I Don't Do Stress Well…Yet

The last year has been one of the most trying of my life. I've given up some things that are very important to me in an effort to re-establish balance, but the challenges seem to keep coming and the pressure keeps building. My spiritual self has been asking: "What is the lesson in all of this for me?" "Where else and how else can I let go?" My mind on the other hand has been cursing like a sailor—raging and blaming, analyzing and bargaining. And my heart? It hurts like heck one moment and is numb the next. I seem to be endlessly cycling between several stages of grief, never able to reach the final stages of acceptance and meaning.

I've always known I don't handle stress well. It's in my biology, but I think it's also a result of my upbringing. I was raised on a farm in the rural South, where the pace of life was slower, and where what seemed like "enough" felt fairly achievable. Ever since becoming a tiny fish in a giant ocean after leaving the comforts of home for college, I've struggled with how to keep up. I don't mean keeping up appearances (and certainly not with the Joneses), but rather keeping up with my own ever-expanding expectations for myself as I continue to learn and grow. While there's a lot I deeply appreciate about being an urban dweller, especially the diversity of people/culture/ideas, I question whether my sensitive nature will ever jive well with the frenetic pace of this existence.

I often wonder if my anxiety is rooted in more than just my personal experience, though—whether life in general, be it urban or rural, is actually more stressful in the 21st century. While I think it's safe to say that for most of us life isn't as hard physically as it was for previous generations, I wonder if mentally it's exponentially harder. Maybe the latter is exacerbated by the former—too much mind work and not enough body work. Perhaps we're just completely out of balance.

Perhaps we know too much and not enough all at the same time. We're intimately aware of the vast risks we face in our brief lives, in addition to the enormity of problems facing our communities and our planet, but we question how we alone can make a difference. Is knowledge really power when power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few? It's tempting to give up and give in, and I've battled a lot this past year between my earnest desire to be the change and a longing to retreat and simply take care of myself and my family.

That said, if I gave in to this yearning entirely, I can't say I'd really know how to be, for this much I know: The stress of life never goes away entirely, no matter how hard you work to declutter and release the non-essential, to prepare for and meet every challenge head-on. I've come to understand SHIT WILL STILL HAPPEN, and some things aren't fixable. As a problem-solver at heart, this causes me immense stress, and when I'm stressed, the people I love the most are the ones who suffer the most. Instead of turning toward them, I turn away—instead of retreating into family, I retreat into my overworking brain, where I spin my wheels until necessity drives me out.

This doesn't sound like a yoga teacher, does it? As I shared in my first post on this blog, I found yoga through suffering, and continued suffering is what draws me back to the mat. My commitment to my students every week keeps me somewhat honest, that is, gets me on the mat more often than I'd get there otherwise. But preparing for and teaching my classes is not the same thing as taking care of myself. I need a lot of time to focus inward, to get quiet, to feel whole. A regular personal practice is essential for my wellbeing, both when life is good and when it's difficult. So if I know this, why am I not doing better?

Recently I learned about a neurological concept called Hebb's Law, which is part of the basis for our understanding of neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to create lasting change. Hebb's Law is summarized by the phrase,

"Neurons that fire together wire together."

This is for better (as reflected in something my mom's friend, Ada, used to say: "The 11th commandment is, 'Thou shall adapt.'")...

-or-

...for worse ("Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." ~Attributed to Albert Einstein and others)

So based on this principle, the more we think or do a thing, the more we'll think or do that thing.

Makes sense, right? Our early programming and habitual behaviors stick, unless we work to change them, and it's easy to slide back into old patterns during the difficult seasons of our lives. Thus, we may have to force ourselves into self-care—fake it until we make it--even when especially when we don't feel compelled to do so because the fight-flight-freeze response is working overtime.

What do the experts say we can do to calm our frazzled nervous systems? Grounding exercises, like we do in yoga, of course! And the more often we do them, the more often we'll be compelled to do them, and the more likely we'll be to change our brains for good.

There is hope for responding better to stress after all. Creating that change starts now as I feel this ground beneath me and this breath within me.