Our Reaction to Stress is Our Karma

“How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.” 

― Wayne W. Dyer

Stress. This single, seemingly harmless word invokes a myriad of emotions and words: fear, failure, pressure, anxiety. All negative reactions. We have been conditioned to view stress as detrimental to our life and health whether it's mental, emotional, or physical. We have been taught to fear stress and to remove it as quickly as we can. If it doesn't go away, we must go at it like battering rams, fighting the stress itself while causing guilt to ourselves for failing to remove it.

Stress takes on a life of its own. It's really amazing what a malleable, changing creature it is. It is incredibly sensitive to our thoughts and behaviors and slowly covers us with a finely woven net of frustration and despair. We end up battling stress itself rather than focusing on the root cause of it. It is a distraction leading us away from solving our life's problems. 

I got hit with two stressful events- problems at work and problems with my car. Then, suddenly, the stress escalated. I became stressed with the fact I wasn't exercising enough and began letting myself make bad food choices. I became stressed with wanting to just sit and read a book but feeling like I needed to clean the house and cook dinner. I became stressed with how it felt like I was the only one closing the window blinds at night at home. Yes, that's right, I was stressed about window blinds. 

That's how stress works. It begins with one thing, and when we don't get right down to the cause of it and take care of it, it begins to sneak its way into other things. Eventually, the small things that we would never think twice about become the reason why we suddenly burst into tears or begin snapping at people we love. 

The problem with stress lies in our conditioning, in the "agreement" we made that stress is a negative thing and must be demolished instantly or else, we are to blame for its existence. We "shouldn't let stress get to us." 

Actually, it's all based on our reaction. There is such a thing as positive stress, also known as eustress, as opposed to distress- negative stress. But before we start happily categorizing everything into eustress and distress, we have to analyze our own karma. How we react is our karma, and when we react negatively towards something, it will rebound to us in a negative way. 

Stress has been shown to give us a burst of energy, that little bit of motivation we've been waiting for to finally tackle an issue head on. Who of us works best under pressure? There's quite a few out there who excels in beating the deadline. And speaking of deadlines, all it denotes is stress, but we finally get that kick in our butt to get things done that would otherwise get put off. Butterflies in our stomach before we go on stage? We end up giving the best performance ever. That stress biologically puts our bodies and minds into high drive, pushing us to give our best, igniting our fight or flight instinct in every situation.

Stress also forces us to really think. Have an issue without an obvious solution? Or time-tested answers just don't work? Now, we have to think creatively. We have to really reach into the back of our minds to come up with something. We have to go find people to talk to, to help us, to give us new perspectives. It forces us to spin the world as we know it on its head and start looking at things from a new eye. It's how we continue to survive, creating evolutionary changes in our society and species. If we continue to do the same old things over and over, we'll never progress further than where we are now. 

Instead of dwelling on the negative, which is generally a subconscious action and escalates stress, we have to begin looking for the positive outcomes. It's the silver lining in things. Lose a job? Now's the chance to find something that fits what we want and need better. It's not making light of a devastating event if we choose to "look on the bright side." It's essential to our survival. 

Sometimes, people tend to shut down completely. We become so overwhelmed we turn into zombies going through our routine on auto-pilot. This happens in extreme times of distress, such as death or divorce. Our reaction still counts here. Death of a loved one is an extremely stressful event, but we have to remain aware of our process of grief. Instead of allowing subconscious actions to come in, causing us to fall into a doldrum-like state of depression, we need to constantly be conscious of our karma, to continue living, functioning, and protecting ourselves. 

Let's cultivate karuna- compassion, ahimsa- kindness, and patience. Allow ourselves to experience our emotions, our grief, our pain and sadness due to a stressful event. Give up a day or two to work through it in whatever way we feel we need through sleep, food, friends and family, escape. Then, practice aparigraha- non attachment. We let go of that stress and transform it into a tool for us to progress and develop. We have complete control over our karma and it is all based on how we choose to react. 

Change our reaction, and we will turn stress from a negative, harmful experience to a positive, progressive growth.

Face Mapping and Nutmeg Dermabraison

Hello there. Winter is coming here. Though it doesn't really feel like it. For as much as I hate snow and winter, if it's going to be this cold and gloomy, it might as well snow. Might as well make it all pretty-like, you know? I'm tired of looking at the corpses of stray dead leaves over my lawn and being paranoid if my yard has gotten too unruly for the neighborhood. At least with a dusting of snow, it can look like a tiny vignette inside of a snow globe and I'll just bitch about the finger-biting cold and not about the finger-biting cold and the drab scenery.

Anyway, rant aside, I wanted to discuss the other fun part of winter: dry skin. My skin pretty much feels like all the moisture has been zapped out of it. My face especially. It's look ashy, a bit puffy, and I'm finding flaky dry spots here and there. Pimples have come out full force all across my forehead so I'm going to have to figure out what to do there. 

By the way, is anyone familiar with the acne face map? It is believed in Chinese medicine that the location of acne on your face is related to various imbalances and upsets in your body and health. I've always known that acne on the jawline is related to hormonal changes, but finding it on my forehead and between my eyes is definitely new. According to this acne face map: for acne between my eyes: I either have a weak heart, I'm drinking too much alcohol, or smoking too much tobacco. Since I don't smoke and I'm pretty sure my heart's going strong, I guess wine might be the culprit. For acne on my forehead: I could be having digestive problems (yep,) small intestine issues, liver issues, irregular sleep schedule (double yep,) too much worrying (triple yep,) too much sugary foods (quadruple yep,) toxin build-up, hair products, bangs, and wearing dirty hats. 

I'm a strong believer that stress and other mental incapacities have a direct effect on one's body and health. For years, I've experienced terrible migraine-like headaches that only grew worse as time went on. I took medicine, went to the doctor, got testing and was concluded that I may or may not have tumor in my pituitary gland. Fun stuff, right? When things in my life changed and I was placed in a situation away from certain people and things that were stressing me out, my headaches melted away. It was pretty close to miraculous. 

So aside from using natural products to wash my face and care for my skin, I really need to ramp down my stress level, quit eating so much sugar (I'm so stressed, cookies look so damn good to me right now,) and reduce the amount of wine I'm drinking. I will also be doing this:

Nutmeg Microdermabrasion Scrub

1 tbsp whole milk (or hemp milk, almond milk, rice milk, but not soy unless it is GMO-free)

1/2 tbsp nutmeg (ground or freshly ground if you can do it)

Mix together well in a little bowl. With clean, dry hands, and preferably a clean face, scoop the mixture up and massage it in little circles on your face. Try to use an upward motion to counteract all that gravity does. Leave on for 2 to 10 minutes depending on whatever floats your boat. Then, rinse well. Moisturize if needed.

Why nutmeg and milk? Nutmeg is similar to honey that it has antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties which makes it good for oily skin and acne. It's also nourishing which helps dry skin by removing the top dry skin layer and nourishing the new layer beneath. Milk has lactic acid that works as a gentle peel for dead skin that refused to be removed as well as moisturizing benefits. It makes your skin baby-butt soft and helps replenish some of the lost moisture in your skin. So really, this is a great scrub for all skin types.

For some people, they say they feel a burning sensation when they use it. I didn't feel it at all. However, if you do feel it, it's not a bad thing but just leave it in for much less time, obviously. Rinse it right away or just do a minute if it's not burning badly. Do not use cinnamon as it will burn. 

My skin was still a little tight and dry afterwards, but it's just because my skin gets really dry once winter comes around. It was definitely extremely soft. I'm going to try this again with heavy cream to amp up the moisturizing benefits so check back to see my experiences with heavy cream.

Like all scrubs, resist the desire to use it everyday. Just try to keep it to once a week to prevent any irritation. Also, you will experience the desire to bake a pumpkin pie. I don't recommend resisting that desire.

Special thanks to Crunchy Betty for the idea.

Moving is Stressful

Happy Vegetarian Awareness Month! Of course, I'd be all over this month. October 1st was World Vegetarian Day so pretend it's Monday and I'm wishing you that very sentiment.

Unfortunately, I don't have any new recipes or new natural beauty find to give you today but I have a good reason. I can attest that moving is, indeed, one of the top three stressful events in a person's life, following divorce and death of a loved one. If you moved in the last six months, I beseech you, don't do it again. But there are two sides to every coin and all the stress and crankiness that came with this second move was tempered by a brand new location in a gorgeous great big house with a giant kitchen and hardwood floors that have not overzealously polished within an inch of its life. 

Here are the things in our new place that we missed that people wouldn't really consider in every day life:

1. Garage: You would not believe the usefulness of a garage. Not just to keep your car shielded from the weather be it blazingly hot sun or mountains of snow, but the sheer simplicity of pulling into a garage, getting out, and walking into your home under a roof as the door rumbles its way closed behind you. You can keep whatever you like in your car because, you know, it's 9:54 at night and you're much too tired to ever think of grabbing that bag from Target and there's a hot cup of tea waiting for you right now. Not to mention, your own parking space, all the time, every time.
2. Dishwasher: I know this is high on a lot of people's list, but people underestimate just how much joy it brings to one's life. In the sweet little townhouse, the dishwasher was named Beatrice and she had to do the dishes every day, after every meal, after every single spoon was used. The lengths she went to avoid dirtying up a dish suddenly became very reasonable. I can tell you right now, it's no way to live; mentally tallying up every dirtied dish and fork and knife every single day.
3. Deck: We had no outdoor space at the townhouse. Granted, we did have a little "stoop" and rather than birds and pretty black squirrels, we had recipients of the local drug dealer meandering their way into our courtyard in their Landrovers and Escalades and other equally obnoxious cars that clearly scream "I sell cocaine and pimp girls out for a living." Unless there was a blonde soccer mom, then clearly it screams "I have juice boxes, bandaids, and a death wish every time I haul my son and all his friends to their games." We did not get the latter, though it would be fun to watch those ladies self-implode. Drugs are equal opportunity after all.
4. Two bathrooms: Something happens when a guy and a girl falls in love for years and years and finally move into together. They need space, lots of it, and most importantly, their own. Matches are not enough, trust me.

Leaving our townhouse was a bit bittersweet for me. It was, after all, our very first place together, but we know we'll lead much happier lives in a bigger space. We didn't really move far away or anything, but it's just far enough that if we forgot to close a window, it's not a tragedy because we're no longer in drunken-hipster-bar-town.

Clearly, that's a major contributing cause of my silence on this blog and Facebook. Instead of packing everything up into boxes and getting a U-Haul and doing it all in one day- which we promised we would this time- we ended up moving everything little by little over a month. This resulted in having no internet for a while, a major shut-down on my part (due to being extremely overwhelmed,) and well, not having a laptop. 

The laptop part had nothing to do with the move. It's just bad timing. I sold my Macbook Pro in order to get a Macbook Air. With the changes going in my life and transitioning into being more of a writer, I didn't really need such a powerful computer like a Macbook Pro. 

Anyway, yadda yadda yadda, it took me a month to finally get my Air. Don't ask me why. Just know I am an extremely patient girl who was slowly getting eaten away inside because I could not update the blog. Seriously, that's how much this blog and you mean to me. When I finally sat down to start writing this post, I felt like I had come home at last. How perfect, huh?

Thank you for your patience and stay tuned, new stuff will be coming your way. I'm also getting ready to post some beautiful 50's and 60's winter coats (mink collars and everything) and sweaters and other cold-weather wear for sale so stay tuned!