Stress Management - Listen To Your Body For Stress Relief

Can You Listen to Your Body for Stress Relief?
Do you know how to listen to your body (to its tensions, aches, pains, and common illnesses) and respond with wisdom and self-compassion for stress relief?
No Special Skills Needed
You need no special skills, just a willingness to pay attention to your experience of your own physiology. With a little practice, you can easily learn to use the state of your body and physical functioning as a measure of your stress levels.
Responding with Self-Compassion
Once you tune into your physical functioning, you can explore connections and respond with self-compassion to reduce your stress.
Habitual Shoulder Tension
For instance, are your shoulders tight and sore? This is one of the most common and habitual areas for holding tension and stress.
Pay attention to your shoulders. Without trying to change anything, be aware of the discomfort you feel there. If your shoulders could speak, what would they be saying to you about your stress? Imagine a conversation between you and your shoulders. Or imagine your shoulders showing you the stress, or just get a sense of what your shoulders are holding as stress.
As you pay attention, you still need not try to change anything in your shoulders. Just observe. Maybe you become aware that you are striving for perfection at work, or carrying a heavy financial burden. Maybe your shoulders feel "up-tight" because you see your in-laws as interfering with your marriage.
Aha
When you get a useful awareness about the cause of your tension, you may find an "Aha" moment, or you may notice that your breathing changes and your body naturally relaxes just a bit.
Extend Your Loving
Here's the self-compassion strategy.
1. Extend your loving and caring to the tension in your body, and to the stressful situation that seems to be triggering the stress.
2. Lovingly ask yourself things like, "What would be a solution to this situation? What is my heart's desire in these circumstances?" To reduce stress, you want a solution in which you are taking good care of yourself.
As you focus on solutions, and even more as you actively create solutions, you may find that you have renewed energy for moving forward, and much of your stress is resolved. At that point, some physical exercise, a hot bath or a good night's sleep, may relieve residual body tension.
If you would like more stress reduction tips grounded in self-compassion, I encourage you to sign up for my free newsletter, 17 Simple Stress Solutions, at http://www.powerofpersonalpeace.com/optin.htm
Dr. Ilenya Marrin is a personal peace consultant, spiritual counselor, inspirational speaker and author of ebooks The Power of Personal Peace: Reducing Stress by Loving Yourself from the Inside Out and 77 Loving Steps for Success.
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