Lifestyle Choices

It is now common knowledge that uncontrolled stress can trigger a great many diseases and disorders—insomnia, gastric ulcers, high blood pressure, asthma, and migraine, to mention just a few. But for a long time these ailments were treated like something over which we had no control. It was assumed that one could only treat their symptoms with drugs, treat the stress that triggered them off with more drugs, and hope for the best. Now, thanks to research into altered states of consciousness and work done with biofeedback, studies have shown that every human being can exercise a high level of conscious control over his nervous system. They have shown that we do indeed have the ability to release excessive nervous tension provided we train ourselves to do it. They have also shown that when this excessive nervous tension is released, the physical and psychological effects of stress are significantly reduced. The key to this,control is relaxation. It can eliminate digestive disorders, lower cholesterol levels in the blood, improve sleep, make reducing easier and even speed up healing in your body.

The Not-so-Involuntary Nervous System

Most of the automatic, or involuntary, functions of your body are governed by a part of the nervous system known as the autonomic nervous system. It looks after the changes in the rate at which your heart beats. It regulates your blood pressure by altering the size of veins and arteries. It stimulates the flow of digestive juices and brings on muscular contractions in the digestive system to deal with the foods you take in. It makes you sweat when you’re hot and is responsible for the physical changes in your body that come with sexual arousal. This autonomic system has two opposing branches: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic.

The sympathetic branch is composed of a group of nerve fibers radiating from the spinal cord and is linked with the catecholamines or adrenalin class of hormones. It is concerned with energy expenditure—particularly the energy involved with stress. It spurs the heart to beat faster, makes you breathe hard, encourages you to sweat, and raises your blood pressure. It also inhibits the secretion of gastric juices and digestion and sends blood to the muscles to get you ready for action.

The other branch of the autonomic nervous system—the parasympathetic—is made up mostly of nerve fibers from the vagus nerve, or tenth cranial. Its activity is linked with the acetylcholine class of hormones, and this system is concerned with rest rather than action. In fact, the workings of the parasympathetic branch are more or less in opposition to those of the sympathetic branch. The parasympathetic branch slows your heartbeat, reduces the flow of air to your lungs, stimulates the digestive system, and helps relax your muscles.

Getting the Balance Right

When you are in a state of stress, the sympathetic nervous system has precedence over the parasympathetic. When you are relaxed, the parasympathetic branch is dominant. A good balance between the two is the key to enormous energy and continuing health. Balance makes it possible for you to go out into the world to do, to make, to create, to fight, and to express yourself as well as to retire into yourself for regeneration, rest, recuperation, enjoyment, and the space to discover new ideas and plant the seeds of future actions. Unfortunately, few people get the balance right.

Instead, there is the dynamic liberated woman who is ever seeking greater challenges and heights of personal achievement and who seems to have endless energy—until she discovers in a few years that she is suffering from high blood pressure and is told either to ease up or to go into long-term drug therapy for hypertension. At the other extreme is the beautifully feminine, quiet, sensitive lady who luxuriates in physical comforts, dreams beautiful dreams, and impresses everyone by her serenity but who never seems to be able to put any of her ideas into effective action.

The first is a sympathetic-dominated person and the second is para‑sympathetic-dominated. To make the most of your potential in action in the world and still remain well enough and receptive enough to enjoy the fruits of your labors, you want to be neither. You need to be balanced. That’s where learning the art of conscious relaxation comes in.

For, like the sympathetic and the parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system which oppose each other, there is nothing vague or unclear about what constitutes a state of stress and its opposite, a state of psychophysical relaxation. These states are like two sides of the same coin. The biochemical and psychological changes that accompany each can be accurately measured in a laboratory.

For instance, under stress your body consumes more oxygen, its metabolic rate increases, your arteries contract, the concentration of lactates in your blood goes up, and your heart beats faster. During stress, cortisone levels in the body are increased. Over a long period of time this tends to block out the immune response; this is one of the main reasons why you become less resistant to disease when you are under constant stress. All these changes are reversed when you go into a state of psychophysical relaxation: cardiac rate decreases, lactate levels fall, there is a decrease in oxygen consumption, and your body returns to a regenerative state.

The secret of getting the right balance between stress and relaxation, between the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches, is twofold. First, you need to take a look at the stress in your life and discover new ways of using it positively. Second, you need to learn a technique for conscious relaxation and practice it daily until it becomes second nature. Not only will this help your body stay in balance and increase your level of overall vitality, it will also give you a profound sense of control over yourself and your life that is hard to come by any other way. Let’s look at stress first.

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