Hello everyone! So today, I want to talk about how to heal anxiety holistically. First, I want to share my thoughts on what fear is and what holistic healing is.
So you have anxiety as a symptom of an underlying imbalance. Whether in our body or mind, fear is a symptom of an imbalance in body or mind. Or the inequality is in a combination of the two for a long time.
Especially for our psychological or mental well-being, given anxiety depression, everything psychological was thought to be a little bit only in the brain. That is unfair.
We understand that we are a whole person, which means an interconnected relationship between our mind, brain, and body.
So if we want to heal holistically, we need to think about both.
Five tips for holistic healing of anxiety.
This one appeals to me because those of you who have been following me for a while and have read my story know that I am someone who has had chronic anxiety for a lifetime. So, it was an important task to heal from that holistically.
I’ve had my share of nightmares, hyperventilation, and panic attacks. It wasn’t until I changed my lifestyle and incorporated these five points that I’m going to share with you today that I could genuinely heal at the deepest level.
And honestly, at this point, I wouldn’t even describe myself as someone who suffers or suffers from anxiety, which is unbelievable.
So what have we done to heal holistically?
The first thing that was important to me was to make a necessary shift in my diet. My belief about nutrition is that certain foods are more likely to prevent sleep.
In general, I don’t think there is a “one size fits all model” for whether it’s diet or nutrition plan, whatever we want to call it for what works for everyone.
I don’t believe in that. You have to test it on yourself, what increases your stress and when you become calmer with certain foods.
I think what’s more likely or realistic is that we need to learn to communicate with our bodies.
That we ask and know because I think everybody knows what it wants. Whatever it needs, no matter how much. Recognize, however, that there are great, eye-catching foods that many of us eat, a lot of that we know for sure are damaging our gut right now.
What happens when our intestines are damaged?
There can be so many hormonal, physiological imbalances, and emotional due to anxiety, with increased stress being one of them. So the big, big problem foods I suggest we try to minimize, at least if it’s not eliminated from our diet.
This big problem is for every person: gluten, sugar and everything processed enormously, such as process food.
So when you read, if you have foods with labels, make sure you read those labels.
If you can’t identify or imagine where that item or ingredient came from, or can’t even tell it was probably lab-made, then it’s something you’ll want to stay away from for your health. Unhealthy food causes an imbalance in both mind and body.
Another big problem area for these processed foods is restaurants.
So those of you dining out, be careful. I would have avoided the fried food in any case. Restaurants oils are hugely processed and problematic, so gluten is the process’s sugars.
The more we can limit it, the more we let our gut heal naturally.
That could go a long way in balancing your body, balancing your hormones, and resolving some, if not all, of those anxiety symptoms. The excitement, the restlessness, the quick thoughts, the brain fog all need to be balanced.
This fog can change a lot if you watch what you eat. Also, watch what you don’t eat. Every small change will bring along change.
Breathwork helps to heal holistically.
This breathwork is such an effective means of achieving a significant anxiety reduction. Why is breathwork so important? I do it every morning. It’s so important. As you know, we have the nervous system.
One of these is called the sympathetic nervous system. That nervous system is also known as the hunter and flight response. Some of you have heard that word.
The other is called the parasympathetic nervous system, otherwise known as the rest and digestion.
The problem with fear is that most of us who are anxious are chronically activated by that sympathetic nervous system, that fight and flight response that has chemical consequences.
We have cortisol, the stress hormone that doesn’t mix well with anxiety, adrenaline flowing through our body, we feel tense. It just makes us more anxious.
The way those nervous systems work is like the brake and throttle in a car, meaning when one is on one, the other is off.
So if we’re in a regular combat flight, it means our parasympathetic nervous system isn’t on. Then it is not used as it could or should be. Breathwork is our key to activating that manual parasympathetic nervous system. So, I wrote some articles about breathwork.
You can take a look at how to do it. If I were to ask you to put one hand on your chest and one hand on your stomach, your belly, and, of course, breathe, the hand that would move is probably the hand on your chest.
That’s fine. Most of us are chest breathers.
The breath we’re looking for, the one that activates the parasympathetic nervous system, is that deep abdominal breath.
So practicing deep abdominal breathing will feel weird at first. I had to teach my body to breathe from this deep belly when I was starting. I couldn’t do it if I were having a hard time.
Many people I work with have success by lying down in the beginning. But all it takes is a hand on your stomach and just being super aware of whether you want to breathe out of your nose or out of your mouth. Or whatever is most comfortable for you, to make sure we direct that breath down there to that belly.
Every time we do that, we activate that parasympathetic nervous system.
Ah, many people I’ve suggested to start with this exercise will feel the difference almost immediately. They will report: I feel calmer. The body feels calmer.
So to use this, as I always say, it’s essential to do it consistently. Just make it a habit to give yourself one or two deep, deep belly breaths every day—another great way to use this.
When you start to feel your anxiety, your stress increases in those moments immediately.
At this point, we may even notice that we go to our abdomen with the right hand and then, as usual, take a deep breath there. One or two of the ones you know can be an essential step to chill out. If you have a scary encounter, give it a try.
Meditation to Heal Holistically!
This method is essential, so like breathwork, meditation allows us to activate that power from the parasympathetic nervous system. So meditation is vital for all these reasons and another important reason. Meditation is important.
Many of us who struggle with fear are so stuck in our heads.
Whether we’re worried about tomorrow’s worst-case scenario the battle we’re having, we’re constantly replaying the argument, the argument, the match, etc.
Whatever it is, we are way too much on our minds. Meditation is thus a tool that allows us to practice two crucial skills. I have many articles on meditation. I want you to find out using the search function.
It will give you more depth on how to meditate.
But what we do when we meditate are two things.
We teach ourselves how to separate ourselves from our thoughts. Meditating isn’t an easy skill, but it goes a long way in helping us heal holistically.
So learn how to separate from our thoughts and learn how to choose where to focus my attention.
Those are essential tools for anxiety reduction with holistic healing.
I know myself. Before, I had so many racing thoughts and was distracted all day. Furthermore, I also had trouble listening to whoever was speaking to me. I am as temperamental as slightly ADHD.
The next was that I had trouble reading and remembering what I read on television shows. I think many of us out there have a lot of consequences if we’re too much in our heads.
So if I have my racing thoughts all day long learning how to separate myself from those thoughts, then I don’t have to jump down their crazy rabbit hole.
And I can choose to pay attention to what I’m doing and what I’m around.
That’s incredibly powerful for those of us who struggle with racing thoughts.
Such meditation. Watch and develop a version of an exercise sometime during your day.
It is also suitable for anxiety reduction.
The future self-journaling to heal holistically!
The future self-journaling was an impactful new tool, writing that future self-diary that I started at the beginning of my recovery journey.
Future self-journaling is essentially taking a moment to imagine how I want to be. How I wish to change so specifically for life with much less fear, taking a moment to write that full intention is future self-journaling.
Whether at the beginning of my day or the end of my day, it is so important to think about my relationship with my anxiety during the day, with my thoughts, with my reactions, and then imagine myself in what ways I want to see that change!
So if I take a moment at the start of my day to imagine what I want my day to look like with a specific intention – e.g., anxiety reduction, discipline, regular exercise, etc., that has an effect. So that will keep me from getting caught up in my thoughts all day long.
I will isolate myself, choose what to focus my attention on, and work on my deep breathing to stay calm.
So, at night that can help not just have my brain imagine that I’m different. The beauty of the brain is that it doesn’t know the difference between what happens and what is pictured and supposed.
For example, if I set out that intention at the beginning of my day or even the evening before the start of my day, it will work through in my unconscious.
So even the practice of thinking about myself, this new person who isn’t anxious about the future, fires up my brain in a new way that could be helpful then. If you do that enough, intensively enough, and consistently long enough, you’ll hit a turning point.
So once I’ve done that, it’s much more likely that I’ll be thinking about doing that all day long. Deep belly breathing is good to remember to choose what to focus my attention on, so this can be an impactful tool.
I know many of you out there that I’ve heard that you have played with had great success. So check it out and dig a little deeper. This breathwork can be very helpful for anxiety.
Getting to sleep is vital for our holistic healing!
Many of us don’t sleep much. Many of us, especially those with anxiety, don’t sleep much. Lack of sleep is tricky because I know, at least for myself, that it’s because of my fear that I slept the least.
My worst sleep is restorative, which means when our body sleeps, all our brain sells is healing, it recovers, it starts building balance again. That’s incredibly important, especially for our emotional world and anxiety reduction. However, too little sleep increases anxiety.
The problem with not sleeping when we struggle with anxiety is the less sleep we get.
The less sleep we get, the closer we are to that fight-flight response. Furthermore, the more we are into fight-flight response, the more we become almost overactive.
It’s like saying that if our emotions were on a scale of 1 to 10 if I was always on a seven or eight, I’d be using those little things in energy all day long.
And now I have that whole fight or flight response to my body.
The less we sleep, the more chances we have of going from 2 to 3 to 7 on that emotional scale. So it is imperative to sleep. That may mean making sure you rest in bed or allowing yourself the correct hours of sleep.
That can happen.
Eight hours of sleep is excellent again.
We all differ in how much we need. But make time to sleep. And this is where this comes into play again. If we try to sleep well, that stops me. That is the case with many of us.
That’s when our minds go to the races.
Ensure we don’t get caught up in those quick thoughts that could activate our bodies. They can keep us awake. Let’s make sure we practice breathwork, future self diaries, or meditation right now. Practicing those holistic healing skills prevents us from going through crazy thoughts.
We’re not going to worry about tomorrow to the point where I’m sacrificing my hours of sleep right now, so these two could be gasping for breath.
If you find yourself having a hard time relaxing, these two holistic healing methods (mediation and breathwork) can help you get to sleep, but make sure you will sleep.
So I hope you found this helpful. These tools are hugely transformative for me and, in fact, deeply healed my lifelong relationship with fear. I always knew about meditation. Also, during my service, as a para-command with a fear of heights.
I played with breathwork now and then, but literally, it wasn’t until I started doing all this and treating my whole person consistently that I could heal.
So remember, guys, try not to get overwhelmed.
Roll out a small 12-minute exercise, very small, because what’s so important is that it’s consistent.
You can continually expand later.
Just make sure you start somewhere, and you’re just doing enough exercises to fit into your day because that’s going to change if you can engage your mind and body and balance yourself.
Thank you!
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