Ilchi Lee on Stress and Life
Jul 26th 2008Phil LawstoneAbout Ilchi Lee
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It would be nice if we could simply eliminate stress in our lives with a pill, but that is not the case. Neither is it likely that you will reach a point where you have fixed all of your problems and have no challenging situations to face. Ilchi Lee says, You may say that people or events in your life are stressful, but really stress is something you generate yourself within your own mind. Controlling the effects of stress will require understanding yourself better, not changing your outside environment.
Consider, for example, two young men taking a graduate school entrance exam. Imagine they are talking the same exam and that both are equally prepared, but one person arrives at the classroom with sweaty palms and a racing heartbeat, while the other remains perfectly calm and relaxed. What really makes the difference here?
The distinction lies, Ilchi Lee adds, in the story that each of the students is telling himself. One student may be saying to himself, “I will just do my best. Everything will be fine.” Meanwhile the other is saying, “I am terrible at standardized tests, and my whole future depends on this one test.”
In both cases, the story is the creation of the prefrontal cortex, Ilchi Lee says, the part of the brain that analyzes and judges our environment. In the case of the stressed-out student, he is sending out a message that says, “Emergency! Sound the alarms!” The hypothalamus, sitting like a guard on top of the brain stem, hears the message and then relays it through hormonal and bioelectrical signals to the rest of the body. The sympathetic nervous system, also known as the fight-or-flight response, is activated — digestion is slowed, heartbeat is increased, and circulation is compromised, including in the brain.
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