What are the 4 mental responses to stress?

1) Restlessness (nervousness)

2) Sadness

3) Moodiness

4) Grief or Depression

How does your body deal with these emotions?

It speeds up your heart rate, creates physical tension and creates high states of arousal.

Your gut, brain, heart and other other organs will be affected by these physical responses.

You may interpret these responses as negative physical and IBS flareup symptoms, if the physical tension is not reduced.

WHAT to do?

Create a relaxation response ON PURPOSE.

HOW do you create a relaxation response?

BREATHE in slowly in through the nose, hold it for just a few moments, and then release more air out that you took in. REPEAT.

Allow your focus of your eyes to soften, expand your peripheral vision.

(Anxious people tend to have a narrow focus, fixating their eyes on something really small and right in front of them).

Now close your eyes and bring your thoughts to your feet.

Allow your toes, soles and tops of your feet to relax.

Allow that relaxation in the feet to float all the way up through all the muscles of your body, even allowing your jaw to relax and rest your tongue on the roof of your mouth, just behind your teeth.

Notice how relaxed your eye muscles have become.

Continue to breath slowing in, holding your breath for a few moments and then very slowly, releasing your breath all the way out.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

You have just successfully reset your parasympathetic nervous system which is part of the body's autonomic nervous system.

Its partner is the sympathetic nervous system, control's the body's fight or flight response.

The parasympathetic nervous system controls the body's ability to relax.

Also know as the "rest and digest" state.

In this state your digestive system can function normally.

Relaxation therapy reduces psychological distress, physical tension and high states of arousal.

It elicits the relaxation response where blood pressure, heart rate and physiological processes return to a more homeostatic level.

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