Stress Series Part 1: Don't Push Me Cuz I'm Close to the Edge, Trying Hard Not to Lose My Head

So Grand Master Flash is speaking from the view of living in the projects, and I'm speaking from the view of being a young career gal in downtown Toronto - but its safe to say that we're both stressed.

Stress oh, stress. Its one of those afflictions which are so easy to aid because its within in our own control to limit, but so hard because its up to our control to limit. And I admit, I'm the worse when it comes to stress management - I sometimes feel I have made a sport of worrying. No, I definitely am not a person who easily goes with the flow.

"Kristen gets many things done, but she insists on making herself so uncomfortable doing it," my mother announced at a family dinner last week. This was a response to being told that my easy going cousin lets life fall into place and somehow always ends up successful.

But I find it so difficult to put my thoughts in a drawer and leave them there for another time. There are so many pressures today that I think many of us feel like we are in a space of going somewhere instead of being somewhere (this is something I have only recently began to overcome). And in this Vata weather I think its amplified. So many of my clients this week have come into the spa breaking out and telling me about their anxieties as they juggle work, relationships, children and change. And of course, on top of this, as many of them are uber ambitious and self-aware, they also take extra courses, volunteer, network and worry about worrying so much. But often this time-poverty also is married with forgetting to care for themselves; skipping meals, forgoing sleep and losing their hair.

And while I have known for many years now that I need to make a point of calming down - recently it really impressed itself upon me while reading the book "Your Life is in Your Hands" by Dr. Krishan Chopra (Father of Deepak) outlined a study conducted on rats to study the effect of stress on our tissues. One group of lab rats were used as a control group, and one group was put under stress by being put into a tank of water for a few minutes everyday to stimulate the stress of drowning. What they found was that these stressed out rats would experience dramatic physical changes within three weeks or less. their hearts, livers, lungs and other organs would harden and become dark and fibrous. If the experiment persists, these rats also will die of "old age" as opposed to the normal, control group of rats who live for two to three years! The effects of stress on our bodies is extremely damaging to their function and health.

In vain terms: this depletion of our tissues will affects our skin and bodies, aging our skin faster than an IPL pulse! And I take this very seriously because God knows I just had an eye bag competition with one of our clients at our Midnight Madness sale yesterday. ("I have bad eye bags!" "What?! No, no, I have bad eye bags!")

So as much work as we put into exercise, eating well, getting monthly facials, performing our skincare regimes and making-up our faces, we need to put into committing to resting our minds. I know, not an easy task.

To quote the wise Mr. Flash: Its like a jungle sometimes and I wonder how I keep from going under.

My next few posts are devoted to discussing how to "keep from going under"...and look great doing it. Feel free to post comments on stress-relieving practices you find useful or you would like me to explore.