Brain functioning is key to understanding stress and anxiety.

When functioning well, your brain can handle fear, stress and change. A stressful experience begins in the frontal lobe of the brain, the area that interprets meaning and controls decision-making, and reacts to the event with fear and other unpleasant feelings. After a stressful event has gone away, healthy neural pathways gradually move fear and upset to the back of the brain, where relaxation centres slow and diffuse the stress and bring you back to a calm, healthy state.

But blockages can interrupt neural pathways and disturb this calming process. Fear stops moving back and doesn’t slow down. Neural blockages can trap you in a high-energy, frantic loop that escalates into chronic stress and anxiety. The more often you experience fear, the stronger it feels and the harder it is to switch off and relax.

Untreated stress damages your mind, body and brain, and it weakens the parasympathetic healing and calming pathways of your nervous system. No one can avoid stress completely, but you can learn to master your response to stress and anxiety with tools and skills that strengthen your capacity for deep healing and relaxation.