Live with colour and beat the January Blues

Yes, winter is here. Perhaps you can feel your energy levels dropping, or your mood shifting from the long dark nights and days starved of light. For some this can affect us to a greater degree - a phenomenon commonly known as the January Blues.

This of course, often leads to increased levels of stress.

Despite common belief, stress is very much a condition with causes, shape and symptoms. So how does your body react to this pressure?

Not only can stress, stored emotions and past trauma easily maintain health problems, but if you are feeling uptight then your muscles tense and stay tense. This uneven muscle tension in the neck, back, chest, abdominals and groin area, also result in the joints around these areas failing to work as well and therefore compound the pain.

Years of experience have also taught me that often lurking behind physical pain is emotional tension stored, knowingly or unknowingly, in various parts of the body. Physical releases, following realignment of the spine for example, can simultaneously trigger emotional releases. So addressing and resolving emotional traumas can also help restore harmony to the body and alleviate some of the aches and pains we accumulate.

For instance, I once treated a lady who had been divorced for 10 years. She had lower back pain and leg pain which had been getting worse and worse for a number of years. Her pain had never fully resolved until I found her an appropriate counsellor to help release her emotional trauma. It may sound dramatic, but after that, she was a completely different lady.

Osteopathic treatment is highly effective at addressing the symptoms of body stress at any point in time. Part of the challenge is to manage these symptoms more enduringly, which entails looking at stress from a wider and more multi-disciplinary perspective - this thought has largely shaped the way in which we help and support our patients here at Not Just Backs.

We also have our in house hypnotherapist, Kirsty Wick, at our Tisbury Practice. You can read more about Kirsty's work at www.springhypnotherapy.co.uk

For more information on our unique approach to stress management, please don’t hesitate to give us a call on 01722 512043. 

Now don't forget, if you are stressed then you’ll often find yourself excessively eating and drinking, resulting in the weight quickly piling on... so stay tuned for next week’s blog where we tackle this delicate issue.

Have a great day!