Jury Duty, Stress, and Overall Health

                 As we have talked about in the past, there are three forms of stress that disrupt the nerve system – emotional, physical, and chemical.  Emotional stress is how we are feeling or dealing with events in our lives; physical stress is blows to the body like falls, accidents, sports stuff; and chemical stress is caused by anything going into the body that is not a natural occurring food.  The primary stress of all of these is Emotional.  Emotions are constant.  We are always dealing with life events by processing our thoughts, usually subconsciously.  And negative emotions such as worry, anxiety, fear, to name a few, put us into a guarded or protect physiology.  With this in mind, I wish to share my experience this week while serving just my day and a half of jury duty.

                  When I received the summons that I had to serve, I had extreme anxiety.  I was being called away from the office for I don’t know how long, to sit and decide someone’s fate.  I don’t mind serving for a few days as most trials, I understand, are over in a couple of days.  But you have no way of knowing what it will be.  My daughter was on a case a couple of years ago that went for 10 days! That would be half of my working month, which would be financially devastating for me!

                  So Monday morning when I went down to the Justice Center, I could just feel my heart beating.  I was shallow breathing.  My palms were sweaty.  I was in total protect/fear mode as my body’s innate self-defense system was protecting me from what it perceives, on a primitive level, as certain death.  I wanted to run from there, which we are programmed to do (fighting would have landed me in jail), so the energy to protect myself kept building and building as it had no outlet to either fight or run.

                  As I sat all morning waiting to be called, I could feel my muscles in various places tightening up.  And I thought of last year when a slight cough put me into complete spasm that lasted 6 weeks.  There were knots forming between my shoulder blades, and I could feel twitching in my left thigh where I had problems last year.  When my name was called that afternoon, my heart gave a loud “Thump” and my reactions were increasing!

                  I was juror number 15, so as we sat in the courtroom, I was praying that they would be satisfied with the first 12 or so. Then we adjourned until Tuesday morning.  I immediately felt a sense of relief, but I did not feel my heart relax as much as it should have.  Then the next morning, when I was faced with going down there again, it all started up once more.  And I was called into the juror’s box.

                  When the judge greeted me, I could barely speak at first as my throat chakra was closed.  But I was able to relax somewhat and answer her questions as well as the questions of both attorneys.  During the procedure I was a total wreck.  Because of the nature of the case, I was certain that it would go into next week.  Finally, the defense attorney dismissed me.  He is now my best friend!

                  I was at ease for a little bit as the immediate danger was passed, but I still had to go back into the pool and wait to see if I might be put on another case, so my ease was short lived.  However, the jury bailiff said that she had too many jurors and she excused me to go home!!

                  The reason I am sharing this with you, is that I wish for you to sense all the physiological changes that I was going through.  My adrenaline was flowing, my blood pressure was up.  My whole body was in total stress mode, and when the danger had passed, it only came down a little.  Fortunately, when I came home I immediately lied down on my table and adjusted myself.  I also did some emotional release work to interrupt the stress process my body was in.  And, I have been doing this each day to continue the release.

                  I, as well as you guys, am fortunate that we are able to do this together because stress is cumulative.  Each stressful event raises the bar each time.  We relax a little, the body can reset – but not completely. Then the next stress, then the next, until the body can’t adapt anymore and we hit the tipping point.  When this happens, we can have breakdown in the form of a heart attack, a stroke, or the development of chronic degenerative diseases. 

                  Look around you.  Look at all the sick people out there.  Look how people’s bodies are breaking down.  This is all due to stress.  Then how do they treat it? By inducing chemical stress in the form of drugs, which makes them worse!

                  What I went through is what everyone goes through on a daily basis – until they die before they need to.