1 Second Immunity Booster

Replace Sneaky Fear with Beauty

Fear is everywhere these days and sneaky as always, embedded in sentences and words and even our homes. The body reads and responds to everything…know how it reads and responds, then make a simple and beautiful SHIFT. Every time you are fighting something, it’s killing you slowly.

1 SECOND DISRUPTER SHIFT: have a few funny or beautiful thoughts as go-to’s to insert as a disrupter in the mind’s chain of fear and musings.

Here is an example: Once, while on a driving vacation across the country, my husband began a rampage about some political brouhaha about which we could do nothing at all. I could feel the tirade coming…the “I’m right and you don’t know what you are talking about and here’s the evidence.” That all could be true but not on my vacation and not for the next 30 hours in a car. Something inside me interrupted him and asked, “I was just wondering: how many states and countries have you played golf in?” He paused, cocked his head and started naming states and countries and it became a wonderful afternoon. Take back control of your life, thoughts and days. Just ask for that “something inside you” to speak more clearly, listen and follow it.

Being afraid, anxious or stressed-out makes us more susceptible to illness. Even “fighting” the flu puts the body out of the rest, digest and nourish mode of the parasympathetic nervous system and into the sympathetic “fight, flight or freeze” mode that stops higher order thinking and stops immunity.

Ways to avoid “sneaky” fear

• Limit news and media perusal to a few minutes per day.
• Get the updates you want and get out.
• Pause before you share…do fact checking to see if what you are sharing is true and beautiful. Much speculation (even from what we consider educated or reliable sources — still people, still fallible, often extrapolating the past to the future…what if it can be different? What if you can trust your own good sense and knowing?) is being served as fact or concluded outcomes, don’t spread fiction and excited hype in the hope to keep your loved ones aware, don’t scare them to death.
• Don’t stew over “right or wrong,” or other people’s stress. Science tells us that watching others suffer is harder on our immune system and our entire psyche than experiencing an event ourselves. Limit the sad stuff and the stressful stuff. Give yourself 5 minutes to dwell on it, if you cannot solve it, set it aside. Or take action like send help, a happy thought, a meal, a “hello how are you?”, whatever you can.
• Don’t stew over money, give yourself an allotted time each week, say Thursday from 10 to 11 am to deal with it, and when it pops into your mind, use your “disrupter” and remind yourself, nope that’s scheduled for Thursday at 10 am. It works!
• Watch for fear language being used in reports — anything that spells doom, death, lack, chaos, urgency, crash, etc. watch your body’s response to it and then make a SHIFT back to YOUR life and what you can make right in your own environment.

Ways to boost immunity:

• Seek out happy posts and people, focus on beauty
• Seek out nature and green (green and green light is nature’s pain relief, relieving migraines by up to 20%).
• Increase Oxytocin, the happiness hormone with face time and laugh time by connecting with happy friends and family on Zoom or any other video chat. Rather than swap fear stories or guess what I heard, resolve to laugh, it’s healing.
• Get outside in the sunshine and fresh air, open the windows.
• Use immune boosting cleaners and essential oils. White vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, lemon, lavender, rosemary, eucalyptus and peppermint are all antibacterial and anti-fungal. They support the immune system while cleaning surfaces and fabric.

“Sneaky” Fear in Your Home

• Colors red, orange, yellow and bright yellow-green are attention-grabbing and activating…remove them from rooms you spend a lot of time in, especially the bedroom. Replace with soft blue, soft pink or neutral grey.
• Sharp edges on furniture become flesh-eaters that set the body on edge, particularly rectangular glass and metal edges create low-level stress; solution, change it out if you can. If you cannot, look for a way to soften the edge (join my Facebook Group and send an image for ideas on how to soften edges)
• Slick and slippery floors, even highly polished floors signal stress to the body. Rugs and carpets that are secure signal safety to the body.
• Long, straight lines or corridors signal stress to the body. Solution: slow the eye down with staggered paintings, color blocks, soft rectilinear pattern on a runner, but remember to keep the hallways and stairways clear of clutter
• Titles on your books and magazines: the brain reads everything so hide the headlines or discard titles that include killing, murder, drama, war, lack, suspense and fear. Look at the metaphors in your art and take it down if it’s not healthy, happy and joyful.
• Body not in the “power” or “command” position whether on a chair or bed, or even standing: back and head protected, full view of the room.
• High contrast colors, decor and design creates stress, consider softening the contrast, removing more than one pattern at a time
• Clutter stresses the body, remove the clutter, from surfaces and hidden spaces. Discard everything that hasn’t been used in 6 months or that, as Marie Kondo says, doesn’t “spark joy”
• Create clarity on counter tops and horizontal surfaces, living with less allows immunity to surface, especially remove the knives to a cupboard or drawer…you’ll be amazed at how much space there is in your mind, body and spirit.

What can you do today, in a small moment, to bring beauty and nourishment back into your life and your spaces?

We have become thoroughly accustomed to the “fight, flight or freeze” embedded in our culture, and no more so than right now. It’s killing us. Don’t agree with something that isn’t true and beautiful for you in that moment, no matter who wants you to align and agree with it. Ask yourself, “What else is possible?”

It’s my passion to help us make the SHIFT and flourish in our beautiful bodies, relationships and spaces. It can happen easily!

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