Are We Training Our Body To Memorize Stress?

Over hundreds of yoga classes, I observed many fellow yogis arrive at the studio feeling stressed - and they achieve relaxation from the practice, but they leave the class with the same scowl on their face they had when they walked in.

They were thinking about the same old problems and worries.

They really hadn't changed anything but their fitness through their attendance of the yoga class. In fact, they had returned to the habit of training their body to maintain the stressful state that they came to yoga to overcome.

Indeed, I’ve been athletic all my life as my primary source of dealing with unresolved anxiety, and I also returned directly into my stress without realizing.

Mindfulness Is A First Step

I have the habit of being stressed all the time and I didn’t recognize it until after Dr. Joe Dispenza explained how the body becomes addicted to the chemicals of our emotions.

Then I began to realize that, from the first moment that I wake up, my mind is wanting to repeat the frustration narratives I’ve carried all my life. They seem real, they seem like ‘me’.

Yet I also know that my world view changes after a yoga class, which means that Dr. Joe taught me to recognize when my brainwaves are stuck in the ‘fight-flight-or-freeze’ state of high beta.

Morning Meditation (With Coffee)

Starting my day with a morning meditation helps to overcome those old habitual patterns right at the start of the day. This has a significant impact on the quality, the ease and the satisfaction of everything I do throughout the rest of that day.

How Our Body Becomes Conditioned

If you have endured some serious but temporary life stress, if you have been abused, or encountered a close relationship with a narcissistic personality - your brain, nervous plexus and organs will have build the HABIT of putting out stress chemicals.

Over time, the body’s plexus, the energy centers of the body - the nervous centers that are important in regulating our organs and glands - become ‘conditioned’ to produce the fight or flight chemicals and hormones.

My body has the habit of producing stress chemicals.

This is why I wake up with unresolved anger, muscle tension and anxiety… my body is still in re-training.

If I wake up with the same thoughts of guilt, fear, worry and so on, the chemicals of stress will guiding my actions for the day. If I trigger these memories again after yoga class is finished, the stress will return as well.

In addition to detoxifying my body of the stress hormones with a yoga class, I need to intentionally begin reconditioning the plexus’ away from producing the survival emotion chemicals through emotional rehearsals while in meditation.

As my mindfulness becomes clearer, I’m less accepting of the subtle signs of stress feelings and I stop and do the work of a yoga class, guided meditation or journaling.

Be Mindful Of Your Emotions

With the habit of yoga practice I have started to retrain my body energy centers to lower the levels of stress chemicals that they produce, and eventually I will retrain them to habitually produce the happy chemical set instead!

As a result - I am truly beginning to habitually experience appreciation, love, empathy, compassion in the micro-moments of my life and in the relationships around me.