COVID-19: Calming Your Nervous System

COVID-19 times can be stressful times… 

Between the obsessive hand-washing, mandatory masks, and food/toilet paper hoarding, we’re surrounded on all sides by potential stressful triggers.

So, what’s a person to do?

For starters, if you find yourself feeling heightened anxiety and stress, cut yourself some slack.

From an evolutionary standpoint, anxiety has its place. It can help spur us into action and encourage us to problem solve better and faster. (Some studies have even shown that certain levels of anxiety can cause us to have better empathic accuracy!)

Second, it’s important that you find ways of processing and moving through the anxiety you’re feeling. In the wild, when an animal survives an attack, its natural physiological response is to shake its body to rid itself of stress.  

Stress and fear can really rev our bodies up. And – This energy has to have somewhere to go, otherwise, you’ll just end up feeling uncomfortably stuck in overdrive.

It stands to reason then, that – like the animals in the wild – you need to find ways of moving your body to ensure you’re properly processing stress.

When it comes to movement and keeping the body healthy and strong, I have a lot of really smart friends who are experts in the field.

Case in point: my good friend, Karen Kelly has a Ph.D. in exercise and metabolic physiology performance. She and I recently had a chat about the role movement and exercise play in helping to calm our nervous systems and relieve stress.

I think you’ll really enjoy the talk and get a lot out of Karen’s deep insights.