"Soul Rest" Affects Our Mental Health
After months of isolation and adversity our brain has been exposed to high levels of stress. Our brain needs balance with ‘Soul Rest’. When we balance our stress, we bolster our coping skills, problem solving improves and our body physically heals.
“Soul Care IS Self Care”
‘Soul Rest’ Affects Our Mental Health
In the recent sermon series of Bethany United Methodist Church, “Soul Care IS Self-Care”, we heard ‘push the pause button’ for ‘Soul Rest’. Soul Rest is essential in maintaining our mental health. Among the many benefits, ‘rest’ assists in detoxifying the brain and body from stress. Rest allows the brain to calm and become reacquainted again with the body.
Stress is an established part of our existence. Stress is not something that lives in a sort of abstract tale of our thoughts. Stress actually lives in the body, in the heart and gut. Just as we feel joy in our chest, stress happens inside the body, kicking in the fight or flight system releasing hormones and disconnecting us from our body.
When the stress hormones are elevated for too long it can have a negative effect, changing the brain and body. The immune system reacts and attacks the body, showing different side effects such as inflammation, stomach aches, headaches, irritable bowel, lower back pain, hypertension, and low concentration - to name a few. The body symptoms are endless.
Stress is an emotion, and emotions are physical! Negative emotions are described by individuals in their own words such, as feeling awful, dread, helpless, disgust, horror, panic, anxiety, fear, depressed … along with the descriptions of body aches and pains. These emotions and physical pain symptoms can lead people to be afraid to feel what they feel and thus avoid their body.
In response to stress, we may tell ourselves we need to rest, but are we really resting? A core issue is when people avoid their body. Too often they will self-medicate with working, eating, drugs, alcohol, pornography, shopping online … wanting to escape, forget, and/or become numb in efforts to calm the body from stress.
After months of isolation and adversity our brain has been exposed to high levels of stress. Our brain needs balance with ‘Soul Rest’. When we balance our stress, we bolster our coping skills, problem solving improves and our body physically heals. How are you detoxifying your body during the stressful times of the pandemic?