What can I eat that will lower stress? I got this question once in a nutrition presentation. My answer at the time was “nothing legal” But what this person really wanted was what we all want when we’re uncomfortable in our own skin. A quick fix. Lower stress really just means better resilience from the inside out. The truth is double edged. No, there's not one thing you can eat to lower stress. But yes there are lots of things. AND how you eat matters. Today we’ll look at how appetite and hunger are connected to the nervous system and stress response. And some ways you can eat that will calm you from the inside out.

We live in a world that values/celebrates a culture of stress. A society where reacting with too much emotion, where standing up and defending yourself, voicing a different opinion or rocking the boat in anyway is risky behavior. A society that insists we shrink ourselves to fit in it’s boxes instead of finding bigger boxes.

This has led to a systemic detraining of our natural responses to both real and perceived threat. That detraining becomes the foundation of dysfunctional patterned responses to all forms of stress.

The result of the 24/7 news cycle is that we can be constantly bombarded by negative, violent and abusive content. Even if that content isn’t directed at us. The unintended consequences of consuming too much of that content can result in the equivalent of an assault on our nervous system that could range from subtle, chronic worry to outright trauma.

Perhaps you’ve felt it? Debilitating fear, anxiety, panic that comes out of nowhere and knocks you sideways. The people around you can’t understand it and you can’t explain it or rationalize it. Once you’re in the middle of it you can’t talk yourself out of it. You live in fear of the feeling of fear because you’re not exactly sure where it’s coming from.

That’s where Sarah was before she discovered trauma release exercise and the power of the tremor mechanism. I sat down with her to find out more about how TRE changed her life. This is Sarah’s story.

In this episode we go beyond habit change and explore what it takes to disrupt the patterns (samskaras) that we hold to keep us safe. We develop patterns of movement, thought and emotion to keep ourselves safe. It's those patterns that run beneath all our behaviors and habits. If we want to change anything we need to start by disrupting those patterns.