Change your brain

Cortisol is your body’s primary stress hormone.

This, you probably know.

When you’re dealing with depression, anxiety, chronic stress you tend to have high cortisol levels.

The hippocampus monitors cortisol levels and feeds back to the hypothalamus when there’s enough.

However, when you stay in an elevated, high cortisol state for a long time, it can actually damage the neurons in the hippocampus.

When this happens, this process of the hippocampus signalling to the HPA axis to turn off cortisol production gets interrupted. You get stuck in this vicious cycle.

Luckily, what we also know is that challenging physical activity stimulates neurogenesis, the creation of new neurons in the hippocampus.

By choosing challenging practices, you can restore this process to help reduce your cortisol levels.

What does challenging mean in this case?

Challenge is individual to you!It could mean a strong dynamic yoga class, it could mean a high energy challenging breathing practice - you get to decide!

Your brain is highly plastic, it can change and grow along with your thoughts, emotions and behaviour.

Even if it doesn’t feel like it, you always have the power to create change.

Want to learn more about how to practise to support your mental health?

Sign up to the finding balance masterclass free and create your personalised mental health toolkit.