STRESS a word we are all too familiar with. What to one person could seem crazy stressful to another could be nothing, but each of us feel the enormous pressure of dealing with events that challenge us. Whatever kind of life you lead, the way you deal with stress will define what you can achieve in your life.
Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness have just written a great book called Peak Performance in which they discuss the abilities that help us sustain peak performance. One of the great takeaways from the book was the above phrase Stress + Rest = Growth. They noted how many top athletes and amazing creatives actually made their biggest breakthroughs in the periods of rest that straddled their training, performance, and times of great production. The funny thing is that often we find the stress part even easier than the rest part, but the inability to take that rest leads to our peak performance being unsustainable and us burning out. To rest actually takes discipline.
One of the reasons for this is that the hormones that our body produces when we are stressed (and by stress I don’t just mean ‘negative stress’ but even just intense exertion), are addictive. Hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol. Once they have flooded the body, we want to keep going, after all these hormones make us feel good, think clearly and act sharp. But if we don’t take a break and allow the levels of these hormones to naturally decline we end up with adrenal overload, adrenal fatigue and simply feeling like we have been poisoned by our own adrenaline and cortisol. Ask anyone who has suffered from adrenal fatigue and they will tell you that too much stress hormones does not feel good. In the long term burnout leads to serious lack of productivity and can even leave you feeling depressed and unmotivated.
The Stress Anti-dote
Yoga is the best antidote to stress
The anti-dote to all this is simply giving your parasympathetic nervous system time to catch up. We need to do things that help the body and mind relax. You could say that our mission at Sanya is to share all the tools to help this process. Yoga, Meditation, the Spa Facilities, Body Work such as Massage and our many workshops are all designed to give you the tools to let your left brain rest and allow your right brain to have some fun. In the long term this will boost your creativity, help you focus and be happier and healthier as you sustain your peak performance.
The invitation is this. Simply take a break, give yourself time to go to a yoga class or relax in the spa….and see how much better and more productive you feel next time you are at your desk.
