Hidden Old Stress – could it be adding on to everything else now?
Have things been changing in your life recently?
Things can change so fast….I started writing this email to you yesterday, exploring Change and how it affects us at deep cellular we mayn’t always be aware of, and then I heard the news that Queen Elizabeth 11 had died.
Her passing is, will be, such a big changing for those of us in the UK, and maybe beyond.
It feels like the end of an era, for whatever your feelings may be about the monarchy, she has been a constant, a rock while she has been Queen of this country for over 70 years, a woman committed to doing as she promised when she was coronated right up till she died.
For me I’m not pro monarchy, and yet I did admire her as a woman and her approach to her work – committed, dedicated, and giving her life in service of what she believe in, even welcoming in a new prime minister 48 hours before she died (and they said she had a good sense of humour through it all).
Yes there are still many post-colonial issues that need facing and healing, and hopefully these can happen very soon, however for now the change is just from her passing.
For even though we all expect change in our life, when big ones happen the reality of them sends out ripples that affect many things beyond. And changes with public figures, countries, large scale events can still shake up our world, however far we feel removed from them. Both within us, and in practical things in the world around, like here much has gone on hold for the 10 days the country is mourning her, and the crowing the new king.
This is one change that the world knows of, and it just happened – but Changes happen in our personal world, and outside so often, and they can affect us at a deep physical level and this is what I wanted to explore with you today.
For they can shake up the very cells of your body. They can make your sense of stability of your world, your security feel uncertain.
And this affects your body’s calm and centeredness, and so your mind’s clarity.
And even before the Queen died there were other feelings of change in the air these last weeks, and they will continue….
Have you been feeling the shift even since September arrived?
Smaller changes like the holiday months are ending, summer ending in the north, and warmth returning in the south for the seasons will be soon be changing. With these season changes, life and work are now picking up a busier pace again.
Changes can feel challenging in small or big ways, and yet even the one we don’t want can bring in something new.
I’ve been really feeling the shift, the boost these last few weeks – it’s exciting, energy is picking up, new things are happening. For September has the growth energy of a mini spring in the north, as full spring is arriving in the south.
For me I have been choosing a life of small changes for most of this year as I’ve been Nomading, spending a week or two in different places as spend time housesitting, travelling and seeing clients. The new places I’ve been in, and this late summer energy, has been inspiring me, so now I’m planning a free experiential event for you in a few months, plus other new offerings.
Change
Whether they are big personal pivots, country or world changes, many seem to be happening now.
How have things been in your life recently?
Have you been going through some time of change – and if so, how are you feeling with it?
Maybe your work or your business is changing; maybe you’ve moved house or country; or something’s shifted in your family, relationships, friends; you’re feeling different in yourself; or maybe you’ve just been physically moving where you are a lot, like me.
In whatever way change shows up in our life, it affects us deeply.
It can affect our lower body and destabilise us.
Maybe it’s intense, uncomfortable, challenging, joyous, sad, easy or hard, whatever way it comes, it is stretching something within us.
Our ability to ‘Adapt’.
This is something we strengthen and grow as we pass through the intensity of big changes.
Some changes may look easy and what we want, and others super challenging, yet they all shake us up on a cellular level to some degree. Because even one’s we want can feel threatening to our core inner self trying to protect us.
Change can show up in our lives in one of two core ways –
– Chosen: Sometimes we are seeking it. We are looking for something different, though even when we want it, the process can take months, even years to find it, for if the change we’re seeking is a big shift, we probably need to change very deep old patterns in ourselves, in our habits and our unconscious thoughts, to allow it. And this takes time.
– Un-Chosen: And then there are the changes that come fast, unbidden, maybe unwanted, from outside of us, and can shake our whole world up. These ones we are forced to adapt to.
And in them both we have the choice – either battle them, or find more adaptability, and with it, more centeredness and ease in ourselves so we can ride the storm with less friction. Then new ways of being and living and unexpected new opportunities can open, though it can be hard to pass through them and make the most of what they bring.
This is what I’ve helped people with, especially in the few 1:1 residential 3-Day Private Retreats I offer a couple of times a year. In these I hold the space so it’s possible to for them to find a path through big change fast by clearing inner obstacles, and find purpose, clear action, and the energy to fuel themselves, can finally be found, and amazing things can then open up in their life.
If you’d like to find out more, look out for my email with details of the Discovery Calls I’ll be offering soon.
Practical things I do when things are changing a lot for me –
While our minds can be excited by new opportunities and places, our bodies are often stressed by change at a very base level, sometimes too deep for us to feel, so I use the techniques that I recommend to many people I working with to help balance this. (Maybe I’ve suggested some to you?)
A key one of these is to regularly Ground yourself, daily if you can, by spending time in nature, walking barefoot on grass, or just coming back to sit with yourself wherever you are and spending some non-digital time with yourself.
When you practice these regularly your body can start relax a little more with any of the changes happening around you, and so feel safer with them all. These will also calm your mind so it has more clarity and you can make better decisions as you move forward.
The bigger the changes you’re going through, the more time you want to set aside to counter balance it with grounding.
Yes I experienced challenging and totally pivoting times of big change, especially when I was younger.
Some of the longest and most demanding for growth ones are the years of limbo, change, new learning and radical new opportunities that we all go from our late 30’s to mid/late 40’s.
I discovered a lot how to navigate these years easier while I was in them, and after as I studied them and helped people working with me to move through them with more ease. For there are forces affecting us at this time demanding and challenging us to step up into our higher potential. The road is easier with others who’ve walked it before.
Times of change have such potential, especially the bigger life-changing ones, and can open our minds to more possibilities, encourage us to think and act laterally, to be open to new and different futures (inspired by our frontal brain cortex), and it really is only possible when we release hidden holdings deep in our body, from our early life and even our DNA, so our body can feel safe enough to allow new possibilities to flower. This is what has happened for so many people who have joined me for Private Retreats.
So are there changes happening in your life now?
What are you seeing energy from them?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on what changes in your life have brought – past ones, or ones you’re navigating now?
Ever find yourself feeling stressed although there doesn’t seem anything around that’s big enough to be triggering it?
Maybe you feel it as tense shoulders or a headache; or anxiety & worry about small things that you’re sure you shouldn’t be worrying about, and yet you are; or when your monkey mind just won’t stop wizzing with unhelpful thoughts; or from feeling insecure about changes you need or want to make, or are happening around you; or maybe it shows up as your body is buzzing so much that it feels so hard to relax, or to sleep even when you’re exhausted?
The stress in us shows up in so many ways.
Yet the things that can seem to be the cause of it (bad traffic, difficult work day, unpleasant interaction with someone, the economy or other money worries, etc etc) are often not.
And why does inner tension arise even when our day may not have been especially stressful?
This happens as the real causes of stress are often older.
Much older.
The stress you feel now could be coming from a long ago, from a time of danger, big challenge, accident, loss, childhood trauma – or even from something intense your ancestors had to survive.
These inner tensions may be with you all the time (so you feel constantly wired with your nervous system, perpetually on alert for some unseen threat), or the stress may come and go.
Either way it will usually feel exhausting as it drains your adrenals, sends your system in freeze, flight, or fight, and so can be holding you back from living the bigger, more relaxed and more fulfilling life you’re wishing for – one with inspiring work, exciting projects, new adventures, closer connections, feeling relaxed, happy, at ease in yourself.
I was wired with stress that came from no apparent cause too when I was very young. I was hyper, and felt my body buzzing all the time with electric charge of anxiety so I couldn’t relax easily. Finding ways to let this tension go became my focus from my childhood and took me on a journey seeking how to live without the speed and stress that had filled me.
What helped for me was when my family moved overseas living a much slower life, then I was introduced to meditation as a kid (though it was hard to stick with it on my own), and later real shifts began with inner exploring workshops I did, unravelling what could be causing that deep tension in me.
Yes we all expect to feel stress when we do something big, but why might you also feel nervous when doing small every day things?
Understanding the invisible hidden places stress comes from comes from can help make sense of, and start to release, these.
For the tension, fear, stress from past traumatic or intense events are often still held deep inside us.
You probably don’t even know your body is holding it.
For though intense situations pass, the affect they had on us can often still be held in the cells of our body, and yes we know in our mind that its not happening now, but our body doesn’t and it’s still reacting – and this triggers stress, anxiety and sets our mind to racing and trying to protect us as though we’re still in the middle danger.
And then there are the tensions in our DNA that from our ancestors.
Protective reactions that began when our ancestors were in danger, can end up in our DNA, as they try and protect us from an intense time they survived – but these threats are probably no longer real for us, yet they trigger general anxiety, worry, adrenalin in our body.
I worked with an Eastern European woman who felt super stressed most of the time, but she said in her life she had not been through through anything that seemed big enough to have triggered it. So we explored her family’s past as well as her own, and eventually she recalled how her family had been attacked on their farm in one of the wars. As she talked I could feel the affect of it in her still, for her body was reacting as though she was being attacked too.
As I treated her I felt the tension let go from her body, her cells, and she felt a deep relaxation begin. After she said she was amazed as it felt as if a lifetime of tension she had felt before was easing.
From then her body gradually began responding to what was actually happening around her each moment, not from an ancient challenge, and new and braver things became not only possible for her, they became easy.
Big things our ancestors experienced, survived and learnt from is passed on to us as part of our inheritance. There can be fears, the need to survive and protect, and there are also strengths. Sharing with us qualities that give us gifts like skills, strengths, natural abilities and resources.
Like my family have been intrepid travellers, ex-pats and adventurers for over 400 years – so I inherited a love of, and skills for, living in many countries and adapting easily.
What gifts do you think your ancestors passed on to you?
These, and the intense situations from our lifetime show up as a level of anxiety that doesn’t make sense in their life now.
Then they are added to now by the instability in the world, the talk of recession, war and other worries.
So how can you heal, resolve, clear these past stresses if you’re feeling these?
If we can find your calm centre, our inner strength – so old fears and stress are not being amplified by all that is happening around us – then we/you can feel more confident, do better, whatever is happening in the world.
I spend years in my 20’s helping my body slowly unwind and let go the inner stress I had since a little kid… and for the last 20 years I’ve helped others become free from their inner stress too. Though now the ways I can help people are much deeper and faster than I was ever able to find as I explored the world looking for solutions.
There are some easy ways you can include things in your life to begin to helping to ease tension.
Such as –
- walking in nature daily
- getting your hands in soil and gardening (yes the microbes in soil help relax us)
- meditating, even if just for a few minutes if you’re busy or your thoughts are bouncing like a puppy
- Turn off your phone for an hour (and muting social media alerts all the time)
- And taking a breath regularly through the day to slow down a little, and just enjoy the simple things around you.
Though, yes these steps can help you feel a bit more relaxed through your day, they will only touch the surface.
To shift the old tension most of us need to go deeper, much deeper, to the energetic and cellular levels, where we can start become really free from it’s grip.
Would you like to find how to free yourself from past stress, faster and deeper?
If now feels the right time find more freedom, less pain, more energy and action in your work and life, and to uncover which obstacles, at the deepest level, could be in the way of you doing this, then…
This week I am offering 5 ‘FREE UP YOUR LIFE & WORK’ Calls with me, for free.
On these calls we would explore:
– Which of the 5 Key Obstacles could be holding you back now. (These are the core ones I have discovered in my decades working with people).
– I’ll share one easy step to help you start to ease it.
– Then if you’d like my help to go deeper and really shift the affects of past stress, I can let you know the details of, and what could be possible for you in, the 1:1 Healing the Deep Private Retreat with me. (There are spaces available in UK in November, Australia in Dec & Jan, Bali in Jan & Feb.) Or how to start the journey with a series of clinic sessions.
**Like to book one of these 5 free calls with me this week? – Reply to this Email with ‘Call’ in the subject.
Then soon you could be discovering what could be in the way of freedom in your life and work, and how to start clearing your path…
Look forward to talking and hearing what you’re looking forward to doing next, if having one of these calls feels right for you now.
With love
Cassandra Punita
Thank you!