Episode 56: Fighting Stress — Lessons from the Past

Today we are talking about stress. Not in a clinical or academic way — though the science is genuinely fascinating and we will get into it — but in a deeply human way. We are talking about what stress actually is in the body, how our ancestors experienced and managed it, and why the strategies that worked for them still work for us today, even though the world we live in is almost unrecognizably different from the world they inhabited.

Because here is the truth that I find both humbling and hopeful: stress is not a modern invention. The experience of stress — the racing heart, the narrowed focus, the surge of energy and alarm that prepares you to respond to danger — is one of the oldest biological experiences in the animal kingdom. Your prehistoric ancestors felt it. Their grandparents felt it. The mammals who came before them felt it. Stress is ancient. And because it is ancient, the solutions are ancient too, woven into your biology in ways that are still accessible to you today, if you know where to look.

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