When you are under extreme stress, your body reacts and your fight or flight system kicks in. However, as our bodies are actively trying to protect us, we can experience real physiological effects from our psychological stressors. Our ability to heal ourselves depends in large part on our ability to manage those stressors.
Listen in as Nancy Crowell, RN, discusses stress and the importance of finding your inner healing resources.
Selected Podcast
Stress Management: Discovering Your Inner Healing Resources
Featured Speaker:
Nancy Crowell, RN
Nancy Crowell is a certified vascular nurse with over 20 years of experience working with Peripheral Artery Disease. Her career has been enhanced by Integrative Healthcare education and certification with the American Holistic Nurses Association. Transcription:
Stress Management: Discovering Your Inner Healing Resources
Melanie Cole (Host): When you’re under extreme stress, your body reacts, and your fight-or-flight system kicks in, however as our bodies are actively trying to protect us we can experience real physiologic effects from our psychological stressors. Our ability to heal ourselves depends in large part on our ability to manage those stressors. My guest today is Nancy Crowell. She’s a Certified Vascular Nurse at United Vascular Clinic, part of Allina Health. Welcome to the show, Nancy. So what happens to our body when we are under extreme stress?
Nancy Crowell (Guest): First of all, thank you, so much for allowing me to be here. I’m super excited to share this topic. Overall, my approach to this is more of a holistic approach. Our body, when we’re undergoing stress, there’s a lot of chemical reaction. There’s a lot of physical, emotional, and spiritual effects of stress in our lives. We take it to the level of – we’ve got a fabulous prevention clinic that addresses the medical and interventions that we can do as far as surgeries and angiograms and such, but then encouraging our patients to recognize that just with a simple breath, you can also help manage those stressors that play a key role in developing disease states, such as atherosclerosis and plaques that build up in our arteries.
Melanie: Well, Nancy, we’ve heard over the years -- and as Eastern Medicine makes its way really more into the mainstream -- we’ve heard that our bodies have this amazing ability to help us heal whether it’s from stressors or even cancer, heart disease, all of these things if we treat it right, use our spiritual side, and as you say the holistic and complementary side – so speak about some of those kinds of things that we can do – you mentioned breathing – what do we do? How do we use things like breathing and aromatherapy and massage to help us help our bodies?
Nancy: Sure, the first key to understanding all of this is we have to understand that we are always capable of healing. We may not always be able to cure, but we can always heal. They have different definitions. Getting rid of a diseased state or condition, that’s curing. We’re geared towards healing and that we can always accomplish. Let’s take breathing, for example, encouraging our patients to visualize the breath going in – I always say, “How about trying lights? Your whole body just illuminates, and when you exhale, smoke is released, anything that doesn’t belong to you is now released and feel the change that happens with that simple breath.” We use aromatherapy – it complements it beautifully in that they smell great, but they have an actual impact on what’s happening inside of our body. When we’re inhaling that, it goes up into our limbic system, it sends a message to our body, so I find breathing exercises coupled with maybe some lavender – I have a diffusor going -- or some soft music, people, truly notice a difference just within minutes of a calm, mindful breath. When I say mindful breath, it’s that visualization that you’re seeing that transformation take place in your body.
The other key piece of that is energy. We have energy flowing in our body just like we do arteries and veins. If you have a blockage in your energy system, it manifests itself just as you would if you had a blocked artery. That’s a problem, and it needs to be fixed. In your visualization, envision your body as a beautiful flow of energy, you’re creating open channels, you’re opening yourself up to healing, you’re opening yourself up to this bright light of wisdom that guides you down the path of what you need to do to take care of yourself. Like Einstein says, “We can’t create or destroy energy, but you can transform it.” If you have stress let’s change that, let’s try to transform that and then visualize the stress just going away and instead, you have courage and hope. Instead of fear let’s transform that to wisdom. Instead of anger, let’s have peace. It’s this transformation that I encourage people to see that we’re working with energy because emotions and feelings are energy, so let’s transform that energy to allow our bodies to have that energetic flow that’s natural to our own – that’s our innate ability – and we tend to put blockages there by our stresses. Let’s open up those channels and get back to the healing state that’s natural to us.
Melanie: And what about the importance of touch because even – some studies have proved that a good, long hug can reduce your cortisol levels, increase your serotonin levels and really calm your heart rate down, things like touch and even some types of therapy, music therapy, imagery, speak about those kinds of things.
Nancy: Yeah, that is very powerful too, and classes that I’ve taken and patients to them working with you, they describe that you feel that. If somebody even comes and puts their hands behind you and even touches your shoulder for example, that immediately – and everyone’s different, some people don’t want that, but those who are open to it -- most people can’t deny the calming sense of just having somebody place their hands on your back, or what I like to teach patients to do is do a self-applied massage. Even your own touch, if you put a little essential oil – and it’s diluted of course – rub that on your feet before you go to bed, rub it on your hands, again we’re using mindfulness because what we’re doing is we’re sending messages to our body. Thank your feet for taking you through life, and your hands and the touch of what you experience throughout the day. Touching another person like we say, “in hug,” that just completely sends this calming response and in the middle of treatment when I’m working with somebody when we do a massage, they instantly verbalize that they feel so much better. It’s a great coupling with music oils and massage, too.
Melanie: These are all great ways to do that. Especially women, Nancy, we negatively self-talk ourselves so much that we sometimes put that block on our ability to use some of these things – energy work or, massage, or breathing exercises, because we’re so hard on ourselves. What do you tell women that constantly berate themselves and use all this negative self-talk against ourselves?
Nancy: Well with the integrative therapies that’s one of the things I love is that there are so many out there to choose from. Each person’s palate of their modalities that work for them is going to be a little bit different, but one thing I think is important for everybody – especially women who are hard on themselves – is journaling. If you can just jot down each day, start with something simple. What are you grateful for today -- something good that happened today. Or telling them to go back and look at themselves and what did you accomplish today, or what made you feel good today. Even one or two things each day – if you have a journal and then you can refer to it each day, that’s very powerful in healing as well. The other piece that I say is that I keep going back to the transformation of energy. These feelings that we put on ourselves with stress and the demand that we’re trying to raise kids, and work, and clean. Give yourself some love time too. A foot massage is so simple, and it doesn’t take time because that’s the cycle we get in, we say we don’t have time to do this because we’re busy and then that compounds the stress so doing a simple foot massage before you go to bed takes five minutes. Breathing throughout the day, people will see the difference when you associate a meaning to it rather than just running to the office, how about when you’re approaching the door, you take two slow, deep breaths before you enter. See yourself just light up and exhale what doesn’t belong to you and move on to your day. You will notice a difference in how you feel. You can transform this energy.
Melanie: And one thing that didn’t use to be so prominent and now is, is fueling that healing with nutrition. What do you say to people when they say, “What are some sort of toxic things I should try and stay away form or some things that can contribute to this negative energy?”
Nancy: I’m pretty careful about when I try to get too specialized – I’m not a nutritionist, so the great thing about the prevention program where I work is we’ve got specialists who are very good at informing patients about what things are good about promoting good health and how you feel. I focus more on – what I would say to somebody, in that case, is you have to use some common-sense things, but what foods – how do you feel after certain foods because some foods just make you feel rotten, period. Avoid those things. Those are common-sensical [sic] things that I would recommend and of course getting a good nights’ sleep, but I don’t get too much into the nutrition piece because we have such fabulous experts who address that in a good, comprehensive package.
Melanie: So wrap it up for us then with your best advice about the ways that we can manage some of the stress, to discover inner healing resources that we all possess already.
Nancy: I would summarize it by saying this is a really fun journey. When you discover – just think about the fact that everything is energy. If you’ve got stress, think of it as energy and transform it. We know that you can transform energy. Play with different ways of accomplishing that, whether it’s breathing, dancing, music, acupuncture, play with it. So many of those resources are free; there’s no copay, they belong to, discover them, tap into them, enjoy the journey, it’s fun. I often say if you have a present under the threat, you won't leave it there. Open it up and discover it and you’re going to heal. It’s just a guarantee that you will heal when you apply these concepts of transforming negative things that don’t belong to you into the positive flowing energy that does belong to you.
Melanie: Wow, thank you, so much, Nancy, for being with us. What great information and for further information on stress management and discovering your inner healing resources, or to make an appointment, you can call 651-241-2970. You’re listening to Well Cast with Allina Health, and for more information, you can go to AllinaHealth.org, that’s AllinaHealth.org. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks, so much, for listening.
Stress Management: Discovering Your Inner Healing Resources
Melanie Cole (Host): When you’re under extreme stress, your body reacts, and your fight-or-flight system kicks in, however as our bodies are actively trying to protect us we can experience real physiologic effects from our psychological stressors. Our ability to heal ourselves depends in large part on our ability to manage those stressors. My guest today is Nancy Crowell. She’s a Certified Vascular Nurse at United Vascular Clinic, part of Allina Health. Welcome to the show, Nancy. So what happens to our body when we are under extreme stress?
Nancy Crowell (Guest): First of all, thank you, so much for allowing me to be here. I’m super excited to share this topic. Overall, my approach to this is more of a holistic approach. Our body, when we’re undergoing stress, there’s a lot of chemical reaction. There’s a lot of physical, emotional, and spiritual effects of stress in our lives. We take it to the level of – we’ve got a fabulous prevention clinic that addresses the medical and interventions that we can do as far as surgeries and angiograms and such, but then encouraging our patients to recognize that just with a simple breath, you can also help manage those stressors that play a key role in developing disease states, such as atherosclerosis and plaques that build up in our arteries.
Melanie: Well, Nancy, we’ve heard over the years -- and as Eastern Medicine makes its way really more into the mainstream -- we’ve heard that our bodies have this amazing ability to help us heal whether it’s from stressors or even cancer, heart disease, all of these things if we treat it right, use our spiritual side, and as you say the holistic and complementary side – so speak about some of those kinds of things that we can do – you mentioned breathing – what do we do? How do we use things like breathing and aromatherapy and massage to help us help our bodies?
Nancy: Sure, the first key to understanding all of this is we have to understand that we are always capable of healing. We may not always be able to cure, but we can always heal. They have different definitions. Getting rid of a diseased state or condition, that’s curing. We’re geared towards healing and that we can always accomplish. Let’s take breathing, for example, encouraging our patients to visualize the breath going in – I always say, “How about trying lights? Your whole body just illuminates, and when you exhale, smoke is released, anything that doesn’t belong to you is now released and feel the change that happens with that simple breath.” We use aromatherapy – it complements it beautifully in that they smell great, but they have an actual impact on what’s happening inside of our body. When we’re inhaling that, it goes up into our limbic system, it sends a message to our body, so I find breathing exercises coupled with maybe some lavender – I have a diffusor going -- or some soft music, people, truly notice a difference just within minutes of a calm, mindful breath. When I say mindful breath, it’s that visualization that you’re seeing that transformation take place in your body.
The other key piece of that is energy. We have energy flowing in our body just like we do arteries and veins. If you have a blockage in your energy system, it manifests itself just as you would if you had a blocked artery. That’s a problem, and it needs to be fixed. In your visualization, envision your body as a beautiful flow of energy, you’re creating open channels, you’re opening yourself up to healing, you’re opening yourself up to this bright light of wisdom that guides you down the path of what you need to do to take care of yourself. Like Einstein says, “We can’t create or destroy energy, but you can transform it.” If you have stress let’s change that, let’s try to transform that and then visualize the stress just going away and instead, you have courage and hope. Instead of fear let’s transform that to wisdom. Instead of anger, let’s have peace. It’s this transformation that I encourage people to see that we’re working with energy because emotions and feelings are energy, so let’s transform that energy to allow our bodies to have that energetic flow that’s natural to our own – that’s our innate ability – and we tend to put blockages there by our stresses. Let’s open up those channels and get back to the healing state that’s natural to us.
Melanie: And what about the importance of touch because even – some studies have proved that a good, long hug can reduce your cortisol levels, increase your serotonin levels and really calm your heart rate down, things like touch and even some types of therapy, music therapy, imagery, speak about those kinds of things.
Nancy: Yeah, that is very powerful too, and classes that I’ve taken and patients to them working with you, they describe that you feel that. If somebody even comes and puts their hands behind you and even touches your shoulder for example, that immediately – and everyone’s different, some people don’t want that, but those who are open to it -- most people can’t deny the calming sense of just having somebody place their hands on your back, or what I like to teach patients to do is do a self-applied massage. Even your own touch, if you put a little essential oil – and it’s diluted of course – rub that on your feet before you go to bed, rub it on your hands, again we’re using mindfulness because what we’re doing is we’re sending messages to our body. Thank your feet for taking you through life, and your hands and the touch of what you experience throughout the day. Touching another person like we say, “in hug,” that just completely sends this calming response and in the middle of treatment when I’m working with somebody when we do a massage, they instantly verbalize that they feel so much better. It’s a great coupling with music oils and massage, too.
Melanie: These are all great ways to do that. Especially women, Nancy, we negatively self-talk ourselves so much that we sometimes put that block on our ability to use some of these things – energy work or, massage, or breathing exercises, because we’re so hard on ourselves. What do you tell women that constantly berate themselves and use all this negative self-talk against ourselves?
Nancy: Well with the integrative therapies that’s one of the things I love is that there are so many out there to choose from. Each person’s palate of their modalities that work for them is going to be a little bit different, but one thing I think is important for everybody – especially women who are hard on themselves – is journaling. If you can just jot down each day, start with something simple. What are you grateful for today -- something good that happened today. Or telling them to go back and look at themselves and what did you accomplish today, or what made you feel good today. Even one or two things each day – if you have a journal and then you can refer to it each day, that’s very powerful in healing as well. The other piece that I say is that I keep going back to the transformation of energy. These feelings that we put on ourselves with stress and the demand that we’re trying to raise kids, and work, and clean. Give yourself some love time too. A foot massage is so simple, and it doesn’t take time because that’s the cycle we get in, we say we don’t have time to do this because we’re busy and then that compounds the stress so doing a simple foot massage before you go to bed takes five minutes. Breathing throughout the day, people will see the difference when you associate a meaning to it rather than just running to the office, how about when you’re approaching the door, you take two slow, deep breaths before you enter. See yourself just light up and exhale what doesn’t belong to you and move on to your day. You will notice a difference in how you feel. You can transform this energy.
Melanie: And one thing that didn’t use to be so prominent and now is, is fueling that healing with nutrition. What do you say to people when they say, “What are some sort of toxic things I should try and stay away form or some things that can contribute to this negative energy?”
Nancy: I’m pretty careful about when I try to get too specialized – I’m not a nutritionist, so the great thing about the prevention program where I work is we’ve got specialists who are very good at informing patients about what things are good about promoting good health and how you feel. I focus more on – what I would say to somebody, in that case, is you have to use some common-sense things, but what foods – how do you feel after certain foods because some foods just make you feel rotten, period. Avoid those things. Those are common-sensical [sic] things that I would recommend and of course getting a good nights’ sleep, but I don’t get too much into the nutrition piece because we have such fabulous experts who address that in a good, comprehensive package.
Melanie: So wrap it up for us then with your best advice about the ways that we can manage some of the stress, to discover inner healing resources that we all possess already.
Nancy: I would summarize it by saying this is a really fun journey. When you discover – just think about the fact that everything is energy. If you’ve got stress, think of it as energy and transform it. We know that you can transform energy. Play with different ways of accomplishing that, whether it’s breathing, dancing, music, acupuncture, play with it. So many of those resources are free; there’s no copay, they belong to, discover them, tap into them, enjoy the journey, it’s fun. I often say if you have a present under the threat, you won't leave it there. Open it up and discover it and you’re going to heal. It’s just a guarantee that you will heal when you apply these concepts of transforming negative things that don’t belong to you into the positive flowing energy that does belong to you.
Melanie: Wow, thank you, so much, Nancy, for being with us. What great information and for further information on stress management and discovering your inner healing resources, or to make an appointment, you can call 651-241-2970. You’re listening to Well Cast with Allina Health, and for more information, you can go to AllinaHealth.org, that’s AllinaHealth.org. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks, so much, for listening.