De-Stressing: Core, not periphery, for your well-being

Want to take stress seriously? Participate in societal-change initiatives, deepen into silence, and get massages.

STRESS. We all talk about it. None of us like it, and most Americans experience a fair amount of it.

But most of us are used to it. We act like it is normal to be stressed. Because for most of us, it is. To not be stressed seems to be the privileged of a few very wealthy individuals - or perhaps some monks, small children, or maybe some imaginary, carefree 20-something (when I was in my 20s, I was NOT a stress-free young woman, that's for sure).

So when something can help you de-stress - like massage, or meditation, or daily exercise - it is easy to just ignore it. Probably the fact that there are advertisements saying you can "destress" and "Get away from it all" (code for de-stressing) ALL over the place doesn't help. Advertisers know how much we crave less stress in our lives, and they make use of it. More advertisements - at least for me - actually produces more, not less stress. Or at least, I tend to ignore them.

Don't ignore this.

And then the other day I was talking to a leading medical professional of diabetes in New York City. Stress, he reminded me, is one of three primary ways blood sugar fluxuates. Blood sugar fluxuations are the cause of the many complications of diabetes - from numbness to amputations. And anyone living in NYC is under a lot of stress.

I raised my eyebrow at that last one. I have lived in England, India and Kenya and never buy the hype that NYC is "all that" (good or bad). Its a huge city in the United States, but I never see it as the center of the world.

"Look," he said to me. "Just day to day activity in NYC is stressful: shopping, commuting, visiting friends on the otherside of town - your senses are ambushed with all sorts of often unpleasant and stressful sights and sounds. And then there's the cost of housing and food here. And all the garbage on the street. You may ignore it, but it adds up. Just living here is stressful."

I think I knew that, but I'm used to it.

Walking home that day I looked around me: the trash in the streets, the drug dealer on the corner, the police on another corner, the fried chicken shop next to the pharmacy that gives you the drugs for what happens when you eat too much fried chicken. Yes, this place is stressful - if you open your eyes and let yourself see what is around you. Most of us grow a bit desensitized to it after a while, we don't really see it. On the one hand, that is necessary - on the other, it has an impact on us we don't necessarily experience.

And that's not counting the stresses of work, earning enough money to live here, paying medical or student debt, keeping up appearances. It doesn't count abusive relationships, screaming neighbors, consistant sirens in the middle of the night, or too many people living too close, and not enough time in nature - which has proven health benefits.

Somehow, something about the conversation hit me. It struck through the "yeah yeah yeah," I know all that, voice.

Stress is amongst the leading causes of chronic diseases, which is the leading cause of death in the United States after drug-related death.

Let me say that again. Because it is easy to not really get this point, because we are de-tuned to even appreciating how serious - how toxic - our everyday life usually is.

Stress kills us. Stress is linked to coronary vascular disease, obesity, diabetes, and autoimmune disorders. In 2012, 3 out of 4 visits to the doctor were for stress-related conditions. 1 in 5 Americans experience "extreme stress" (shaking, heart palpations, depressions). 44% of people loose sleep every night due to stress. Stress actually SHRINKS the brain.

And, lets be honest and clear: stress is experienced more often and with greater acuteness in racial and minority minority groups, especially those who live in violent neighborhoods and are touched by the prison system.

Stress reduction: cultural transformation

Best way to reduce stress? Change the whole system.

Or at least that's my current best suggestion. Stress comes from our whole way of life - the food we eat, the way we live, the prison industrial complex, racial inequality, job insecurity, lack of enough holidays, and a general system that does not put the human being and the earth's health first and foremost. If we are all in the rat race, and the rat race is causing us stress, and stress is killing us, then how about stopping the whole darn rat race? And don't say that's not possible.

Yes, I really am saying that if we want to put our personal health at the center of our attention, we need to put societal and ecological health at the center of our work.

But figuring out how, and taking action towards another world, is not easy. Or particularly stress-free. Stressed, overweight, chronically under-the-weather and dis-eased people are not as likely to have time/energy to create an alternative socio-economic-ecological country. One based on an ethic of care for ourselves and one another and that lives in respect to the ancient wisdom of this incredibly fruitful and fertile country - which is increasingly being paved over with concrete and shopping malls. Join the Poor People's Campaign and the awesome work of Rev William Barber, and you will be joining many other people who are also, well, stressed. Join a lot of other folk who are, as civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer so famously said, "sick and tired of being sick and tired."

Massages, meditation, and social change

I'm an artist, a life-long massage therapist-type-person (I've been helping to relieve people's physical pain since I was 7 years old), a minister, and a daughter of wild places. So I am not going to look at the killer that is stress and just say you should meditate more. Meditation, properly understood, has a significant role to play in enabling societal transformation. But its not just about your cushion. Or rather, your breath is far more powerful than just to reduce your heart palpations after a too-long-day at the office. Or in someone else's office, taking out someone else's trash. Your breath is your life. Your breath is part of the breath of all life.

Silence: silence can be the source of rejuvenation and the place where we find the meaning that we need overcome the many contradictions of our life and our world. Silence has a place in our life beyond any particular tradition, carried throughout cultures and generations because it is at the source of so many of the greatest traditions.

Nor am I going to propose that massages can do it all. OR that marches can do it all. OR that the best social welfare programs or job security programs can do it all. It just doesn't work that way. I think you probably know that.

And massages really do help. Physical touch done with care and consent can significantly support our capacities. I don't live in an either-or, activist-or-spiritual, massage-or-marching, kind of world. Stored up in your body are the stresses of your mind. Massages help get them out. Sacred Bodywork is even better than that (in my humble opinion) because it works at the energetic and narrative dimensions of what is stored in your body. Bodywork shifts your mood. Research suggests that regular massages (not necessarily one-off massages - that's part of why I encourage people to buy packages) can reduce the negative impacts of chronic illness and lower your blood pressure and heart rate. Both physical and psychological stresses are reduced during and after the massage. Even a 15-20 minute chair massage can make a difference in oxygen levels.

Long walks in the woods (or other nature-infused area) and other forms of exercise, doing art (including coloring!), touching the earth, and talking about what's really going on for you (also known as having good friends and/or good therapists) and laughing a lot are also good. And the silence in which you can come to know that you are loved beyond all measures, metrics, evaluation tools, or progress reports.

The Ideal, the Real, and the Possible

In my ideal world, social change organizations would be infused with massage therapists and spas would have information about social change programs - and business leaders would frequent both spaces often and there would be free acupressure for vulnerable populations. Church leaders would eat healthy food and their congregations would stop serving store-bought cookies on styrofoam plates. I wouldn't have to spend so much time trying to explain the connections between doing societal healing work (from working in a prison as a chaplain to designing disaster response systems) and my sacred bodywork. And the "how to de-stress" advertisements, books, classes, yoga fliers and motivational speeches would incorporate the need for an organic food system and clean air for everyone, regardless of where they live or the color of their skin.

In the world I live in, I'm making small steps towards that. My house is looking at holistic health - for our neighborhood as well as for ourselves - more seriously. I'm giving and receiving more bodywork - and spending more time working towards tangible change in my neighborhood. I'm not eating past 9pm at night and not working past midnight (which is a step in the right direction for me - I know there is more to go). I'm spending time with my godchildren and my friends as well as designing new webinars on decolonization for health professionals and looking for some more aromatherapy oils for my clients. And I'm getting better at resting in gratitude. Gratitude for dreams, gratitude for health practictioners of all kinds (from mothers making medicine at home to doctors working on the complications of diabetes to ministers holding prayer circles with abused women to sound healers). Because there is a wholeness that is beyond the fractured lives that lead to so much stress. And in that wholeness, there are worlds coming into being we can barely imagine. So go ahead. Get a massage. Carve out some time for some silence. Pray with your grandmother. And see if you and your neighbors can plant a garden with and for people who need the food - as well as the flowers.