The physical body and stress

The physical body and stress

Your health is your responsibility

While the fight or flight response is a rapid reaction to a danger, the changes in the physical body due to mental and or emotional stress, is a longer-term event.

Just as it can take weeks or months to improve your levels of physical fitness so it can take quite a time to remove the physical effects of stress from the body.

The physical changes, caused by stress, can take a relatively long time before they are noticeable, in certain cases the cause of the mental stress may have been removed before you notice the changes it has made to your body. It will take a relatively long time to remove such physical changes. Very long periods of mental and emotional stress will have long term effects on your physical wellbeing. Not just your strength and muscular development but also changes to the internal organs, heart, lungs, liver, kidney etc.

How to improve your wellbeing is a matter of following the usual path:- Recognition of the existence of a problem, coping, accepting need to make the effort to change, physical and mental exercise to bring about that change.

The recognition can be the most difficult part, many times the relationship between stress, previous or existing, and a physical “illness,” is not recognised. There is a reluctance to accept the completeness of the fusion between the emotional and the physical aspects of the human body. This fusion and connectivity can be observed in animals but is often ignored in humans. Pharmaceutical medicine is designed to treat and alleviate the symptoms of a perceived “illness,” but this is part of the coping phase of the recovery path. It can coexist with the first stage of recognition but far too often it replaces the first and most vital step on the recovery path. Once the recognition has been made and the coping strategy instigated then pharmaceutical chemical alleviation of symptoms

Can be useful. If the damage to the physical is severe then chemical and even surgical intervention may be necessary; this usually but not always, occurs when there have been relatively long periods without recognition or alleviation of any sort.

Recognition and acceptance that a physical malfunction in the body may have been due to existing or past emotional and or mental stress, leads naturally to a slightly different approach to resolution, or cure, of the physical problems. By all means use symptom relief as part of the coping phase, but coping is not the same as resolution.

Natural health care has many different names, from folk medicine to wholistic wellbeing. It has as many variations as there are therapists. All basically should be attempting to remove the cause of the il health as well as alleviating the symptoms and discomforts involved. The difference between good natural health care, and the normal level of chemical health care, is the acceptance of the close relationship between emotion, mind and body. There are no hard and fast boundaries here, some highly skilled surgeons and some pharmaceutical medical practitioners, recognise the wholistic approach has much to offer. There are also some “therapists” who are poorly trained and seem to ignore all the wholistic principles. In most ( but again not all) cases it needs both body and emotions/mind to be attended to.

Once coping has been achieved, that is a stabilisation where life goes on and the “illness” is not getting worse, attention turns to the next phase, accepting need to make the effort to change. This is not easy. It usually involves accepting that you are not perfect and that you and you alone have to make changes, you cannot rely on, or blame others. Your health is your responsibility. You will probably need others to help is some way with the coping strategy, but complete resolution will have to be your own. You must decide and you must act. Seek out all the possibilities always remembering we are individuals, each of us is unique. What is proclaimed (sold) as wonderful and will “cure” everyone is unlikely to be effective on everyone. It may be just what you need, but it may not. Lifestyle, diet, exercise regimes, physical therapy and mental “therapy” sessions can be used, what combination is suitable, is as variable as the number of patients. Death is about the only thing that “works” for all of us. Find what works for you, remember it is your health, your responsibility.

For many people the way that shiatsu and magnetic therapy combine to assist both physical and emotional stress, will be good choice

Shiatsu is about energy, it is about projection of energy, it is about being a conduit for universal energy, it is about re-aligning a recipient’s energy; but it is also about pressure, the physical stimulus of selected trigger points, about physical releasing of toxins that had become locked into tissue, about releasing spasms and about correcting posture; it is about working on pressure points and releasing physical blocks to energy pathways. It also involves releasing the body armour, the muscles tightness that indicates locked in emotional stress. There are many styles of Shiatsu some are predominantly about the physical work. In other styles the energy work predominates.

The relative importance of the ratio between physical and energy work will vary with each patient and the conditions presented at the time of the treatment. The therapist works on the pathways of energy that run around the body, gentle pressure is applied at points along these pathways, with the intention of ensuring a balance and easy flow of energy around the body. Some gentle stretching and easy manipulation may also be involved.

Shiatsu is used for: i.e. to treat. Stress, tension, specific pains and injuries, chronic conditions in general, nonspecific conditions where there is a reduction in wellbeing. Recovery from trauma and ill health. Back pain and injury. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, hormonal problems, headaches, migraine, and just about anything you need.

Magnetic Therapy is also about energy, and the use of magnets to free up and stimulate the flows of energy and of blood within the body. Shiatsu and Magnetic Therapy are complementary to each other, and good results can be achieved by the use of magnets and magnetically enhanced support wraps, between Shiatsu sessions. Both seek to improve the balance of internal forces within the holistic person. Both can use the ancient meridians and points of acupuncture, but without needles or any form of penetration of the skin. Both can be of great help with muscular problems and the combination of Shiatsu treatments with Magnetic therapy devices worn between Shiatsu sessions can speed up recovery. Magnets do not wear out; not with normal use and normal human time spans. The energy given out by a permanent magnet returns to it, the balancing and correcting being done as the forces pass through the body. To find a way of visualising this, consider a river with logs trying to flow downstream but the logs are all over the place muddled up some at right angles to the riverbank others at sixty degrees etc, a mess. Then consider what happens to the flow of logs, if they are all orientated in the same direction of parallel to the riverbanks. They flow effortlessly with the river water. This is what magnets can do to the flows of blood and fluids within the body. This is also what Shiatsu and Magnetic therapy can do to the flows of energy and life forces within the body.

In every aspect of our lives intuition is the principle guiding force and the intellect is the tool that enables us to go in the direction chosen by our intuition. Complete and eclectic (wide ranging, all embracing) training with really absorbed knowledge are vital for good treatment. Really absorbed knowledge is that knowledge which has become almost unconscious knowledge, that which is known without conscious logical reasoning. Only with these things can the practitioner allow their intuitive senses to guide them into which parts of their intellectual knowledge they use at any moment in time.