Let’s just be real here. Unless you’re a munk living on top of a mountain (and if you’re reading this you’re probably not), stress is likely a regular part of your life. Most likely, it’s a much more regular part than you’d like to admit (even to yourself) and one that you haven’t been managing particularly well up to now.
Rest assured though that it isn’t the lack of stress that leads to long healthy life but the adequate management of that stress. The people who live in the Blue Zones aren’t naturally gifted with a stress free life; they just know how to downshift from that stress on a regular daily basis.
Each Blue Zones area downshifts in a different way. For some it’s prayer, for some meditation or yoga (or tai chi). For others it’s just a mid-day nap, called a siesta. The idea is the same, however. To stop whatever is causing stress and just take a much needed break to tune out and tune back into whatever makes you true to you: whatever makes you tick and drives you in the first place. It’s a time to tune into breath, into hope, into rest (and hence into the the much needed parasympathetic sense inside you).
Adding some parasympathetic into our very sympathetic-dominated lives is key to staying youthful and healthy longer. Deep breathing, meditation, yoga… have all been linked with improving our gut microbiome and our gut microbiome being healthy and well-balanced has been linked with us being healthy and well-balanced. That includes positive mental health as well as good physical health. Who would have thought it can be as easy as 1-2-3 (rule number 3 that is).
Need help downshifting? I was a hypnotherapist even before I was a Nutritional Therapist, helping stressed out corporates to downshift through meditation and those who wanted to reach goals that seemed too far away to do so through visualisation.