Working through the stress of Spring

A (completely non-stress inducing) sign of spring

              We are having one more winter blast here in Western MA. I have been dreaming of nothing but spring for the past two weeks and it seems like it is the same for my clients.  But, where I am having lazy thoughts of planting a flower box and hiking without a mountain of layers on, my clients are worrying about seedlings and hoop houses that where destroyed in the snow.  Other folks feel the weight of the winter lift as the snow melts, most farmers (and a majority of my farmy type clients) are gearing up for the stress-fest that is the start of the season.

 I have been told about an array of ways that stress is affecting my clients bodies. From small things like tighter feeling shoulders to the more frightening like early morning dry heaves.  Stress has real effects on your physical wellbeing and it can take a tole on you.  The flight or fight response is built to adjust what is happening inside your body so you don't say, get mauled by a wildebeest.  Your adrenaline goes up, your muscles tense, your blood vessels constrict and you can run from the wildebeest. But, if the wildebeest is really the fact that you are 3 days behind on your planting schedule and the order of plastic to patch a whole in the hoop house hasn't come in and you are worried its going to rain...your body remains in this state that was only ment to be for short bursts.  And so we come to the topic of todays post, how to beat that stress and not let it take over your body. Lets walk through a few ways you can calm yourself down when you say, walk out the door and find a crisis. (If you are looking for more every day changes to make look to previous posts for stretches and exercises.)

You wake up and the sun is just barley lighting your path. The list of things you need to do is tremendous and how you are going to make it through yet another spring is beyond you. You come to the barn to find a crisis, something broken, frozen or dead. Your whole body stiffens and you are about to......

Ok, first off lets talk about breathing, I know we have been over this one in past posts but it bears repeating. When you take a deep breath, and I mean a deep breath where your belly expands and your ribs part, you are pulling your diaphragm down.  This action is amazing, not only because a good inhale can seem to take forever but, also because it tricks you into calming down weather you realize it our not.  Heres why, your diaphragm is a "smooth muscle" this means it is a muscle that contracts and stretches subconsciously.  Smooth muscle, like your heart and your intestines, will work without you telling them too and in fact if your tried to think them into stopping they wouldn't.  Though these muscles work on there own they still need some guidance from the nervous system as to what is going on in the world of you so, they have a direct link and will respond to weather you are in fight or flight or in rest and digest. Your diaphragm is linked up to your central nervous system in the same way but, you can controle it. So, when you take that deep breath you are essentially overriding a small part of your CN. Telling it to switch from "Oh crap, a wildebeest!" to "What a lovely nap I am taking" and thus you calm yourself down on a deep neurological level.

Now, you are calmed down and you dont feel like you are going to explode all over the flats waiting to be seeded. It's time to boost your endorphins and burn off the cortizol that bubbled up.  The best way to do this is through some physical exertion. You've heard of the "runners high"? Well what that is is when the flood of endorphins that are released by exercise reaches a critical mass and it makes you feel extra euphoric and...well...high.  You don't have to run a marathon to get a little bit of extra endorphins, just moving about whatever task is at hand with a quickness or dropping down to do a few push-ups will do the trick. Keep your breath even and deep and get your blood flowing and you'll burn off the stress hormone cortizol and release a few extra endorphins that will help to pick your mood up.

The mighty beast of stress

Ok, does that crisis look so dire now? It might but, at least you are in a place that you can deal with it. And that brings up to the last tip, organizing your thoughts and dealing with the problem at hand.  This may sound like the most fru-fru of the tips so far but, hear me out. You have brought your central nervous system out of panic and gotten the good hormones flowing now you need to re-set your brain.  In a study on how stress effets rats one of the things sited was short term memory loss due to cortizol, the effect seemed to last until the rats where distracted. Managing your thoughts is a tool used by many who suffer from severe anxiety attacks and can really help to get your brain to stop sending "WIDEBEEST!" messages. So, organize your mental space into things you can do right now, things you can do later today and things that are beyond your control and you need to let go(oh, say that snow that is stating to come down). This way you give your brain a distraction and a way to cope with the stress all in one. And hey, if the things you can do list is super long remember you did this last year and you can do it again. Even better! Because this year you will know how to work though the stress of Spring.

I hope this helps you as we move into the 2013 growing season. As always feel free to contact me with questions at info@theflexiblefarmer.com or leave a comment here. 'Til next time, happy spring!