After my talk with Sean Croxton which you can listen to here in it’s entirety, I’ve been thinking about stress in a new way. Click here to listen to that particular part of the interview where we’re talking about stress.

Stress can cause cancer and stress can cause heart attacks. According to Joel Wallach who is the author of Dead Doctors Don’t Lie more heart attacks occur at 9am on Monday morning than at any other time. Stress can cause our hair to fall out, it can cause our libido to crash and it can cause hair to turn gray. Anxiety, panic attacks, nervous twitches, worry, fear, the inability to sleep, are all ways of saying the same thing, you’re stressed out!

Imagine what stress is doing in all other areas of your life outside of the things that we CAN see? Think about your life and really think about all the areas where you have stress? Maybe it’s your job, your toxic relationships or just your financial situation. In a book called Earthing, by author and researcher Clint Ober, he suggests that not being grounded to the earth is stressing the body. And maybe it’s the health of a family member, what ever it is, it’s important to know where your leaking your energy.

It’s also important to know that stress isn’t just worrying about something, it’s MUCH more than that. Sean was saying that stress or anxiety can be simply over-exercising or poor eating habits. If we expand our thinking about stress we can identify it as anything that causes the body to work harder than it should. So now you can see just how many things can actually be stressful in your life.

As you can hear in the interview I posed the question to Sean that hey, it might not even matter what the heck we eat if we didn’t have stress in our lives. You can hear me say that right here. I’m starting to think that lowering or limiting your stress levels is THE MOST important health related thing you can do. I have a feeling it’s more important than quitting smoking, stopping your poor eating habits or even exercising.

As Sean was saying Cortisol and DHEA come from a precursor hormone called pregnenolone. He explains that at the top of the triangle, you have pregnenolone and on the bottom right of the triangle you have your libido and on the bottom left you have stress. Both the hormones coming down the top of the triangle, cortisol and DHEA both come from pregnenolone. It’s just a fancy analogy for showing how your libido is directly tied to stress.

I now you know how stress kills your body. But really ponder it and start thinking about your energy (your Chi as the Chinese call it, your one time battery pack of essential life force energy) as something that needs to be conserved and not leaked out like water flowing out of a plastic bag with holes in it.

Don’t just give your energy and stress away to everybody that asks for it. Think about it, that’s what a teenager does. A classmate comes up with the latest gossip and drama and the teenager immediately reacts emotionally thereby leaking their energy and causing stress in the body. As adults it’s up to us to manage how we react to things and what we allow in. This is precisely why I do not watch TV or watch the news by the way.

So your goal is to figure out where you’re leaking your energy each day. Is it with the drama that people want you to get involved in? Is it with family members, relationships, health or wealth? Find out where you’re leaking your energy. Then try to reduce it somehow. Figure out creative ways to avoid those people or situations. It might not be easy and you might not be able to avoid stress 100% of the time. But if you reduce your daily stress load from 100% to 80% you’re on the right track.

Next you might want to start thinking about ways to add energy TO the body. There are lots of creative ways to do this. I like to meditate and pray as well as do yoga. Soon I’m going to start incorporating some qigong (chi gong) and the 5 Rites exercises into my daily practice. Rebounding has been something that energizes my body also. I’ve never done Tai Chi but that is also something to consider. Maybe just have some alone time before bed where you play some soft soothing music and do some stretching and deep breathing. Heck go get a massage or go to a day spa and sit in a mud bath! Do whatever you have to do, to lower your stress loads.

The point is to figure out where you’re leaking your energy and where you’re are stressing out. Identify them and work on limiting them. Then work on adding energy back into your body through these daily practices.

After a few weeks of this, I have a feeling you’re going to thank me. 😉