How do you get your body to be in peace and harmony? Once you see the answers to this question, they may seem like common sense. Unfortunately, we don’t always use common sense in our approach to our bodies. Sometimes we take partial or baby steps. That’s a good start, but the more you understand about your body’s needs and the more kindly you treat it, the more at peace you’ll find yourself.
How is a body in peace? On the surface, your forehead is smooth and not wrinkled in anguish. Your face is calm; your hands are relaxed and your fists are not fired. You stand tall and don’t slouch under the weight of your daily stress.
Looking inward, your bloodstream is distributing nutrients and collecting waste and isn’t chronically clogged with stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. As we saw earlier, these hormones serve a useful purpose by preparing you to approach danger and shutting down regular functions in your body that aren’t specifically needed to combat stress.
This is fine when your body is under attack and you need to defend yourself or get out of harm’s way. However, the immediate threats pass fairly quickly, and hopefully your body returns to a more relaxed and peaceful state. When you are constantly plagued by worrying thoughts, emotions, or both, your body remains in a state of high alert that prevents you from feeling peaceful and eventually wears you down and prevents you from living a productive life. Your body, mind, emotions, and spirit are all interconnected.
Your blood pressure, pulse, and heart rate increase when you are in a state of stress or anxiety and decrease when your body is at peace. When you are at peace, you have more energy to spend on constructive activities instead of fighting stress.
Once you remove stress from your life, you’ll find that in addition to more energy, you’ll have a better appetite and better digestion. Instead of finding natural ways to achieve peace within your body, you may be tempted to seek the help of prescription drugs, alcohol, or illegal drugs as a way to offset the restlessness within you. Chemical approaches can be helpful on occasion. However, better long-term results can be found by considering changes in the way you live your life. What changes? That’s a long story that I’ll get to another time.