Posted by Kimberly Rex

The Impact of Chronic Stress

The impact of chronic stress has both short-term and long-term effects on your body-mind system. When stressful cycles do not resolve or get released, your body-mind system continues to store the pain from the stress within the map of your body. Your body-mind system needs natural ways to support recovery in creating greater calm and restoration.

Stress Response and Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis

Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis

Adrenal Stress originates with messages from your hypothalamus to your pituitary gland that release hormones to react to perceived danger and threats that then stimulate your adrenal glands to secrete cortisol.

Stress cycles have an impact on memory retention, focus, mood, and health. The Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis (HPA) process. The hypothalamus releases hormones that signal the autonomic nervous system to control body temperature, thirst, hunger, metabolic, and autonomic functions. It works with the pituitary gland through endocrine responses to signal the adrenal glands. This response also connects with limbic system (emotional brain) structures including the amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus, and olfactory cortex. These connections enable the hypothalamus to influence emotional responses to sensory input.

The hypothalamus sends out chemical messengers to the entire body. It controls the autonomic nervous system and is the bridge between the body and the brain. The hormonal signals from the pituitary gland to the adrenal glands create the release of adrenaline and cortisol.

Adrenaline and cortisol hormones direct energy to respond to perceived life-threatening situations. Adrenaline messages the liver and tissue to release glucose (sugar) that is needed to either fight or run away. These hormones increase blood supply in the heart and lungs in order to supply oxygen and blood to your muscles.

When this happens your energy is directed away from digestion to conserve energy. Cortisol production ramps up to stop your pancreas from secreting insulin to utilize glucose in the bloodstream. This severely diminishes or eliminates the availability of amino acids related to optimal cellular function. In addition, this shift in energy limits thyroid hormones, to complete natural digestion, metabolism, and detoxification processes.

When cortisol is present, this leads to the production of the anti-stress hormone, DHEA to calm your system after a threat. However, the constant need for DHEA can lead to the suppression of your body’s immune response from cortisol overload. Perpetual stress without intervention or relief creates imbalance and disharmony within your body-mind system. This in turn diminishes the ability of your body to deal with bacteria, viruses, candida, or parasitic infection. Long-term stress cycle effects can show up in muscle loss, arthritis, diabetes, chronic fatigue, allergies, PMS, craving for sweets or salty foods, autoimmune disease, immune suppression, and at the far end of the spectrum, cancer.

In order to treat the effects of this past year of stress, this is your personal invitation to nourish your body-mind-spirit system to create greater wellness and well-being. In the process, you can learn new stress avoidance behaviors and actions to replace, restore and create new opportunities for greater ease, resilience, and connection to yourself and others in life-enhancing ways.

Kimberly Rex, MS is an Advanced Resonance Repatterning® practitioner, Person-Centered Expressive Therapist, and Wellness and Well-being Life Coach. She works with people all over the world via Skype, by phone, and by proxy.

Find out how Resonance Repatterning benefits your life. Set up a personal session or sign up for a free monthly newsletter with articles, natural healing modalities, and exclusive group sessions here.

Research for this article came from Resonance Repatterning, Scalar Heart Connection, and Healing Trauma training material as well as Wikipedia sources.

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Posted by Kimberly Rex

4 Stages of Disease: The Interaction between Your Kidneys, Liver and Heart

4 Stages of Disease Leading to Chronic Illness 

Chinese Traditional Medicine TCM looks at the pathway of disease from the perspective of the relationship between organ and meridian systems. The heart is the emperor of the body-mind system, however, in order to begin the healing process, the heart must connect with kidney. When there is a disorder of stagnation in the kidney your liver is affected. When your liver is negatively affected this impacts your heart.  This starts with distortions in how you think related to what you believe and see in life. This, then, can lead to both emotional and physical imbalance.

When there have been long-standing issues with unresolved emotions and perception of victimization or overwhelm over time, dis-ease becomes more likely a possibility. This happens through 1) Shen Stagnation 2) Chi Stagnation 3) Blood Stagnation and resulting 4) Body Stagnation.

The interaction and relationship between your organ systems impact the integrity of your wellness and well-being. 

From the Kidney’s Perspective

The kidney relates directly to the reptilian brain function. This means that survival, fear, and overwhelm in your current life get translated into how the energy in your body-mind system is communicated throughout your body. Kidney stores short-term memory. The impact of the relationship to the reptilian brain can make it difficult to discern what is a current danger or a residual thought, belief, or attitude about a stressful event or situation from the past. The reptilian brain‘s job is to search for anything that reminds it of previous danger, and then to take action through the fight, flight, or freeze.

In practical terms on a day-to-day basis, this affects how your Nervous System responds to perceived danger and threats. It impacts your Adrenalin response, blood pressure, hormones, cortisol, and sleep cycles. This impacts your ability to retain information accurately in the present. It affects the amount and quality of life energy or vitality you have, your ability to remember important information, and your ability to hear things clearly.

More on Health Implications between Kidney, Adrenal, Excretory and Circulation Impacts

From the Liver’s Perspective

In Chinese Medicine, Liver stores emotion. The liver is related to the Limbic or Emotional Brain. When liver is distorted by anger and frustration is repressed over time, it impacts the way you perceive the world through your thinking and seeing. The ability to modulate your emotional responses to your external environment has an effect on your internal response to challenges.

The liver filters blood and this in turn affects your chi or energy level. When the liver is out of balance, it limits your vision and your ability to see from the perspective of another person. It keeps you from considering that there might be another alternative or possibility. Your decision-making process becomes clouded, and your body-mind system’s ability to prioritize thought and action becomes less clear.

More on Liver’s Impact on Health and Well-being

From the Heart’s Perspective

Heart is the home of the Shen Spirit related to the capacity for compassion, forgiveness, gratitude, tolerance, joy and love. It is primarily related to your reasoning and decision-making Cortex. There are 5 functional responsibilities for the heart including consciousness, thinking, imagination and planning, the ability to modulate emotions and long-term memory according to TCM. Because of these functions, it is important to engage all three places: the kidney, the liver and the heart in order to heal internal conflict and dissonance related to your mental, emotional, physical and spirit.

This is your personal invitation to working with creating greater harmony and balance in your life. As we move into Winter, Water Element related to Kidney and Bladder are the prominent organs that express information for special needs and care. There is much to be acknowledged on the health benefits of starting with the kidneys to inform and play a healing role in transforming the rest of the body-mind system through focusing on nourishing the transformation of your Reptilian Brain’s reaction to trauma from the past and to balance your need for giving and receiving in a loving way within your body, your mind, your relationships and in the world.

Build integrity in your wellness and well-being for the winter months by taking part in a personal Resonance Repatterning® session that works with this purpose to create greater harmony and balance for your kidneys and bladder’s impact on your ability to build life energy to heal the past so you can be more energized and able to go with the flow of life, set boundaries, increase resilience through the winter months.

Here is an opportunity to continue on the path to building integrity in your wellness and well-being with monthly healing modalities and repatterning events from Windows to the Heart Repatterning.

Sign up for monthly newsletter here: Newsletter and Exclusive Re-pattern Your Life Events

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