So, what is stress? Let's have a look at the physical changes that stress causes, because our bodies are designed to shut down certain systems in times of danger. So thousands of years ago, if a lion had been used saw a lion on the horizon, you would immediately be put into the fight or flight mode. So your digestion would close down, your energy would be sent to your muscles so that you are ready to flee or to fight. So it's our adrenal glands that produce adrenaline and cortisone. That gets our body onto this high alert state.

Digestive system shuts down. Our heart rate quickens and our breath becomes shallow. So panting is often associated with a stressed state, and palpitations of the heart You can feel, you often begin to sweat. So when the danger passes, you need to be able to switch back to a non danger mode and you need to be able to do this fairly quickly. Now, breathing deeply, can help release noradrenaline into the bloodstream, which cuts off the adrenaline and helps you recover and continue with your day. And if you think about a wildlife film, where a lion is perhaps chasing an antelope, and as soon as the danger has passed, the animal might shake a little and be able to carry on eating because the digestion system basically turned back on again.

So if we We are continuously going into a stressful mode, our adrenal glands can quite easily become fatigued. And it's much less easy to come down after a panic attack or a stressful moment, you're less able to release that noradrenaline into your body to come back down. And we actually start moving into a stress mode much quicker, we have more triggers that send us into a stress mode. So in this course, we are looking at all of these aspects to see where it is we can help you stress less. So we need to address the triggers of our stress so that we can learn to have a different reaction when those triggers occur. We need to look at our recovery from the stress mode and how can we improve that and make it a more natural habit to breathe deeply.

We will be looking at our set susceptibility to stress. So all of those factors that are not helping your stress levels. And of course, we'll also look at your overall health because that will help build your resilience to stress. So, you will be needing to have a look at the times when you get most stressed, what is happening, what time of day is it, the places where you're most likely to get stressed and the people that are most likely to initiate your stress the activities that you might have been doing or might be doing to instigate a stress response. Also we need to acknowledge how the stress affects us, both physically and emotionally. We'll be having a look at different ways to improve overall health.

Because stress doesn't often happen on its own. Usually there are other factors that need to be considered. We'll be looking to improve our resilience to the stress around us. Often, we cannot change the stress around us. The only thing we can change is how we react to it. We will be looking at building more confidence.

So we're confident in our abilities. And we will be looking at how we can recover faster from stressful situations. We will look at learning new ways to react And how to implement new techniques that will become our new habits. We need to address the underlying issues that leads us to becoming stressed. So there are many different levels we're going to be looking at within this course to help you overcome anxiety and learn to stress less. We'll be looking at sleep, exercise and food.

Often we find that nighttime is a difficult time when we are anxious we easily start thinking about what has happened or what might happen and we start worrying about it. We'll be looking at how to reduce anxiety during the night. We'll also be looking at exercise because exercise improves resilience and it improves sleep as well as your overall health So it's a very important factor. We'll also be looking at food and the correct fuel that your body needs to work correctly. If there is something missing in your diet, it may well be making you more anxious. So we need to go through your diet, what you're eating when you're eating it, and whether it is the right fuel for you.

We'll be looking at quite a few mind exercises. Because in order to change your reaction, we need to practice new reactions, and we need to practice them enough so they will become your new habits. We will introduce new mind exercises for you to download. You can practice them you can learn them until you are doing them automatically. You'll also be encouraged to make your own New exercises because of course, you can then tailor them exactly to your own anxieties. So we'll be looking at how to do that.

You can do this because to change something, you're going to need to change what you're currently doing. And this course is going to provide you with lots of different tools to put in your toolbox to help change your tomorrow. So well done. Congratulations on choosing this course. And let's get started with making your life a whole lot better.