How’s the lockdown affecting you?

The first couple of weeks was like a holiday, but the fact is now that for many of us holiday mode has become the new normal and thankfully the weather has been wonderful for exercising and gardening. However there are many that are less fortune trying to balance working from home with their partners, caring for parents and homeschooling their children. Many having to work late at night having entertained their children all day. Stress and tension levels are high and moods low, combined with anxious times ahead and not knowing when we can partly return to normal life if ever.

For myself, I have the worry of my overheads at Essential Well-being, an empty building with all my equipment redundant, not knowing when my team can start work again. Underlaying stress and anxiety caused inflammation and breakouts , which is unheard of and my neck and shoulder tightened causing tension headaches.

How’s the lock down affected you?

Have you noticed any change ?
Has your skin changed? Has it become dry and sensitised?
Has your eczema or psoriasis flared up?
Do you feel more tired even though you are doing less ?
Does your body feels tight and fatigued and ache like mine?

These symptoms maybe due to increased cortisol levels, cortisol creates an inflammatory response, reduces the immune system and delays recovery. Increased cortisol is the worst thing for us at the moment as we need to be increasing our immune systems ability to keep us healthy and protect us from this virus.

The link between the mind and the body has been known for centuries, negative thoughts and low mood can affect us more than we realise, re-occurring negative thoughts can play havoc with our skin, reduce our immune system and lead to illness and depression.

Let’s talk about skin first, skin is a gauge of what’s going on underneath and tapping into the mind skin link is becoming increasingly recognised. Skin conditions occur when your stress levels are high, it can takes days or even weeks before symptoms present in skin, often being unassociated with the stress trigger.

Both physical and mental stress provokes a neurogenic response in the skin, this neurogenic response tiggers inflammatory conditions and histamine resulting with inflamed breakouts, dryness, sensitivity, Eczema, Rosacea and Psoriasis.
Skin conditions go hand in hand with anxiety, panic attacks and depression.

Stress affects our bodies with variety of symptoms; muscular pain, headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, fatigue, insomnia, heartburn and hormone fluctuations are just a few examples.

Whist Essential Well-being is closed and we cannot offer any touch therapies, I’m going to give you a few tips to practice at home to help you through and this difficult time. We are all missing the normal, missing our friends and work colleagues, meals out, socialising, the gym or our fitness class, the normal so now is the perfect time to introduced a self care routine, a self healing practice, I don’t mean doing a hit class twice a week, I mean something to help you relax and reduce your cortisol and calm your unconscious mind which is driving our needs for normal.

Once or twice a week, take some time out, even if you just shut yourself away and have a relaxing bath.
Try a breathing practice, breath in for 6 seconds, breath out for 6 seconds, you can do this for a minute to start with and build on time up to 5 minutes. This type of breathing reduces cortisol and takes you from your sympathetic nervous system into your parasympathetic system, I try and practice this daily.

Mindfulness is calming, try painting, or colouring, its eases the pressure in your mind and is very therapeutic.
There are loads of meditations on line, try and reboot your mind, just tin minutes will help.
Take time for your body,massage your skin with calming lavender oil, do some gentle stretches or yoga to ease tension in your muscles. All of these will slow your system down and reduce cortisol and help to maintain your health. Simple! If you build this into your routine now, it will help you to cope with your return to the new normal.

For further advice or online consulting to help elevate anxiety and stress please call Essential Well-being on 07960 003061.

We offer online, FaceTime and zoom sessions for Meditation, EFT and Hypnosis to support you through this time of adjustment.

Stay safe, Stay home, Stay healthy, Stay Stress free.