Stress meditation by The Silva Method

What’s Really Behind Stress
AND HOW TO BEAT IT

© 2009-2010 Silva International & MindValley LC. All Rights Reserved.

What Is Stress?

• Stress will always be a part of your life.

• There is the positive side of stress that can energize, motivate and
excite you known as eustress.

• There is the negative side of stress that can negatively effect every
area of your life called distress.


What Is Stress?

• The destructive effects of stress on an individual’s overall living
experience have been well documented for years.

• Stress can affect your physical and mental health and cause such
things as accidents, absenteeism and substance abuse. Many of the
health threatening conditions can be fatal.

• In general, ineffective stress management impacts your health,
career, job performance and relationships.


Types of Stress

• We all experience stress to some degree or
another. It is unavoidable.

• Some people have more stressful lives than
others, and some types of personalities
have learned to cope with, and respond to
stress more resourcefully than others.
What may be stressful to one person may
be exciting to another.


Types of Stress

• Studies show that a person with the stressful, “Type A”
personality is most prone to heart disease.

• “Type A” personalities have a tendency to always be in a hurry,
be very competitive, be sore losers, and get hostile when
things don’t go their way.

• Hostility is believed to be the most detrimental factor leading
to heart disease.


Types of Stress

• There are life events that seem to cause stress to all people across
the board. Death, illness, divorce, a big move, loss of a job, or some
kind of profound life change rate high on the list of stressful events.
How you react to stress is often more damaging than the stress
itself. Although you may not be able to control everything that
happens around you, you certainly can control how you respond to
it. Your willingness to change your response to stress is often your
biggest challenge in managing stress effectively.

• Your reaction to stress is a learned response that you can modify or
eliminate.

You must understand what stress is, and learn to manage it
effectively.


What Is Stress?

• Stress is a physical, chemical, or emotional factor that causes wear,
and tear on the body, mind, spirit and emotions.

• It creates imbalance in every bodily system.

• Most people think of stress as only a mental or emotional change, but
research has shown time and time again that bodily damage results
from stress.


Short-term stress

• Short-term stress is referred to as acute.

• Acute stress occurs when your life is being threatened, or you
perceive danger.

• It is the kind of stress you experience when you are being chased by a
dog while jogging.

• It immediately triggers the Fight or Flight Response and it is not
likely to be life-threatening.


Long-term stress

Long-term stress is referred to as chronic, and often leads to serious
health challenges. Some of the ﬁrst symptoms of chronic stress are

• Headaches

• Insomnia

• Digestive problems

It is as if your body is telling you that you need to slow down and
make some changes.


Side Effects of Long-term Stress

• If constant stress continues, or gets worse, the symptoms follow suit.
The following conditions may result:

• High blood pressure

• Arthritis

• Glaucoma

• Hypoglycemia


Chronic Stress

• Chronic stress causes an increase of the stress hormone called
cortisol.

• Cortisol leads to many symptoms:

• Increased insulin and body fat

• Increased bone loss

• Decreased levels of sex steroid and thyroid hormones


Understanding Stress

Every time you experience stress, you have some kind of reaction. Your
reaction to stress largely depends on how you think, believe, and/or
behave. The reaction is fully under your control. Whereas you tend to
react with excitement and joy to eustress, the opposite is true when it
comes to distress.

Reactions to distress include such things as losing personal control,
erratic behavior, inability to handle every day situations, and a difﬁcult
personality.

Discovering how you react to stress must be the focus of your
attention. Otherwise, you continue to react unconsciously. Making it
difﬁcult to control or manage through time.


Stress
Positive Stress Negative Stress
Eustress Distress
Reaction
Under Your Control
Thoughts / Beliefs / Behaviors

Negative Stress Triggers the Fight or Flight Response

Affects Body
Heart / Breathing / Muscles / Stomach / Kidneys


Fight or Flight Response

• The changes your body goes through when experiencing stress is a
sign that the Stress Response, also known as the Fight or Flight
Response, has been triggered.

• The Fight or Flight Response is a built-in survival mechanism. It is a
response to perceived danger.

• Anytime you sense your life is in danger, the Fight or Flight Response
is triggered so that you can run away from the danger, or ﬁght it, in
order to survive.


Anger and Fear

• The Fight or Flight Response was beneficial, even vital for our
ancestors’ survival. Today, you rarely have a need to either fight, or run
away in order to survive and so, the response does not serve the
same purpose today as it did in the long ago past.

• The Fight or Flight Response has evolved into anger and/or fear.
Instead of fighting, you now get angry. Instead of fleeing, you now
become afraid.

• Become aware of what makes you angry and/or afraid in your daily
living experience, and how many times that happens in one day


How Many Times Are You Going To....

• Cause your heart to beat faster

• Your breathing to change

• Your digestion to stop

• Your inner processes to be put on hold

• Your muscles to tense

• Hormones to be released into your system


Which leads to......

This ongoing triggering of the Fight or Flight Responses is
what leads to chronic tension problems like high blood
pressure, insomnia, arthritis, headaches, migraines, and
digestive problems.


Unlike Fighting And Fleeing, Being Angry And/Or
Afraid Are Not Physical Behaviors. They Are Emotions.

• At the root of the Fight or Flight Response is a need to protect the
emotions.

• Stress triggers an emotional reaction, and it is worsen by what
automatically goes on in the body when the Fight or Flight
Response is triggered.

• When you feel stress, it is no longer so that you can survive
physically. It is so that you may survive emotionally, and if you
can’t survive emotionally, or cope with life and living, you might get
very ill and some people even die.


Root Issues

• Abandonment – To be left alone, deserted

• Rejection –To be denied acceptance, care, and love

• Hopelessness – To cause despair, impossible to solve, or cure

• Helplessness – To be/feel weak, incompetent, powerless

• Control - Needing to have control over everything


Root Issues

• When a core issue is being triggered, the mere fact that it is being
triggered means that it is something that is related to some aspect
of your past.

• Today you may feel that you are all grown up physically,
intellectually, spiritually and emotionally, but the moment you are
face to face with a trigger, the snowball effect begins and a you
without the necessary resources shows up.


The Snowball Effect

1. First, you experience the shift from comfort to stress with a
knotted feeling in the pit of your stomach…

2. Then your mind begins to ﬁll with sabotaging thoughts and
negative feelings linked to issues of your past…

3. Followed by the cluster of physical changes due to the triggering
of the Fight or Flight Response…

4. And then the expression of the stress itself in the form of a reaction
that resembles a child who is angry, afraid or hurt.


Who Is In Control?

• When past issues get triggered, it is as if the “child” you is forced to
surface. In a ﬂash, you are transported to the past and become the
child once again, and as a child, made to handle the adult situation.

• The “adult” you is nowhere to be found. Too often, serious situations
are handled by the “child” you, when they really need to be handled
by the “adult” you instead. The “adult” you has many more resources
than the “child” you and can handle situations more effectively.


Stress Management Strategy

1. Notice when you shift from comfort to stress.

2. Close your eyes to eliminate outside stimulus.

3. Take a deep breath and pace your breathing and calm yourself.
Say to yourself mentally “Relax and get in control.” Do this two or
three times if necessary.

4. Identify what core emotion is being triggered.

5. Separate yourself from the past or “child you.”

6. Create an ideal mental picture of the desired outcome.

7. Step into it fully associated and allow your body, brain and mind
to memorize the experience of being calm.


Managing your stress effectively will be one of
the greatest accomplishments of your life!


Stress meditation by The Silva Method

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