Curing Anxiety with Holistic Therapy

Many of our mental & emotional problems play out in the body, and anxiety is no exception. Our minds can be easily overwhelmed, so before that happens, our body tends to pick up the slack. This "two-way street” is possible because our bodies (brain included) represent an incredibly complex & interconnected system. You can think of the body as storing life's experiences (good, bad, and ugly) on a day-to-day basis just like the brain stores memories. Though most of us think, analyze, and spend most of our conscious time “in our heads”, the body is still doing its job of storing experiences, including anxiety. This means that anxiety can be best treated with mentally healthy habits, physically healthy ones, and complementary therapies that support your mind and your body balance.

First let's consider how this sort of issue actually shows up. When anxiety or stress persists for too long, it tends to be “sent” to various locations in the body to be stored, and this can trigger more anxiety. Here are a couple of broad examples:

• If someone asks you "Where do you hold your stress?", you could probably answer that question, right? For many people it's the neck. For others, it’s the shoulders, knees or hips. Though problems in these areas can of course arise from physical injuries, anxiety is often a contributing factor. For instance, if you feel frustrated about a recurring neck pain or worried that it may return, then that stress has a way of triggering your body's memory of that injury, making it much more likely that it will return, leading to increased anxiety, and the cycle continues.
• If you recall a traumatic event in your life or anything that causes you anxiety, you may find your body reacting to those thoughts in one or more ways: your posture changing, your breathing becoming shallower, tightness in your chest, sinking sensation in your stomach, or even just heat in your core or cold in certain limbs. This is what your body has associated with that particular event. Retrieving the memory in your mind activates this reaction in your body.

As unpleasant as these experiences may be, they reflect a truth about how we work: the human body is an advanced and highly intelligent unit, so much so that we’re not even aware of it unless something is actually hurting. The body uses symptoms as part of an intelligent reaction to its external and internal circumstances in order to regain balance (e.g. - shivering in the cold, sweating in the heat). I encourage you to think of anxiety as less of a problem and more of a symptom or signal that is putting you on notice. It is your vital force’s best expression of its fight to get you back into balanced health - mental, physical & emotional. The best way to heal that anxiety comes from recognising this, and supporting that response and that balance.

Being aware of this, what can you do? A good place to start is by Improving your diet, being sure you get enough “good fats” such as those in avocados & certain nuts, more fruits and vegetables (organic is best), and less refined sugar and processed foods. If you’re just starting out on the healthy living journey, consider this as a guide next time you are shopping: check out the ingredients list on the back of a food or cosmetic product — if it has more than 5 ingredients, or anything you can’t pronounce, it’s probably something that shouldn’t go in or on your body! Taking a high quality multivitamin and magnesium supplement (citrate or glycinate, not oxide) will also do wonders for anxiety symptoms. This nutritional support helps your body to clear out toxins and support the health of your mind.

Supportive therapies assist this process greatly. Besides talk therapy like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and other brain-centered methods, you can also tackle anxiety by talking to and getting to know your body. Gently releasing & resetting the complex muscle, nerve & sensory connections in the body is what we do with the Emmett Technique.

The Emmett Technique is a gentle, non-threatening, non-invasive means of resetting your body’s balance points. An Emmett therapist can be compared to a body electrician, resetting your body’s circuitry & firing patterns, instantly sending healing messages back and forth between the brain and body along your nervous system that then release the anxiety, whether it’s in the form of a chronically tight or restricted muscle, pinched nerve, repetitive strain injury, or other symptom. This clears away disturbances that help you feel and function better - often within just one session.

Receiving a session of Emmett therapy is one of the best and easiest ways to see improvements in one’s physical and mental state. It can help with problems ranging from anxiety and chronic pain to range-of-motion issues and neuropathy. If you have further questions about this topic, feel free to contact me or read more elsewhere on this site. You can schedule an appointment for an Emmett session with me by calling 0473 661 285 in Australia, or if you are not in the Camden/Sydney area, you can find  can find a list of Emmett Technique practitioners worldwide at the link.

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