Do you have stress stored in your body

Hello, Dr. Nicole LaPera, the Holistic Psychologist here. For all of you who have already subscribed to my YouTube channel, big, big thank you. If you haven't and you like this video today, please hit subscribe at the end. So what are we going to talk about? How to heal stress in the body. Such an important video because I know a lot of you out there are probably like myself, stress might as well have been my resting state. I'm actually going to talk a bit more about that concept, what I call emotional addiction in a video next week. So definitely want to hit subscribe if you're interested in hearing that. But today, stress. So how do we begin to heal stress in the body? I'm outlining six areas that we need to be aware of and possibly tweak some of the daily choices that we're making. First area is sleep. Sleep is so important, especially when we're under stress, whether it's acute, because there's just a stressful event happening in our lives, or if you're someone like myself who is under chronic stress daily, why? Stress takes a physiological toll on the body. There are stress hormones, two in particular, cortisol and adrenaline that are released in our bodies when we're under stress that we need evolutionarily because it helps our body deal with essentially the stressor, the stressful event in our environment, but that really does take a toll. So sleep is integral, not only when we're stressed, but all of the time. So what are your sleep habits? Take a look at what time you're going to bed, how you're sleeping, how long you're sleeping. And if these are areas that you could improve, really making a commitment through those small daily promises to make sure that we are prioritizing sleep. It's when our body heals, and in particular, it's when the organ, that is our brain, heals. It repairs itself. So the toll that those hormones might have been taking on ourselves or our bodies physiologically during the day can really return to a balanced state. So again, ask yourself, how is your sleep? And if there's anything that you can do, whether it's going to bed 15 minutes earlier and then another 15 minutes earlier, making sure that sleep is a number one priority will go a long way. Grounding. What does grounding mean? Grounding means using our senses to be physically present to the moment. So what does that mean? Asking yourself in each moment, what do I feel? What can I touch? What can I smell? Doing that does what we call, it grounds the body. It brings us into the present moment. And more importantly for stress, it sends a signal of safety. When we are perceiving real or imagined stress in our environment, we're actually sending the quite opposite signal to our body. We're sending a signal to our body that we are under stress or attack. Again, this is very evolutionarily based. And that's why those hormones of cortisol and adrenaline are being released because our brain thinks we have to run from a predator or from something that could cause us physical harm. When we ground, when we come out of possibly those imagined stories or those imagined scenarios that are contributing to our stress response and come really present in our bodies using our senses to ground ourself in the present moment, that sends the opposite signal, a signal of safety, allowing our body to go back into that relaxed state it prefers to be in. Breath work. I could not emphasize a more impactful tool for when our bodies are under stress. Why? Our evolutionarily system, when we are stressed, we are in what we call a fight or flight response, which is actually a nervous system response. We have what we call alternating nervous system. So like the brake and the gas in a car, when we're stressed, we're in what we call sympathetic. And when we're not stressed, we're in what we call parasympathetic. Breath work is really our manual overdrive, I call it, or override, I should say, shifting our body back into that parasympathetic straight state. So when we're stressed, naturally our body is going to shift over into that sympathetic fight or flight response with those hormones. It's going to get us ready for action. Using some easiest one, deep belly breaths, brings us back into that parasympathetic state, helping our body to rebalance. I will link a video I did a bit ago on breath work in particular so that you can check it out. A quick and easy how-to to get started using this incredibly impactful and nervous system rebalancing tool. Meditation. Those of you who follow my work know I go on and on about a meditation practice. Why? Meditation teaches us to become more and more separate from our thoughts because the reality of it is, those of us who are like myself, chronically stressed, a lot of it is coming from these imagined worst case scenario stories that we're living under that because our brain and our body is connected, are triggering that stress response in our body. So if we begin to practice through meditation, that separation where I am here and my thoughts which are not me are out there, that will go a long way in calming that stress response and allowing the body to heal. Again, I also did a video on a quick and easy meditation how-to that I will link below that you can check out to get started. Nutrition. Nutrition fuels the food we eat, fuels our body. And again, because of the toll that stress takes on our body, we want to make sure that our body is optimally fueled. So what that means is being mindful first and foremost of the nutritional choices that we're making each and every day. Not going into autopilot and tuning back in when the chips bag is empty. Really making a conscious choice to fill our bodies with whole, nutrient-dense foods. Again, that will help our body to heal from the wear and tear that stress causes. Sunlight. Vitamin D, the hormone that we get from the sun, is so important in all of our body's processes, really. In our brain health in particular, and in, you guessed it, sleep. So I know, depending on where you live, sometimes, sometimes of the year, I'm getting ready to enter winter myself here in the Northeast, sunlight is limited and vitamin D is limited. But when you do have access to the sun, definitely get out in it. Pull your sleeves up, really make sure you're making a conscious effort to increase that vitamin D. It will, again, help not only regulate our sleep system, but our body overall. All of these steps are going to help us to undo the effects on our body that stress causes. So I hope you found this helpful. If you did and you're not yet subscribed, hit subscribe and tune in to next week because I'm going to talk about what I call emotional addiction.