill the demands of them.

That analogy now applied to our everyday. The stress of sitting at a computer for hours on end, staring at a phone, etc. make it difficult for us to stand upright. The stress of working too many hours, not sleeping well, not having community support all form our body and mind a certain way. Then we need and want community and time off and rest and we are not very good at it. We may be afraid to interact with others. We may lack communication skill. We may be completely antsy when we try to sit still. Have you ever said, I can’t meditate, my mind is just too busy, it cannot be still. That may be true but it also isn’t the only possible truth. It is that way because of its pattern. The stress that has formed it.

Another analogy. Look at the earth. The shape of its rocks and oceans, its landmasses. These exist because of stress. Look at the stress caused on the earth by human consumption. Stress is essential to understand if you want to create positive change or to mitigate negative change or stop negative patterns from worsening. To be able to do this in your body, you need to be able to FEEL Stress. You must not IGNORE stress. Reading this hopefully will help, but a scientific understanding, an academic paper will not do a damn thing for your stress if you don’t start feeling what it is and where it is and start taking action to change it.

So in answering the question, what stress does to the body, the list is endless. What is important is to find what it is doing to your body.
My foundational movement and meditation practice is step one of this process. We will replace harmful stress with healthy stress and change your body and mind for the better. Join my next online cohort.