Do you ever get overwhelmed?

Dont panic just take three deep breaths..and then put the kettle on!

I remember my Grandma telling me this when I got cut as a kid- it was quickly followed by lets put the kettle on...( I am after all English!)

Little did I know that as adult I would find my self as a psychotherapist building a whole practice around just that. Every day i listen to my clients tell me about how much stress life is- just trying to fit it all in- whatever it is that they are all doing-

The topic de jour is of course the terrible state of the economy. I know... I know my last two posts have been all about abundance...breathing into the possiblity that we can change our thoughts and our world....hum

Well today.... I have been given a challenge by a client who said ok...

"Great Elayne but what if i cant even get anywhere close to that place you are talking about - you know the one where everything feels hunky dory? In fact what if all i feel like doing is reaching for my familiar way to numb to and just not think about all this any more..."

Well in this case the person talking is a recovering addict and the way of numbing that they were talking about was crack. However, my bet is that when any of us feel overwhelmed we want to reach for the drink, tv, potatoe chips, ice cream what ever our particular drug of choice is! to ease the panic - the "I cant cope" feeling inside.....

So here is where Grandma steps in- and she says - "now now don't panic take a breath- lets see what else we can do here! "

So lets do it- really...no point talking about it

I invite you take a couple deep breaths and as you do to simply see yourslef letting go- letting go of trying to solve anything....

When we take a breath it literally slows things down- it signals to our central nervous system that things are ok- Stress on the other hand signals the opposite- In essence what I see is that many, if not most of my clients whatever their issues, all have one thing in common they are STRESSED.

In a state of stress your body is told "run for your life!" Literally all systems are firing and we are operating in a state of emergency..... I have to smile everytime i am in the airport in the USA and I hear we are operating on a code yellow security imperative......

thats right we are all edging between code yellow and red....Phew..

Heres something to try- next time you watch the news...notice what happens to your body- do you feel it tightening, a frown on your face, your jaw locking, your breathing getting more shallow or even holding your breath? As you are bombarded with the woes of the world do you feel how this affects you? This is the kind of stress that we all take for granted...its part of being alive...

So lets see what else- oh keeping up with phone calls, emails, my sapce, linkedin, facebook and now there's twitter, uploading, downloading, (imploding) keeping well and fit, eating healthy, making money, taking care of kids, having fun, praying, driving in traffic, the list goes on and on and on.....

I read something the other day where the author spoke about his idea that as we make the shift into this informtaion age we are bombarded with so much information that our brains can not handle- infact our "donkey" of a brain is moving way too slow to assimilate and manage all this...

So right now notice are you breathing- i am not...

so lets take a Breath and literally start to be wise managers of our own internal system....

I invite you to make it a practice every 30 mins to an hour to take a two minute breather.....

to stop...and do nothing..allow there to be a pause - like rebooting the comptuer- coz you all know if we run too many programs no matter how much RAM we have eventually the damn thing will freeze (yet another response to overload!!)

have a beautiful breathing day!

Breezy moments bought to be Planet Breathe!