Stress PREVENTION

June 3, 2008 by carly.

“We need stress prevention, not stress reduction” stated Dr. John Doullard of Life Spa (www.lifespa.com) at the first of many seminars I attended at the Midwest Yoga Conference in Chicago last weekend. I could not agree more.

We do have the tendency to expect copious amounts of negative stress, accept this stress as a fact of life, and then seek ways to deal with it. I had to seriously consider if stress reduction was how I currently viewed the results of my yoga practice or if I was already subconsciously sophisticated enough to see it as stress prevention.

Stress prevention should replace stress reduction in our vocabulary. If we reprogram ourselves to see negative stress as unnecessary and not a normal part of life, we free ourselves to let go and relax just a little bit more. We can then focus on ways of preventing stress.

Our Hyp-Yoga practice is one of the best ways to prevent stress. Not only can we consciously focus on relaxing through movement and meditation, but we can also subconsciously work on the actual reprogramming part of seeing our activities as preventative as well as restorative.

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Mini Hyp-Yoga Practice: Mountain pose, inhale sweep arms up and forward fold to your toes. Inhale sweep to chair, hold to breaths and exhale forward fold. Inhale sweep arms back up to the sky with a tiny back bend, and exhale back to mountain with your palms together, hands at your heart. Close your eyes and feel the breath in your body. Take in three slow breaths, exhaling equally as slow and then repeating this affirmation 10 times:

Affirmation for Self-Hypnosis: “I am calm and relaxed. I am preventing stress while cultivating health.”

If the words seem to drift from your mind, that’s OK, just focus on the words that you do remember.

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