Have you ever really paid attention to your body when its going through severe stress, trauma or anxiety? It’s a difficult thing to do since the event itself is distracting, but if you’re able to pay attention to the physical feelings, you’ll notice something rather incredible: hyperventilating, shaking (tremors), curling up into a ball (flexion), maybe even the urge to vomit.
A zebra that outruns an attack will wine a place to curl up, shake and breathe until all of the stress has been successfully moved through its body. At that point, the zebra has officially ‘purged’ all of the extra energy, and will re-join the herd like nothing happened.
This response from the nervous system of the zebra is appropriate, and its the same for us too. We’re lucky to have it.
But humans have been socially conditioned to suppress and hide these integrations, play ‘the cool guy’ when in fact we’re dying inside. (Not literally but kind of literally since the stress is the #1 cause of disease in the body!)
That extra energy, physical, chemical and emotional, needs to be integrated and managed by our nervous system, because if its not, it will be stored causing di-ease leading to disease later.
Also, I’ll make a bet that the zebra isn’t thinking about that it did wrong to deserve that attack, and won’t suffer from PTSD, anxiety, depression or develop stress related ulcers due to the attack.
Nope, not this zebra, it’s cool!
Next time you find yourself in some deep zebra poop, pay attention, and don’t fight what feels natural. You may not be able to just sit and meditate to get over it. Movement may be required to get that energy out of your body!
Try heavy, throaty breathing with sound. Try yelling, Go pound at mattress!
Then sit, slow your breathing, integrate, get quiet and journal. And last, but not least, get your spine checked by your chiropractor: the ultimate nervous system re-balancer and de-stressor!
Here for you 100%
Dr. Kara
