Beating stress and the blues isn’t easy, but with coaching, self-discovery, and transformation you can live a happier, healthier life, according to two certified Rye health coaches.
“To take care of our emotional health, wellbeing practices like building emotional resilience, focusing on the positive, having both downtime and playtime along with savoring life and appreciating our ‘glimmer ‘ moments when we are doing something we truly love are all shown to improve our health,” Samantha Sidari, founder of Yoga Food and Mood, told the 30 people attending a program called Healthy Life Starts Here at the Rye Recreation Center.
“Stress will always be part of our lives,” said Virginia Rodriguez, founder of Colora Helath Coaching. “The key is how to tackle stress and what are the tools we have to manage it properly.”
The two outlined various ways to handle stress, including such emotional resilience builders as brief time outs for meditation and stretching exercises.
Studies indicate that 80 to 90 percent of diseases are stress-related, according to Sidari.
“It’s estimated that we have approximately 70,000 thoughts a day, and 47 percent are not connected to what we are doing,” Sidari said. “Two-thirds of our random thoughts are negative. Mindfulness practices teach us to manage these thoughts, and clear some of this clutter out of our heads…. We learn how to create distance from the negative thoughts and redirect the focus to the present moment instead.”
In other words, positively focus on the present moment. “When stress is perpetual, it becomes chronic stress … which can lead to poor health outcomes ranging from heart disease to poor sleep, anxiety to depression and more,” she said.
Mindfulness practices lead people to a different relationship with stress, where people live in what Sidari calls our “thoughtful brain,” or parasympathetic nervous system, where bodily functions run optimally, including emotional and physical health. To reach that state requires mindful eating and exercise, proper sleep, staying hydrated, and reducing exposure to toxins, she said.
Rodriguez said stress can be managed by taking care of your brain. Four areas to focus on, she said, include biology (exercise, diet, sleep, toxins); psychology (quieting your inner critical voice); spirit (having a sense of purpose and vision for your life), and connections (spending time with people you love).
“Change the story in your mind to a positive one; it’s called reframing,” she said.
Her functional medicine practice focuses on what she calls primary food (job, relationships, spirituality, and exercise) and secondary food (the food that actually goes on your plate).
“What we do is all about not just information but transformation (behavior change, becoming comfortable living with the uncomfortable … learning to challenge negative thoughts with intentionally positive thoughts) … becoming emotionally resilient in anxious times,” she said.
