Anxious, Bloated, Low energy...I could go on...

Anxious
Bloated
Low energy
Neck pain
Difficulty sleeping
Nervous energy all day

These were just a handful of the symptoms a new client was experiencing probably 12 years ago when I had my first gym.

He hadn’t come to me for help with these things. He was a lawyer working the sort of hours lawyers do and had put these things down as par for the course.

I’d recently began studying the nervous system. I’d learned that during a high alert state (sympathetic) a bunch of things have to happen inside in order to support that state.

Decreased digestive activity was one of them.

(Along with decrease fuel storage, decreased insulin activity, decreased immune response, decreased social skills, increased blood pressure, heart rate, and muscle tension among other things.)

With this in mind we made three changes.

- 30 minute walk at lunch time
- No phone during lunch hour
- No snacking

Pretty simple right?

It was enough to balance his nervous system.

The anxiety, bloating, neck pain and nervous energy went away. The sleep improved and his energy increased. As a result he started getting better results from 2 training session per week than he had with 5.

This sparked my fascination with the nervous system. The nervous system is never not scanning the environment in order to prepare us to survive, strive or thrive.

The way it decides how to prepare the body is determined by the meaning we (unconsciously) attached to our environment in the past based on the most threatening memory.

I realised that by incovering and reviewing that meaning I could help myself and my clients to literally switch the body from survival mode along with its negative impact on health and social skills to Thrive mode that improved health, social skills and creativity.

There is still a strange stigma around stress and mental health that makes no sense at all. These challenges are the inevitable consequence of being alive. It’s time we started teaching this in our school and our businesses and reaping the immeasurable rewards of high energy, high performance, connected and creative, collaborative humans.