Chiva-Som (Prachuap Khirikhan, Thailand)
Without stress we all might still be scavenging the savannah for our next meal. Under those circumstances, stress is what prompted us to run a little faster, jump a little higher, and think a little more clearly. In other words, we avoided being a meal or someone's victim. In fact, it's accurate to say that without stress many of our ancestors would not have survived their first encounter with a wild animal or a marauding tribe. Stress, or more accurately our "stress response" has been a great advantage for our species through time and it is so strongly hardwired into our bodies that we cannot avoid it.

Simply put, stress can be defined as "the body's response to any perceived threat." But this is where our stress response becomes the proverbial double-edged sword. Today, the wild animals have been replaced by an overly demanding career and the marauding tribes are now encountered in a traffic jam on our daily commute.

The body has been programmed to react to anything we perceive as a potential threat and that reaction is characterised by the following in the short-term: increased muscular tension, increased blood pressure, increased anxiety and decreased digestion. In the long-term, chronic stress increases one's chances of developing hypertension, digestive complaints, a wide variety of pain syndromes, sleep disorders, heart disease and some experts believe even cancer and auto-immune diseases.

Regular exercise naturally burns calories and decreases the hormones related to stress, and relaxation therapy and transcendental meditation can lower stress hormones as well as blood pressure. Even small changes in lifestyles such as time away from work and maintaining regular eating and sleeping patterns can reduce accumulated stress.

In dealing with accumulated stress, try a variety of activities and holistic therapies that specifically fortifies your body's mechanisms to dissipate the effects of stress whilst giving you a break from the sources of stress. Meditation, yoga, massage, cranio-sacral therapy, lymphatic massage, flower remedies, exercise and relaxing music are just some of the methods of reducing stress in our lives.

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