We are living in uncertain times. We see images of violence, pain, and sadness plastered all over social media, the television and newspapers. It either desensitizes us to the horrors or keeps us stuck in a highly suggestible state invoking feelings of fear, anger, sadness and hopelessness.
It is because of this I was inspired to share some very important tips for coping and taking care of yourself during stressful times and tragic events. Events such as the ones we all witnessed last week with gun violence against African American citizens and Law Enforcement. This type of violence has been happening for many years and is not new, however, these recent incidents carried a different kind of energy and a definite shift in consciousness could be felt around the World.
It seems as though these events were felt by the masses on a deeper and more profound level. I personally experienced an intense emotional reaction accompanied by stomach aches, insomnia and fatigue, which is out of the ordinary for me. Then, it dawned on me that I was experiencing body syndromes which, as described by Dr. John Kappas founder of HMI College of Hypnotherapy, is a physical manifestation of emotions. I’ll do a separate blog post and video on Body Syndromes later.
I thought to myself “If I am feeling this way surely others are having similar reactions to these tragedies.” So, I wanted to share 7 ways to restore balance physically, mentally, and emotionally in the wake of tragedy.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzGkOYEprBs]
Tip # 1: Make sure you’re eating enough food. Eat healthy meals four to six times throughout the day. That means breakfast, lunch, and dinner with small snacks in between. Be sure to include plenty of good protein and whole fruits and vegetables. We call this grazing in the hypnotherapy community and we encourage our clients to do this in order to help stabilize blood sugar levels. When blood sugar levels drop it can cause you to become moody, easy to anger and easily agitated. You might also get headaches, nausea, and dizziness. In order for you to stay the happy, healthy, loving, caring, and sharing person that you are and maintain your health throughout the day, fuel your body up with good healthy foods.
Tip #2: Drink lots and lots of water. This is very important because when you experience a stressful situation or tragedy, it triggers the flight or fight response. This response stirs emotions such as anger, fear, lack, worry, or frustration. The stress causes the body to pump toxins into the bloodstream. Drinking plenty of water helps flush toxins out of the body. It’s also Summertime in many places around the world and it is hot outside so, hot external temperatures mixed with hot internal tempers can be a recipe for disaster. It is important for you to stay hydrated and drink plenty of water to help you keep cool, calm, and collected.
Tip #3: Get plenty of sleep. Sleep helps you maintain a sound mind which helps with making healthy, smart, life saving decisions. Throughout the day you are inundated with information from the outside world, from your own thoughts and feelings and from the media. The brain was not made to hold every bit of information received so it must vent out the overload of information during your sleeping time through dreams. Dreaming allows the mind to get rid of all the information that you do not need and retain the information that is helpful and beneficial to you. Therefore, if you do not sleep, your mind becomes overloaded with all of the information that was not allowed to be filtered out during dream time. This can put you in environmental hypnosis, or in overload, which makes you feel like you are “zoned out”or not present. When you do not get enough sleep you might do things like run a red light or forget to pay an important bill or find yourself in a situation where you are not making the best decision for you and other people around you.
Tip #4: Make sure you give yourself a break from the news. Turn the TV off and stay away from social media if only for one day. Recent studies have shown that over exposure to violent images or even just hearing or reading about tragedies can wreak havoc on our psyche and trigger symptoms of PTSD.
Tip #5: Reach out to your loved ones and talk to people who have a positive outlook on the world. It is okay and perfectly natural to be angry and frustrated about what is going on, but you do not want to carry on conversations with people who are spewing words of hatred anger or fear. You want to have high vibration conversations during times like these in order to maintain a sense of hope.
Tip #6: If you are open to it, meditate, meditate, and then meditate some more. Studies have shown that meditation can help lower high blood pressure and increase health and vitality. It can also bring a sense of peace and well-being to the entire mind, body, and spirit. If you do not know how to meditate there are many YouTube videos for guided meditations. Just do a search and you’d be surprised at the thousands of videos that are out there. These meditations run anywhere from 1 minute to 9 hours.
Tip #7: Final tip. If you have tried all of the tips from 1 through 6 and you notice that you are still having trouble letting go of frustration and anger, or maybe having feelings of fear and anxiety, or experiencing bouts of sadness, I strongly recommend that you seek outside counsel. Hypnotherapy is a very effective and powerful tool to help improve your sleep, relieve anger, anxiety and fears, and help with Stress Management. Hypnosis is simply a focused state of awareness where the body is completely and totally relaxed, the mind is open and allows access to the subconscious where true long-term positive changes can take place.
If you have any questions about anything that I’ve talked about in this blog or in the video, or you would like to know more about how hypnotherapy can benefit you or a loved one, please feel free to email me at shara@opendoorhypnosis.com.
You can find me online at www.opendoorhypnosis.com and follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Please be sure to share this video with your loved ones because we all can use ways to heal ourselves in times of tragedy. Remember, you are the key to a new you. Stay blessed and I’ll see you in the next post.
