During this stress series, I’ve been talking a lot about living in rhythm vs. living an arhythmic life. This is because when you are going against the rhythm of the planet, against the most basic laws that created our reality, negative stress will be created. If you do it for a while, you start breaking down.

Practices like meditation can help you relax and connect with spirit, so you become mentally and physically stronger.

Stress and Spirituality

Spirituality does not come easy to everyone. If you are not a spiritual person, please put all labels aside in order to understand how this might fit into your life. Ask yourself, what does your spirit want in your life, right now? What does it want to experience today? Excitement? Calmness? Movement? If you are truly honest, you will get a greater sense of who you are in a spiritual way.

After getting some answers from your spirit, ask some questions to your body. What does your body want? If you give it some serious thought you might get answers like: “I need to go to sleep” or  “I need a break from food”. Both body and spirit need to be connected and in alignment with your true desires. This is why, if you want to fight stress you first need to identify what it is that is missing from your day to day life.

If you are consistently not listening to what your spirit wants, you may start to develop more and more stress. When we feel like we are living a life that is not ours, we are living arhythmically, not aligned with who we are at a spirit level.

This doesn’t mean that if you connect with what your spirit wants, you will get a definitive answer to stop stress. You need to keep in touch with your spirit because it is always changing its wants and needs. Trying to stay true to an outdated version of yourself will definitely break your rhythm.

For example, you might have longed for security in the past, and that longing led you to get a secure job. But now you loathe going to work and would like nothing more than risking your savings by opening your own business. That’s why you need to check in with spirit regularly. Ask yourself – What do you want to experience today?

Identify Your Biggest Sin

If you are attuned with what your spirit desires, you will naturally pivot. Living in rhythm will generate opportunities that extend beyond our past level of capacity or ability. You become more adaptable and with that more confident taking on new paths. If you do it once, you will live knowing that you can do it again.

When our lives are too bare when you feel like you’re in a grind. Where you’re not living to your own pulsation, your own flow. Negative stress is created when you are going against what you really want. This type of stress does not generate more opportunities or resilience.

There is no question in my mind. If you are not leaving your life aligned on all levels, negative stress will start to show. There are different levels you have to consider. What your body needs, what your energy body needs, what your mental and emotional body needs. And you have to balance it with what your intuition is directing you towards, based on what your spirit is signaling. In order to live in alignment, you need to listen and attune to all layers of the self.

There is more to negative stress than the anxiety you might feel on a daily basis. Over time, stress leads to inflammation, which, in turn, can lead to an immune system that attacks itself. You are dealing with an organism that is disorganized. And disorganized organisms get sick.

The way to fight it is to find a deeper rhythm. To achieve that, you need to have day to day habits and behaviors that suit who you want to become. When I worked as an Ayurvedic practitioner I developed a great way to help people find rhythm.

I found out it helped to look where the person was the most out of rhythm. Where is the biggest sin against the nature of things? Do you stay up too late? Are you eating dinner too late? Are you not hydrating enough? Not sleeping enough? Not letting your digestive system rest by eating too frequently? It is easy to quickly spot where someone is missing the mark. There is no shame in it. What matters is not what you are doing wrong, but the fact that you want to do better. You want to take control and choose what you need.

Connect with Spirit

The best time to connect with spirit and understand what it is you truly want is in the early morning. The energy at dawn allows an expansion of our consciousness, it allows connectivity. At dawn, it is easier to connect with all parts of ourselves. Because as soon as we get past dawn, the energy is dominant, denser and more physical. At that time it is good to exercise.

If we are living on the run, we rarely get the opportunity to take the time, at dawn, to access spirit. Being denied spirit and not tuning in with what we truly want, generates the kind of stress that leads to disintegration. Taking the time to let yourself dissolve and listen to your spirit is enough to start. Just doing it will lead you to do it right.

Meditation helps break stress because it is an act of digestion as much as an act of dissolution. And, as such, it helps you digest stress. When we meditate, we break down thick thought patterns, emotions or sensations into smaller, digestible pieces.

It used to be that human beings had to work on paying attention. But in today’s world, humans need to learn how to relax. That’s where practicing meditation helps. After deeply relaxing and breaking down your patterns, you can start rebuilding.

You’re reorganizing, realigning, attuning to rhythm. And when we’re attuned to rhythm, we are generating the capacity and the ability to become more adaptable and more resilient. Which, in turn, will enable you to be able to handle more positive stress.

Align With Your Potential

Hopefully, after reading this you feel inspired to align your life and check in with your spirit. Only then will you allow your identity to evolve and achieve your full potential. This is the process we develop in our courses at Yogahealer. First, you develop healthy habits with our Body Thrive Program. Then, you start to align your life with your potentiality in the world with Awake Living. If you are serious about spiritual growth, but find it hard to do by yourself, remember, you are not alone.