At Aurra, we believe that a culture of wellbeing is non-negotiable for any organization looking to improve their workforce productivity, engagement, retention, or attraction.
In a time of peak burnout and stress exhaustion1, this only becomes more the case.
To us, the logic of how wellbeing fosters business advantage is simple: High-quality personal inputs–like food, sleep, movement, and connection–fuel high-quality professional output.
Ideally, we feel good at work more often than we feel fatigued, burnt out, irritated, or overwhelmed. Your ability to feel good consistently–especially when in a high-performing, fast-paced environment–is reliant on your level of resilience.
Stress resilience is the ability to maintain function, balance & wellbeing in the body and mind even during moments of pressure or tension at work.
Instead, stress resilience is about how effectively you can encounter a stress trigger, adapt to it, regulate how you relate to it, and return to stability on the other side of it.2 The more nimbly you can cycle through stress and stability, the more resilient you are.
So, how do we actually go about building stress resilience?
The starting point would be your nervous system, a key determinant for how your body responds to and recovers from stress.3
From the intensity of your initial emotional response, to how long a stressor affects you, your autonomic nervous system is at the core of your body’s stress response.
The autonomic nervous system has two main branches:
In building a healthy stress response, our goal is to fluidly transition between these nervous system states–responding appropriately to daily stressors that activate us, but then returning to groundedness and neutrality with relative ease.6
When the sympathetic system remains in overdrive unchecked, small triggers can throw us into a state of fight-or-flight for much longer than is useful, leading to chronic fatigue, brain fog, tension, burnout, and other health ailments.7
Depending on the person, stress can also lead to a freeze or shutdown response–leading to feelings of immobilization, disconnection, or low motivation.
A central goal of stress resilience, then, is to know how to transition your body out of these states of activation or shutdown and into grounded, centered calm during moments of stress. There are a number of ways we can train our bodies to do this.
The roadmap to better stress resilience is holistic, as the state of our nervous system is influenced by a myriad of lifestyle factors.8,9At Aurra, we equip employees with a stress resilience toolkit that spans the following practice areas.
Breathwork & Mindful Breathing – Slow, controlled breathing is one of the fastest ways to signal safety to the nervous system.10 Techniques like box breathing or extended exhales--such as those used in our breathwork Immersions--help reset the stress response.
Movement & Somatic Practices – Exercise, yoga, walking, and even gentle shaking exercises help release stored tension and improve vagal tone, which is essential for nervous system flexibility.11
Connection & Relating – Interacting with others who have a regulated nervous system (coaches, therapists, or even pets) helps your own system find balance through social connection.12
Rest & True Recovery – Deep sleep, restorative practices, and even intentional stillness allow the nervous system to recalibrate and build long-term resilience.13
Nutrition & Hormonal Regulation – What we eat impacts our nervous system function and stress response. Balancing blood sugar, supporting gut health, and ensuring adequate micronutrients can play a critical role in optimizing energy levels and resilience to stress.
Aurra’s range of wellbeing services help employees strengthen both in-the-moment regulation and big-picture resilience–helping them overcome daily stress with more ease and agility.
Combining individual employee support with our culture change consulting, we offer a uniquely systematic approach to reducing burnout and stress in your organization.
Learn more about how our evidence-based experiences and consulting can help you build a more resilient work culture: Book a call with us.
1. https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/glassdoor-employee-confidence-index-july-2024/
2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4260357/
3. https://www.massgeneral.org/news/article/vagus-nerve
4. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response
5. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4260357/
6. https://khironclinics.com/blog/a-regulated-nervous-system-is-not-always-calm/
7. Sapolsky, R. M. (2004). "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: TheAcclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping."
8. https://www.massgeneral.org/news/article/vagus-nerve
9. Porges, S. W. (2011). "The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation." W. W. Norton & Company.
10. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6137615/
11. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00067/full
12. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2921311/
13. https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/11/04/deep-sleep-can-rewire-the-anxious-brain/
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