Stress

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Stress is your body's physical and emotional response when it thinks you're about to die. It is said at times that a person can experience good stress and bad stress but in reality stress no matter how you label it is not good - not even a little good. This is tantamount to saying eggs are good for you if you only eat one or two a week and reality says that eggs effect our heart and cholesterol and are bad. The egg industry simply lobbied to have that message adjusted so its bottom line would not be adversely effected by the news.

There are tons of things in the human world that are simply bad for you and when that message hits then pressures are applied so that those sending the message are pressured to change it so that the thing is not bad but the thing if used judiciously and in moderation is not so bad for you message. Here is how our bodies, in short, deal with all kinds and levels of stress.

“When our brains perceive what is happening in our world and decides that your life is at risk, your body is given two choices: fight or flight. Your brain turns on the stress response system that is hard wired into your brain and body.” 

Now, you might start to make assumptions that very little in our life that is stressful is about putting our very lives at risk of death but reality says that when stress hits the brain, the lizard brain, does not care or differentiate between causes of that stress as to whether it is life threatening or not - the lizard has one speed when stress hits, danger-danger Will Robinson death is facing us right now so run or fight!

When stress adrenal conditions occur no matter the level or the cause the lizard brain kicks in and dumps the chemical cocktail of the adrenaline family and the lizard goes directly to death fears regardless of what our brains and minds see, smell or perceive in our environment. The levels tend to be about sensitivities and the reasons or intent make no difference. When stress, any stress hits, the body and mind use the same levels of chemical releases as would be triggered if facing a true life or death situation. 

There is NO GOOD stress and that is just how it is and our goals in life is to handle, control, reduce and/or avoid as much stress as we can and I say, “Good Luck with THAT!”

Karate, martial arts, meditation, and other efforts to achieve an immovable mushin present moment mind are about leaving as much as possible thoughts and experiences relived as possible to reduce stress to its absolute minimum. This is about mind-state programming and training and experience building models of practice and training. 

In short, not complete or comprehensive answers, you have to expose yourself to stresses that would help you to know, understand and experience to build up a resistance. Guys and Gals who work in professions that have lots of stress will tell you that over time and not all the time their experiences help lesson the stresses making them capable of doing the job while lessening the effects that effect how they do the job because sometimes, most times, you will just have to experience and deal with stresses.

Now, here is the kicker you already know but may not be consciously considering, “How you handle stress matters as to how bad that stressor effects you physically, mentally and as to heath, etc.” It is like using positive self-talk vs. negative self-talk while both have beneficial effects, at least initially, the negative will in time add lots of stress to your stress. Positive self-talk without burying your head in the sand and ignoring the stress triggers helps you deal with stress so that you can combat that stress through experience for the future and so on. Make sense?

Karate, martial arts and other such disciplines are about learning of stress triggers, understanding the stress triggers and then accumulating experience of handling the triggers and stresses to build up a type of resistance allowing us to apply our skills through the adrenal stress conditioned repercussions and so on. Make sense?

Something else, if you don’t know about stress triggers and the stress conditions and the stress repercussions; if you don’t know that you don’t know; if you don’t accept the facts of human life and existence; if you don’t learn, understand, train and build experience of those stress triggers, etc. then you are doomed to experience the past over and over again without relief or the coping skills that allow you to toughen your proverbial skin toward stress. Failure to achieve such goals is not an option for stress and stress repercussions are like the Borg, resistance is futile. You can’t resist and ignore them for they dig under your subconscious and cause the damage while leaving you ignorant unless you decide to face them head on appropriately. 

Adrenaline stress conditions are triggered.

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