Fight And Flight With Mr & Mrs Grunt

8 Comments

Historically, we have all evolved from the cave men. Our ancestors where hunters and gatherers, who lived a fairly simple, yet very hard life. Their day to day lives revolved around scourging for food to exist and putting it in layman’s terms – very simply there wasn’t a fridge, a convenience store or a car to simplify their lives and provide an ongoing and excessive food supply to satisfy their need for sustenance. Lets put you back to your cavewoman days and reflect on this for a little bit.

Your name is “Grrr ’ and you wake in your cave early in the morning with hungry cave babies nipping at your feet. Yet you know that all is safe and sound in the warmth and safety of your cave Your husband named Grunt throws on his little old loin cloth and kicks the bones from last nights feed out the cave entrance, for you to start witting into spear head later in the day.

Meanwhile, the hungry herd of extended family all arise from their separate corners of the cave and Grandma Grrr starts to prepare the morning meal of seeds, fruit and the last remaining meat from the previous days hunt.

Grunt picks up his spear, whist you collect your woven basket and the men and woman all congregate outside of the cave whilst Grandma Grrr deals with the rabble of little Grunts and Grrs.

As you descend onto the plains of the hunting grounds the friendly old Brontosaurus can be seen marching along in the distance yet the ‘Watchers – Aunties Grrs ’ are perched on their high ground scouring the fields for not so friendly fellows.

Whilst your forage all your sense are on overdrive, you know that at any moment a Tyrannosaurus Rex or giant anaconda size snake may emerge into the clearing and wipe out your entire tribe in one bite !!! Suddenly, your worst fears become a reality and as you raise your head from picking a bunch of green nettle weed for lunch you see a giant sabre tooth tiger racing across the plains coming straight towards you.

Now, I’ll finally get to the point – your fight or flight responses kick in. The adrenaline starts to pump, an excess of hormones and chemicals such as adrenaline and cortisol are released into your body. Your respiratory rate increase, and the blood is shunted away from your gut into your muscles to enable you to run like hell or fight till the bitter end with the sabre tooth tiger. You can hear “Grunt” screaming at you to run, run, run – and that is exactly what you do !!! Luckily your tribe has located shelters nearby that will protect you under a crevice or rocks, that Mister Tiger can’t fit into and there you sit, until he decides to take on the giant snake that wanders in after him, instead.

Your body has been in Fight or Flight mode and you maintain this response at a lesser intensity until you have made your way back to the safely of the cave where you spend the remnants of the day completing the simplistic and repetitive daily tasks, of making a fire, whittling the bones and being nurtured by the community of Grunts and Grrs. By this stage your body is back to it’s natural state and as always you are reminded of how lucky you are that you have made it through another day with a handful of green weeds and berries to feed the little rug rats.

Fast track 2014 and skipping a bit of history in between. Whilst we now have all the luxuries of the modern day, many of us still go out into the hunting grounds each day ! However, now days our predators are far less easily identified and our battles less physical. However, the pace much faster, the demands on us personally are greater, the support communities non-existent, the expectations higher and the emotional and mental strains far greater than they have ever been. Ultimately this is resulting in many of us living in Fight or Flight mode on a permanent basis from the moment we wake till the moment our eyes finally shut for the day.

Our bodies are running on adrenaline 24/7 and with that many of us are facing enormous health challenges !!!! The reality is quite simply, ‘Fight and Flight’ is supposed to be a quick event that is then overcome and our bodies should be returning to a state of homeostatic and for a lot of us this just isn’t happening !.

Hence, the great need for Mind and Soul Medicine, which will enable us to click out of fight mode and come back down to chill mode, in which you can go back home to your caves and chill with the little Grrrs and Grunts or play with your evolved Sabre tooth tiger the ‘pussy cat’!

Take a moment to think about what state you are in right now ???
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Ana Kitson Ferguson a Stage 4 cancer warrior, 45 year old mother of 4 teenage daughter who has lived with cancer for 12 years. Ana is a Nutritionist, writer, blogger and ‘cancer options researcher’ and integrated medicine advocate. Liferoom is an education portal for people facing a cancer or disease diagnoses that empowers individuals to take responsibility for their healing and incorporate mind, body and Integrated medicine into their daily lives, providing them an improved quality of life and hopefully quantity too. www.liferoom.com.au
More importantly she is a walking testimonial to the new era of personalised cancer treatments and an integrated approach to living with cancer. For more information on Ana’s personal story see www.savingana.com

Posted by mom118138, 17th February 2015

8 Comments

- - BellaB said
  - 05 Jun 2016
    7:21 pm
Many people don’t realise that they’re stressed.

- - Naomi said
  - 30 Sep 2015
    8:08 pm
I like your comparison and explanation of fight/flight. So true we now have less obvious stressors.

- - mom81879 said
  - 28 Sep 2015
    2:30 pm
So good to read of a positive, cancer survivor story. Great to know treatment for this shocking disease is still improving

- - mom57522 said
  - 15 Jun 2015
    8:34 pm
My husbands body is constantly in flight and fight mode as he struggles with an auto immune disease, and yet, he’s not open to looking at any other therapies.

- - mom94125 said
  - 08 Jun 2015
    3:23 pm
this was a really great story. it was a different one than what you usually see on here. yes i need to relax a little i think when i am home

- - smiles said
  - 25 Apr 2015
    8:00 pm
An interesting read. I didn’t quite know where it was going from the story at the start!

- - hopefullyheidi said
  - 28 Feb 2015
    9:34 pm
I actually found some depth and true scientific accuracy in this piece of writing. Yes much has changed, yet we still find ourselves in a continual stage of flight and fight these days, which is very taxing on the body and mind. I often wonder, especially for women how far we have really come from the days of burning our bras etc. It would seem as women we are challenged more than ever. Not only do we now have the role of care giver, but of career women, media telling us we should look like a model and handle all of these responsibilities with the stamina of super woman. My family is being touched by cancer at the moment, and your story could not have come at a more relevant time for me, as my mum who I didn’t think ever would, is now looking at alternative therapies.

- - BellaB said
  - 18 Feb 2015
    4:10 pm
Interesting. Thank you for this story.