Chapter 18     The Meaning of Stress

Stress is a word we use quite often, but we rarely use it kindly. A few people say they enjoy stress, but for most it has a negative connotation, which is not surprising because prolonged or severe stress often leads to serious ill health. Something about our wonderful living system breaks down and an identifiable disease appears and although stress may not be regarded as the sole cause it is usually thought to have contributed in some way. Many diseases of the cardiovascular system, the digestive system, the immune system and, for that matter, the mind are said to be stress-related. It is generally believed that stress weakens the body’s defenses against infectious agents including the viruses that cause the common cold. We need to consider to what extent all this is a function of the operation of our mind.

A Canadian doctor, Hans Selye, coined the term, stress, in 1936 to describe a ‘general adaptation syndrome’ he first observed in rats that were physically stressed by strenuous exercise and exposure to cold. They developed stomach ulcers, their lymph glands shrank, indicating a problem with their immune system and their adrenal glands became enlarged. The effect on the adrenal glands soon became the typical diagnostic feature of stress; normally measured as a surge into the bloodstream of adrenocortical stress hormones. Selye’s definition of stress was so general it was not taken seriously by many people for quite a while. He said stress was ‘the non-specific response of the body to any demand.’ In other words the whole spectrum of normal coping mechanisms whereby a living system adapts itself to its environment was also to be regarded as a potential source of damage to the system. Here the principle is that it is an overload or an exhaustion of coping reserves from excessive or prolonged demands that is the problem.

The bemusing circularity of this discussion was probably one of the things that attracted me to it early in my research career. People talked about stress as both the cause of the problem and the response to the problem. There was something quite fascinating for me about a process that could be either healthy or pathological depending on the intensity and duration of the forces involved. Stress appeared to be a basic life force, but one that could go astray and I wanted to understand how this happened. Some of my research with animals was concerned with purely physical stressors such as excessive exposure to hot weather that can cause distress and death, but I was particularly interested in the psychophysiology so I also studied social stress such as overcrowding and isolation and early-life experiences that help or hinder the animal’s ability to cope with future stress. The most common forms of stress for humans, of course, are not simply physical and obviously do concern the mind.

So much has been researched and written about stress that our story could easily become overcomplicated, but the basic biological principles of the mind that we have employed in this book can help us to keep it simple. The crucial distinctions I like to make are between (1) the stressors, which trigger (2) the responses and result in (3) the stressprint, which is the residual effect within the living system. The third one is a term I coined some years ago when measuring stress in animals. The remediation of stressprints is an important subject, but it will be touched on only briefly here. For the most part I am considering stress from a salutogenic rather than a pathogenic point of view because I am more interested in how we stay healthy than in what causes disease. The term, salutogenesis, comes from the medical sociologist, Aaron Antonovsky and refers to the origin of wellness (salus = health) rather than the origin of disease. We will consider this important concept more carefully in a moment.

How does stress occur?

When we become aware of stress, what is it that has happened to bring about this state of affairs? This is a subtly different and perhaps more useful question than to ask what stress is, because we are not pinpointing the stressors, the responses or the stressprints; we are looking at the process itself. What has happened is that, between the autopoietic organisation of the living system and the non-autopoietic organisation of the medium in which it exists, a mismatch has occurred; there is a lack of correspondence or accord; some dissonance or discord exists, instead of consonance or harmony. To put it very simply, using words from a musical play (Stress: the Musical) I wrote 20 years ago, stress is a disagreement between your insides and your outsides. The ultimate attunement that I mentioned in the last session as an ideal kind of connectivity or a perfect state of the mind is never actually achieved so a living system exists forever in the grip of stress.

When the first living system appeared it closed itself off from direct correspondence with its medium and became self-governing as was explained much earlier in this book. The first aspect of knowing is autonomy. Therefore there cannot be a state of complete equilibrium between our insides and our outsides as long as we are alive. While it may be necessary for the purpose of rest and recuperation to have short periods approaching equilibrium between internal processes and the external medium, by lying low or choosing a very benign environment for example, this is the low ebb of life. By its very nature it will soon become stressful again because the inevitably changing flow within the living system is not being matched by changes in its environment.

No matter what the stream of changes in the outside world may be, the living system has to keep in touch with these if it is to survive. This is what Maturana and Varela called the ‘conservation of adaptation’ and it points to the second essential requirement for life or the second aspect of knowing: to be connected. It is probably the dazzling variety of the processes of adaptation that makes biology such a fascinating study. Many organisms seem to us to be perfectly adapted to their environment. When we see overt signs of stress, however, we are seeing the imperfection in this adaptation process. For example, grasses curl at the tip due to lack of moisture in the soil, leaves and flowers wilt when the sun is too hot for them, and thirsty or starving animals become increasingly desperate in their frantic need for refreshment and sustenance. They are experiencing a severe form of stress. Their internal system requirements are not being matched by external circumstances and they are trying desperately to correct this imbalance.

As a human being you can take great solace from your ability to adapt, but you also know that you are not comfortable all of the time. Even when you deliberately make yourself comfortable you know it will not last and you will need to move again quite soon to regain the temporary optimality of your adaptation. To be severely thirsty or hungry is to experience a very obvious form of stress and many of us are fortunate enough to be able to take appropriate action to correct this situation. However, most of our common experiences of stress are more subtle than this and we are often unsure what the appropriate corrective action is because we do not see clearly how this mismatch has occurred. We are not aware that it is our process of connection with the world around us that is enabling us to maintain a reasonably comfortable life. Understanding that this connectivity is our stress regulating valve and our stress indicator gauge helps us to know what to do.

Stress as a personal guide

All that we have studied in this book has to do with the mind as ‘the great connector’ that joins us to one another and to the world in which we live while, at the same time, enabling us to be autonomous unities; in other words it gives us life. So stress is the tension between these two opposing, but essential needs; it is the natural side effect of being alive and possessing the mind that we have. This could be viewed as a problem, perhaps, but it is much more fun to recognise it as an important asset whereby our mind enables us to live well under a wide variety of different circumstances. In Stress: the Musical the final song was called ‘I Love Stress’ in honour of this idea. Awareness of stress can be our most valuable guiding light or ‘life coach’ as the British marketing professor, Angus Jenkinson, pointed out recently in his book From Stress to Serenity. His concept of stress was the more typical way of speaking about it in terms of the ratio of demand to capacity and he wrote: “Each time I experience stress it is a signal to reduce the pressure or develop increased capacity.” I have no quarrel with that, except it is not always as simple as it sounds to achieve, but I think we can expand that idea and make a more far-reaching explanation if we think of stress as fundamentally a connection issue. Here we are talking about everyday stress rather than some extreme overload of your system in which the subtleties of mind and the connection process would be irrelevant.

Jenkinson listed three causes of stress: (1) being out of tune with the natural world; (2) being out of tune with other people; (3) being out of tune with ourselves (meaning our own spirit). Attunement depends on there being a functional connection so I think of being ‘out of tune’ as a degree of disconnection or separation. You will recall Fromm’s idea that the yearning to be united through love was ‘the answer to the problem of human existence’ and also, from the last Chapter, that the healing spirituality of imperfection arises from the ‘root sense of connectedness’ having been ‘lost, missing or wounded.’ It is a fundamental biological principle that we must exist separately, in our own right, but yet strive to remain connected in the best way we can to all that surrounds us. In the simplest possible terms the cause of everyday stress is separation and stagnation and the solution is connectedness and flow; I will flesh out that idea shortly.

The first and second aspects of knowing are basic elements of stress, therefore, and so is the proactive nature of our perception, which is the third aspect of knowing. What I perceive to be a stressor and what you perceive to be a stressor may be quite different. This bedevils all research on stress; some of my animals were not stressed at all when others were quite severely stressed by the same situation. As Wittgenstein put it: “happy people live in a different world from the world in which unhappy people live.” Failing to take responsibility for bringing forth our own world is a common cause of stress. Once we blame the world for the way we see it we have less chance of understanding the meaning of stress.

We all know from experience that the trials of life can also be gifts and the unpleasantness of stress nearly always contains some benefits. Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning about prisoners of war:  “It is often just such an exceptionally difficult external situation which gives man the opportunity to grow spiritually beyond himself.” What Joseph Campbell called the Hero’s Journey is typically a story of being awakened to a task, probably refusing that task until circumstances force us into it and then experiencing a process of personal development like a rite of passage through which we acquire new faculties of mind, which may include wisdom. This maturation of our mind owes a great deal to the existence of stress in our lives and to be able to use stress as a personal guide requires a certain attitude of mind that strives to find its meaning and work with it rather than oppose it or fear it.

This does not mean that excessive stress should be encouraged as a martyr would encourage persecution; I think stress should be welcomed, but not worshipped. At low levels the stimulation will be beneficial, but there are critical levels at which the living system begins to break down altogether and remedial action is not only desirable, but necessary for survival. These critical points are not easy to determine even though we can measure stress responses with great accuracy. More research is needed to show which changes in the biochemistry of the immune system or the heart muscle are the most crucial signs of danger. Once disease symptoms appear and blood test results become diagnostic much damage has already been done. The salutogenic approach is to try to maintain wellness at the highest possible level. To achieve this we can use relatively small changes in the level of stress as guide posts that point the way to doing the ‘next right thing;’ they are aspects of knowing that take our doing in the right direction. So we do not need to attribute a poisonous power to stress if we can be thankful for it and be attentive to it every day. The forthcoming age of attention will probably include more attention to everyday stress and this will help us to see every small challenge as an opportunity to develop our mind further.

Early signs of stress include being restless, irritable and discontented, a lack of laughter, play and wonder, self-criticism, judging of others and all those emotional states that slow down, weaken or shut down our connections with one another and the world. Here the fourth aspect of knowing - our emotional state that determines our relational space - comes into play. The key to managing stress is to realise that each sign of stress is an invitation to connect differently and that this involves the emotional mind. A stark example would be the challenge of being verbally abused by someone you regarded as a friend. Fear and anger produce narrower, less open and more sharply focused connections so the level of stress will rise. If you can draw strength from an emotional state of love, the relational space will be vastly improved and the level of stress will fall. The old maxim ‘love your enemy’ has a strong biological foundation. Jenkinson indicated that this principle applied even more generally to all kinds of stress when he wrote:  “Love becomes a path from stress to strength and on to serenity.”

Many other examples arise from our consciousness of time that was mentioned earlier as a common source of pain. If you are not attending to the present moment the memories or wishes that occupy your mind will diminish the connectivity with what you are doing and produce stress. The chances are you will also not be aware of this growing stress and therefore unable to respond to it unless your mind has developed its capacity for surrender and acceptance; for being in the present moment, which is the fifth aspect of knowing. The ability to use stress as a personal guide depends also on our capacity for reflection that was described earlier in the course.

I learned from Jenkinson that the Hebrew language has 22 letters each of which is a fundamental aspect of God having specific links to colours, tones and numbers. The letter Chet which begins the word chai (the equivalent of chi or ki) is the letter of vibrant health and vitality. It is formed by linking the sigils or forms of two other letters together: Vov, which refers to our relationships with others and Zayin, which refers to our relationship with time. This is interesting because these are probably the two most important elements of stress management: relationships with others and our relationship with time. They are fundamental aspects of the mind as we have seen; along with the ability of the mind to be aware of them and thereby make it possible to manage stress productively.

Using stress as a personal guide draws upon all the aspects of knowing I have detailed in this book. Without the sixth aspect that refers to honest conversation about stress we cannot develop the knowing about it that will be most helpful nor will we recognise the value of our mind as both the creator and the manager of this delightfully double-edged sword that living systems wield; nor will we appreciate the need to use it to its full extent. The work of the mind is not only thought, but thought is a big part of it. To be thoughtless or indifferent or apathetic is not an antidote to stress for very long. Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Sense of coherence

The magnitude of stress is a measure of the efficacy of the connections both within one’s own autopoietic system and across the larger system in which we see ourselves as autonomous unities embedded in the surrounding medium. A better connection creates the potential for more flow between any two points, which is constantly required for the integration of the system as a whole. This may be thought of as a flow of energy or information, but whatever it is, it provides us with the ability to make meaning, which is the work of the mind. We make meaning by making connections. This meaning is dynamic; it is never static. There is a flow of meaning within our brains and bodies that is contingent upon keeping the entire network in a fluid state. The common blocks or breaks in connectivity with our world result in some discomfort that we usually call stress. Our ability to make meaning is hampered by these blocks or breaks in connective flow and when the meaning is not clear our system begins to fret. Carried to extremes this can make us very sick; the discomfort becomes dis-ease. To contentedly make meaning in every situation is what we aim for according to this biological explanation and, although we never achieve this completely, it is the way we maintain a healthy, rather than an unhealthy, experience of stress.

A sense of meaning is another phrase to describe what we have called ‘knowing’ throughout this book and this requires our mind to optimise, if it can, all those qualities of connection that I mentioned earlier – breadth, intensity, openness, focus and resilience. It also involves using our whole brain, not just parts of it. While the activity of the higher cortical or reasoning parts of the brain can connect with the centres of emotion in the limbic system, this does not always happen when reason is worshipped and feelings are denigrated resulting in a less than ideal connectivity and relational space. Habitual reliance on so-called left brain activity such as rational, language-based, computational kinds of thinking without complementary exercising of visual imagery and artistic appreciation (right brain stuff) will limit the connectivity and hence the sense of meaning that we obtain and this will contribute to stress.

This is because logic and meaning are not the same thing. Viktor Frankl regarded the ‘will to meaning’ as a ‘primary force of life’ and he created a new branch of psychology called logo-therapy, the name coming from the Greek word, logos, that denotes meaning and incidentally also meant spirit. In Man’s Search for Meaning he associated this with finding meaning even in suffering so that through trials we gain strength. Noting that man is self-determining, he wrote: “The ultimate meaning necessarily exceeds and surpasses the finite intellectual capacities of man; in logo-therapy we speak of it in the context of a supra-meaning. What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life; but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic.” He maintained that mental health is always associated with a degree of tension and recognising this stress as the basic quest for meaning points the way toward preserving good health.

I relate this to the pioneering ideas about salutogenesis that Aaron Antonovsky was so insistent about a few decades ago. In a book entitled Health, Stress and Coping he proposed that the key factor in salutogenesis is a person's ‘sense of coherence’ (SOC). He defined SOC in a rather wordy fashion as "a global orientation that expresses the extent to which one has a pervasive, enduring though dynamic feeling of confidence that one's internal and external environments are predictable and that there is a high probability that things will work out as well as can reasonably be expected." Living with uncertainty, which I have described as our mind’s basic challenge was obviously central in Antonovsky’s thinking too.  He also referred to three elements of salutogenesis as (1) control, being the person's belief that he or she is able to influence the course of events; (2) commitment, embracing a curiosity for and sense of meaningfulness in life; and (3) challenge, which is the individual's expectation that it is normal and beneficial for life to change. This emphasis on predictability and control may seem, superficially, to defy uncertainty, but there is an element in it of acceptance, particularly with regard to finding meaning in change and having confidence that one’s marvellous mind will adapt no matter what happens.

To me, Antonovsky’s SOC implies a love of life. I described earlier how an attitude of love enables us to see more clearly than we can in any other emotional state and this is reflected in the meaning that we make. When you love something you know it better because you feel you understand its significance and its value, which are two words very closely associated with meaning. To care about yourself is to say that you mean something – to yourself, to the world and to somebody else. Loving your work gives it meaning and purpose. To look at something without interest is to render it meaningless, at least for the time being. Love can convert distress into stress as I said earlier. More broadly, the most satisfying meaning seems to be associated with this sense of coherence regarding one’s place in the world at that time and one’s right to be there.

A review by Donald Smith of functional salutogenic mechanisms in the brain listed the components of a person's SOC as comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness. Other factors that he said contribute to salutogenesis include social support, spirituality, happiness, humour, and love. Smith further noted that "an organism with a salutogenic brain would experience the world as manageable and coherent...with a self-perpetuating cycle for enhancing self-confidence and well-being." On behalf of the chiropractic profession Christopher Kent described a salutogenic situation as one in which the individual’s “connection with the world is not compromised by vertebral subluxation,” meaning improper relationships amongst the spinal vertebrae. He felt that, as human beings, we have the ability to control the modulating factors in salutogenesis as long as there are no blocks in the system. We can choose to experience social support, spirituality, happiness, humour and love when our nervous system is free of distortion and interference and we can exercise control, commitment, and challenge provided that the bio-mechanisms are not impeded in any way. “As chiropractors,” he wrote, “we have the ability to empower others to lead salutogenic lives.”

All therapeutic programs rely to some extent on the ability of the living system to heal itself, but it is the practitioners in the Wellness Industry who make most use of this principle. Homeopaths, naturopaths, osteopaths and some spiritual healers believe in working with the body and mind rather than attacking any disease agents or opposing or augmenting any particular molecules of emotion in an attempt to correct an imbalance in the system. They try to do this by tapping into the natural self-healing flows of the molecules and the mind and promoting them in some way. Similarly, the practice of yoga, tai chi or any other psychophysical activity is an appeal to the natural flow to do whatever it does best, which includes connecting the body more fully to the world thus altering perception. Flexibility of the spinal column, particularly, is regarded as essential to the smooth functioning of the entire body and mind. These practices are treating the stagnation and disconnection that I mentioned earlier as the primary elements of stress.

Going with the flow

Perhaps the most pervasive emotion underpinning stressful experiences is fear. The famous behaviourist, B.F. Skinner, with whom I would disagree in many other respects, wrote beautifully about fear along the following lines: ‘I used to think I ran away because I was frightened until I realised I was frightened because I ran away.’ The greater connectivity obtained by engaging with the fearful stimulus rather than trying to avoid it invariably lessens the impact of this stressor and usually leads to a quicker resolution of the problem. This is not the same as saying we should resist or oppose all threatening stimuli. In fact what we resist or oppose only pushes against us more strongly as I mentioned earlier. The way described so clearly in the Eastern martial arts is far more effective. It is to yield to the force with one part of the body while transferring that energy to another part where it could be used effectively against your opponent. When you go with the flow in this way you do not disengage your connection as in running away; you continue the engagement, but in a more intelligent way, which is the best possible use of your mind.

Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline and many other books, was one the best-known management gurus of the latter part of the last century and his principles were, in his own words, based on Maturana’s biology. He defined the ‘learning organisation’ in terms of the biological principles I have outlined here. A later book of his called The Dance of Change was about ‘the challenge of sustaining momentum in learning organisations’ and contained many practical examples of how to go with the flow in a way that was productive and successful. This is exactly what living organisms do. Maturana called it ‘drifting,’ but it is not aimless because it employs every aspect of knowing to find the best path with proper regard for all the greater forces that prevail. Thus it preserves the organism’s ability to adapt and its chances of survival. It also explains why animals and humans can be lured into traps so the ability to stand back and reflect from time to time is also essential.

In the management of chronic pain it is recommended that you spend at least some of the time working with the pain, visualising it and engaging with it rather than trying to ignore it altogether. Of course, it is also useful to have some distracting activities that take your mind off the pain and it is a constant challenge to find the best balance between these two ways of dealing with it. There seems to be a benefit from finding some meaning in the pain and, conversely, it is worse if you can see no reason for it and your mind feels helpless and disempowered. Once again your mind has a necessary and important role to play in coping with this kind of stress.

The founders of Integrative Medicine such as Andrew Weil point to an association between attention by the mind, connection with the world and internal regulation of the body. If you are attentive you will make good connections and this will facilitate the regulation of your body processes thus equipping you to continue to be attentive. When attention falters the connection is weakened and the regulation of the body becomes less precise because it does not have the full resources of the adaptation process at its disposal. Similarly if attention is misdirected the connection may become distorted leading to some physiological disregulation that could become disease. You will recall that this is a self-regulating system we are talking about, but it can only govern itself efficiently if it is closely in touch with what is going on around it. Its functionality depends on the entire circuit flowing smoothly. The mind works in the processes of attention and regulation as well as the connection. It guides you to provide the right food, exercise and rest for your body’s regulation, to watch what you attend to and, above all, to make the best connections that you can. The advice regarding stress that I think is often overlooked is to regularly check the connection or, to put it another way, if the lights go out, check the circuit breakers in the electricity supply box on your wall or in your basement.

Connections are never static, of course; they need constant updating if the flow is to be maintained. In Goethe’s Faust, as I said before, the one thing that would enable the Devil to win the contest with God over the soul of Dr Faustus would be if he said ‘linger for thou art so fair’ indicating that he wanted things to remain as they were and was unwilling to move on. This represents a biological principle that compels our mind to go on re-connecting for as long as we live. Whatever hinders or breaks the connection will tend to accentuate the stress, but the thrill of connecting well is the fundamental joy of life. Another analogy is that a string tied between two points can be made to vibrate and create a tone; if you pull it too tight it will break and if you leave it too loose it will not set up the rhythmic vibration that makes the tone.

Short circuits

A common cause of stress is when the circuit that we make as we connect with others is impaired because we short-circuit ourselves. In the parlance of physics a short circuit (also called a short) is when the current flows along a different path from that intended because there is an accidentally low resistance between two points. It is your mind’s equivalent of connecting the positive to the negative terminal on your battery; nothing useful is achieved and the battery will soon go flat. In a previous Chapter I mentioned the distinction, originally made by Trigant Burrow, between ditention and cotention. Whereas cotention refers to the natural biological union that our mind strives to make with others, ditention is a divided attention where much of our interest in the conversation is self-interest. In other words you are wondering whether what you are saying is causing the other person to dislike you or put you down. This is a common manifestation of what I have referred to as self-will and it is debilitating for the mind.

Connecting with yourself is characteristic of all addictive behaviours. The self-pleasuring or self-gratification aspect of using mood enhancing drugs, for example, reinforces the desire to repeat that behaviour and the fundamental work of the mind becomes a vicious cycle of insatiable short circuits that must eventually end in death if it cannot be arrested. It is by regaining the natural connection with the world that addicts are enabled to break out of this trap. Again the bonding force of love is the lynchpin of such a recovery process. I have mentioned before the healing connectivity that occurs when like-minded souls share their experience regarding the wounds they have in common. Through stories and conversation with others whose lives have been turned around their knowing will drift in a more positive direction and after a time the addictive curse can be lifted altogether. There are many less dramatic forms of addiction, of course, which apply to us all, so the milder effects of the mind’s short-circuit undoubtedly contribute to the imperfection of every human mind.

The criticism of others and many forms of harsh and often uninformed judgment about people and the world are another way in which our mind creates unnecessary stress. Making comparisons between individuals is necessary in some circumstances such as selecting an employee or a partner or a player for a team, but generally the tendency of the human mind to think of everything in comparison to something else is a futile and frustrating experience. As we divide up the world in our perception we divide up parts of ourselves into perceived strengths and weaknesses, which may serve our mind in some superficial ways, but does not promote an emotional state of unconditional love nor does it provide the space for useful reflection and the wisdom that a more encompassing acceptance can bring.

When it comes to the remediation of stressprints, the only way is to convert unhealthy short circuits into healthy ones as described above. Stressprints are structural imprints within a living system resulting from previous stress that distort the normal flow because they change the connectivity. Often stressprints have become strongly established and do not appear to manifest as obvious addictive behaviours, but simple acts of looking after yourself still have healing power because new patterns of connectivity gradually take over. I visualise it as a process that is like the lapping sea gradually wiping away the footprints you have left in the sand on the beach.

The fine line

Just as each of us has to make our own meaning because it cannot be provided for us from outside, so each of us has to find our own version of the meaning of stress in our lives and our own special way of fine tuning our mind so that stress is working for us not against us. If you love what you are doing here and now you will enjoy the stress, almost regardless of how hard you work. Over a period of time this can become an unhealthy habit, however, when you get into a rut and you are not being honest with yourself about how much of this kind of work you really want to do. Without reflection and responsibility work often becomes another form of addiction and the stress involved is insidious and eventually destructive in a biological sense. Using all the aspects of knowing described here your love of what you do need not become obsessive because it will include an acceptance and surrender to a higher power, which provides a more advanced level of knowing about what is best in that situation and what is the next right thing to do.

There is a fine line between useful reflection and introspective over-analysis, between unhealthy self-gratification and satisfying your natural instincts for food, sex, rest and recreation and between listening lovingly to someone and losing yourself altogether by taking on the debilitating, emotional state of the other person. I think it is an awesome attribute - one of the wonders of the mind – that we are able to do this fairly well for most of the time. The seven aspects of knowing are nowhere more important than in the management of stress. Our mind is the instrument of connection; the music it plays, if we are mindful of it, provides us with a harmonious and comfortable existence in the world. In Stress: the Musical it is proposed that we may come to know a sort of ‘biosong’ which is the way our mind sings to us to keep us well.

Of all the forms of experimenting that have been suggested in this book for learning about the mind and life I think singing songs about it is one of the best. The lyrics of two sings from Stress: the Musical follow this Chapter.

So the management of stress, like the management of life, concerns the mind, love and making meaning - threads that will be woven together in the closing Chapters of this book.

 

WE ARE THE SONG

(We are the product of our history of connections)

 

Threads connect us every day in everything we do

Everything we notice and pay attention to

These threads are hardly broken; they just renew each day

They follow one another in an incremental way

Honouring these details, the truth will set us free

Where we are right now is where we’re meant to be

 

We are the songlines of our lives

We are the laughter and the cries

We are the being right and wrong

We are the singing, we are the song

 

We often think of what we are as what we ought to be

Some imagined super being, absolutely free

Or perhaps a victim of events that were not kind

This denies us our free will; suffocates the mind

We can only be exactly what we have become

The product of our history; the race that we have run

 

Chorus

 

 

KNOW YOURSELF

 

Know yourself

And you will know who you’re being

And then accept yourself

So you will like what you’re seeing

And then forget yourself

That’s all you need to do

And it will help you to keep up with everything that happens

In the big wide world

 

It helps if you will use all your senses

Even those you’re not sure they exist

Otherwise you might put up defenses

And think of all the things you must resist

 

Whatever we oppose, opposes us. That with which we flow, flows with us.

Whatever we embrace, goes with us. What we suppose, knows with us.

So sing with us

 

Chorus