For National Stress Awareness Month, we’ve touched base with intuitive healer and therapist Phil Flanagan to hear his thoughts on stress in today’s world and the best ways to move through stress and anxiety. Read on for a bit of sage wisdom and a comforting mantra to help you through the days ahead.
For the last four or maybe five years I’ve had the mantra: “Hold your nerve and keep your faith.”
For when we lose our nerve we fall into fear as we do when we lose our faith. Maybe now more than ever this is a powerful mantra to hold on to when so much seems to be slipping away. Fear is based in the past, projected onto the future, yet lived out at this very moment. This could be why so much of what we see around us does not make sense. Stop and take a breath, in and out through your mouth, which will bring your awareness into your body out of your head and towards the place where our power originates, inside us…
It seems that forever people have stayed busy as a way to avoid and distract themselves from underlying stress and anxiety that so many deal with on a day to day, moment by moment level. In this current, climate we are all having those distractions taken away and, understandably, the anxiety that activity has kept suppressed is bubbling up and out.
A few facts on stress
The level of managed stress and anxiety in society seems to have been at a record level in recent years. Even the amount of children who are dealing with such seems to be off the scale. When you realise that in England in 2017 alone, over 70,000 children under the age of 18 years and 2,000 under the age of 11 years were prescribed antidepressants. More than 20 years ago, the World Health Organisation said that by 2025 the biggest cause of death would be stress.
Have you noticed how many people now seem to be suffering with what I call “twitchy leg syndrome”. While sitting still, their leg continues to shake yet most are not even aware that they are doing this; a reaction to having overactive adrenals and the adrenaline produced needing to find an outlet. It’s like watching the sleeping dog mock running on its side as we wonder if he’s dreaming of chasing that cat.
Adrenaline is the fight or flight hormone that we naturally produce to keep us safe yet, in excess, it can by highly damaging to our health and wellbeing. A result of living too much, too fast, too intense and when we can’t keep up with ourselves, let’s take an energy drink… NOOOOOOO! They don’t actually give you energy, they literally put the body into adject terror, forcing out the last drop to keep one going when actually one really needs to STOP… It’s as if someone held a gun to your head when you said “I can’t walk a step further” yet you miraculously find the ability to do so.
Ways to thrive in the here and now
A popular label and health condition in recent years has come to be known as “adrenal fatigue” or “adrenal burnout”. Stress and anxiety, like fear is born in the past, projected onto the future yet lived out in the present. So let’s stop and bring ourselves back to what you can control in this very moment. Notice that whatever is going on, our body continues to breathe on our behalf bringing in life force to keep us alive.
The understandable panic that we are now feeling just needs to be felt and allowed expression. Dance it out! Shake it out! Share how you’re feeling with those around you. Take it in turns to listen to another’s fear and concern; we are all in this together. In fact, we have always been in this together yet only now are we being shown the power of that reality. The breath that you took in three days ago could be taken in by another who is reading this tomorrow.
We are all connected; let’s learn how to live united and thrive in our unity. If we “hold our nerve and keep our faith” – together we can.
Click her to learn more about Phil’s online intuitive healing and to book an appointment.
Phil Flanagan is super intuitive, personable and expert at drawing out and dissolving our problems in a gentle yet effective manner. His ‘Free to be’ approach allows people to “resolve” and move on, which is often hard to do living in such a fast-paced society. He believes that awareness, acceptance and expression are key to true healing, resulting in gently breaking down and dissolving those previously unseen yet often felt problems. This profound, powerful, physical healing work releases the grip of what is ailing us and allows us to move on.
