New Year, stress and health.

The entry to 2021 is not how most people imagined the New Year, or any New Year for that matter.  The last 12 months have been one heck of rollercoaster, both on an individual and world level.  For most people the New Year presents itself with an opportunity to re-examine their lives, health and generally what is important to them.  As we have had a year to naval gaze, with many focussing back on the self, returning inwards and allowing that quiet time to become a haven of peace in the world of chaos that is a cause of major stress.  For others, that alone time has almost become a solitary confinement that has not only acted as a mirror, but a magnifying glass on those things that work but those that are part of the stressors in our lives.

Now the new year has dawned, and we are put into further restrictions it becomes even more important to try to focus on those things we can do to create new routines to help us manage our days.  How we deal with the constant barrage of information on a daily basis has an impact on our overall health.  Life seems even more busy, with work and family all under one roof.  Even just having a quiet 3 minutes to make a cup of tea sometimes seems impossible (I have a toddler, I know!)

The immune system works at it’s best when stress levels are at their lowest, so if it means switching off the news for just one night to watch something that makes you laugh (this has proven results to make you healthier) or asking the children to be quiet while you make a drink in peace.  For some it will be jumping and dancing to your favourite music or doing a home workout each morning.  Reducing stress is a large part of what we are all needing at the moment.  Health is more than just the absence of disease.  Health and healing is the moving forward, the progression, and evolution of a new state of being.

“To find health should be the object of the doctor.  Anyone can find disease, health holds dominion over the body by laws as immutable as the laws of gravity”  A. T. Still (Founder of Osteopathy)