Beyond the Butterflies: Locating the Stress in Your Body

"So now that I've realized I may be holding stress in my body, how do I release it?"

First, you need to locate the stress in your body, and then, you need to understand why it's there.

Our minds can be poets, and they can also be smart-alecks. In order to understand why your stress-induced tension or pain has taken residence in a particular part of your body, you need to understand the metaphor or association that your mind may be employing in choosing that spot.

For example, take the case of the client with the persistent, oddly located headache. The spot on our foreheads between our eyebrows is the location of one of Eastern medicine's energy centers, or chakras. This particular chakra is commonly associated with intuition, and by understanding the potential connection between this place in her body, her pain, and what was happening in her life, my client was able to relieve her headache.

To experience the connection between your mind, your stress, and your body, I invite you to join me in a short guided imagery:

Take a few long, deep breaths, and when you're ready, close your eyes.
Locate a place of tension, tightness, or pain in your body. Focus all your attention on that place. Notice what you see.
What does this spot look like? How deep is it? How wide is it? Does it have a color? Does it have a texture? If you were to touch it, what would it feel like? Notice everything about this spot--all the details.
Now, I invite you allow an image to form in this spot in your body.
What is appearing? It could be a person, someone you know or a stranger. It could be an object. It could be a place. It can be anything at all. What is it?
Why is it there? If it could speak, what would it say?
Now I invite you to return all your attention to your breath, taking a few long, deep, cleansing breaths. When you're ready, open your eyes.

Now write down everything you saw. This step is very important, as we develop our understanding through the process of writing it out. For more information, you may want to Google "(whatever you saw) + universal symbol."

Guided imagery and other mind-body stress-relief and healing tools work quickly because they take an expressway straight to the core of your distress, which allows you to understand what you're feeling and why you're feeling it much, much faster than hours and hours of analysis.

When practicing stress-relief, I encourage you to try new things, even if they seem odd or unfamiliar. If something works, great! And if it doesn't, try something else! *

Continue to Part III of Beyond the Butterflies: Relieving the Stress in Your Body.

*Mind Body Global Wellness respects the beliefs of people of all faiths, and works to ensure that any stress-relief coaching it provides fits with each individual's or organization's values.