the Stress State that prevents us from growth & transformation

Sometimes there are little things we want to change. A habit. Part of our daily routine. A repetitive cycle we've gotten into. Sometimes there are bigger things. Sometimes we want to change a relationship, a deeply-embedded story from our past, an emotional wound that's holding us back, a way we've limited ourselves and who we want to become.

There is a possibility, while we're here in this life, for deep growth and transformation. To actualise our creative potential. To reach for that next challenge and find out what we are truly capable of. To heal our past. To find acceptance and love for ourselves, and to experience the depths of who we truly are.

Transformation and Growth. The deepest joy and satisfaction can come from this experience of reaching for our highest potential, seeing for ourselves what we are capable of...whether that's in our work, our relationships, our ability to give and love, our physical capacity...

However, so often we also have the experience of being inspired to change something in our lives, and finding ourselves still doing the same old thing. We'll have a flash of insight, a real breakthrough about something in our lives that needs to shift, and yet when that moment of inspiration has passed, we find ourselves reverting back to our old habits and reactions.

It's spring, and as I was out in the garden adding compost into my vegetable beds, I thought about the resources all living things need to grow. When soil is depleted, plants cannot thrive. And this feels like a helpful way to think about ourselves and the ground we need to cultivate inside ourselves in order to make change and growth possible — whether that's a small habit shift or a deeper transformation.

Here's a little science...

In every moment, we experience life based on our inner state of being, especially the state of our nervous system. When the world is calm and safe, we are able to relax and our attention and energy can shift inward. This means we can get lost in our thoughts & imagination, think about complex problem-solving, focus on emotional connection with others and with ourselves. It also means our energy flows to regenerative, healing pathways in the body. It is a time to renew old cells, digest food into energy, revitalise our immune system and much more.

However, when the world is busy, or stressful, or overwhelming and we need to constantly respond to our outer environment, we have to shift into a different state. Our attention becomes focused exclusively on the outer world where the problems lie, scanning the environment for 'dangers' or things we have to deal with next. Physically, our energy is directed away from a lot of the health systems in the body and instead floods into certain muscles, increases our heart rate, raises our adrenaline and cortisol levels, releases massive levels of glucose into the blood stream and prepares the body to respond.

These two states are often known as "Rest-and-Digest" vs. "Fight-or-Flight" response. Science knows them as the Parasympathetic and Sympathetic Nervous Systems. 

We can think of these two states as — Creation and Survival.

These are two very different states of being. They create very different physiological and biochemical realities in our bodies and brains. They give us access to very different resources. And so some things are possible when our nervous system is in the Creation State that is not possible when we are in Survival, and vice versa.

When we are in the Creation State, where we are designed by evolution to be for the majority of our time, we have the resources to think creatively, mentally explore different ideas or responses, learn new information, look at things from a variety of perspectives and most importantly, take chances trying something new. This is the fertile soil needed for growth and transformation.

When we are under the influence of the Survival State, our body's number one directive is to keep us alive. In this state we don't have time to processes a lot of complex information. Our brains simplify things by narrowing our focus to a few key bits of information, and we gravitate towards predictable behaviours, choices & responses...the ways we have acted and 'survived' before. Under these conditions, making a new choice, taking a chance, using new ideas you haven't tested out before feels life-threatening.

Here's how that works...

Your brain and body when you are Stressed

When you are busy, fire-fighting problems, dealing with difficult people, making a ton of decisions, navigating challenges at home with family members...when you are Stressed, your body produces chemicals to try to help you deal with the outer environment. Adrenaline and Cortisol flood your system, creating tension in your muscles, flooding your bloodstream with glucose for energy and raising your heart rate and blood pressure.

Humans are also the only mammal that can switch on the Survival Response by thought alone. This means even thinking about a stressful or upsetting situation, or reliving a traumatic moment in your mind, will initiate the cascade of stress chemicals into the body, as if the situation were actually happening now.

This biochemistry affects your brain in important ways. 

If you think about a deer grazing in a field which suddenly notices a predator, that deer's brain will immediate zero in on two bits of information — where is the predator and where is the escape route? The brain filters out all other information and begins to race, jumping back and forth between 'where is the predator now' and 'where can I run to escape next'. Back and forth — predator, escape route, predator, escape route.

The human brain under the influence of stress biochemistry acts very similarly. Our brain waves become very fast, our attention jumps back and forth so we feel distracted, and our focus narrows onto a few pieces of information our mind has decided are the only things that are relevant. 

A few other important things happen in our brains. When neuro-scientists have done EEGs mapping activity in 19 areas of the brain, they discovered that Stress creates incoherence in the brain — meaning different areas of the brain stop communicating with each other, and instead of areas of the brain oscillating together, different areas of the brain begin firing erratically.

When this happens we feel highly distracted, we fail to notice a lot of contextual information which the brain is filtering out as irrelevant to survival, and maybe most importantly the brain will always prioritise predictability and the Known as it strives to find a sense of certainty and security. For the brain and body, certainty and predictability mean survival...even if those behaviours and responses might not make us happy, healthy or who we want to be.

the Stress State actively blocks growth, change and transformation

We are embodied beings. And though we love to believe we can *think* our way out of all our problems, we cannot transcend our physiology. One example I always give is my son who has ADHD. We now know that people with ADHD have lower levels of norepinephrine (adrenaline) and dopamine in the neocortex, which is why they find it difficult to organise and direct their brains to focus. To say to my son — "just try harder to pay attention" — is completely unhelpful. When the biochemistry of our brains is a certain way, the brain functions a certain way. That's how our brain works.

In the same way, when our brains are under the influence of stress or survival biochemistry, it is compelled by those chemicals to fire in a certain way. Our thoughts are always going to be fast, in High Beta brainwave patterns. Our brains are always going to filter out wider information about a situation to simplify and focus on survival response. And our brains are always going to fire erratically, as different areas of the brain no longer have the capacity to effectively communicate with each other. This is the brain on Stress.

Shifting into the Creation State for growth and change

If we are experiencing chronic stress, or we have moments of being triggered by past trauma, we cannot *think* our way out of that nervous system state. We cannot rely on a change of mindset, or an intellectual insight we had last week to see us through. Unless we change the inner state of our nervous system from Survival to Creation, we will experience all the physiological and neurological consequences of that stress state. And we will keep doing the same old thing because we will always err on the side of predictability and survival over uncertainty and potential happiness.

All this means — it is extremely difficult to change (and maintain that change) in our lives when we are stressed.

This is the true cost of Stress.

In order to change, to grow and create transformation for ourselves, we need to guide our nervous system back into the state of Creation.

Creation is a state where the nervous system perceives everything to be safe enough to take a risk and try something new. Creation is a state where the brain is functioning at a slow enough speed to pause and remember the new information we learned, the new insight we had last week, the various options available to us. Creation is the state in which the brain's focus is wide and we take in a lot of information about a subject, and where different areas of the brain are communicating well together so we come up with new creative solutions and are able to imagining different perspectives.

This is the fertile soil we need to not only change something in our lives, but sustain that transformation over time.

the Work that is so often overlooked...

Our work then, for those of us who are in the process of growth, healing and transformation, is to support our nervous system to live in the Creation State most of the time. We need practices that release us from where we are stuck in the Survival State and shift us back into Creation so that becomes our 'home'.

This is like 'training for our nervous system'.

Two of the most effective methods for shifting the nervous system response away from Stress/Survival and back into Relaxation/Creation are movement and breathing practices. This is the case for both specific moments when we are in acute stress, and for building longer-term resilience from chronic stress.

In other words, in our focus on 'the power of the mind,' we forget how powerful the body can be. And when we start with the body and harness our physiology to change our inner state first, we will find ourselves with a brain that is able to function much more creatively and bravely, so that we are empowered to maintain the transformation we want for ourselves.

Specific movement practices.

Specific breath exercises.

These methods activate the deep intelligence of the body to shift the nervous system and change our inner state. This is how we cultivate the fertile soil that has the resources to sustain growth. This is how we support lasting change in ourselves — whether that change is something small like shifting a bad habit or changing our morning routine, or whether that change is something bigger like healing trauma, changing a belief about ourselves, or reaching our next level of creative potential.