R. Murali Krishna, M.D. President

When our ancestors still roamed the vast savannahs or hunted wooly mammoth beneath the icy winds of massive glaciers, humans had a more intimate understanding of stress and its effects on the human body.

At night, when the hunting and gathering was finished and tribes congregated in caves around firelight, the dangers of raw nature could be heard growling around the edges of the comforting glow of the hearth.

If a man or woman encountered a threat in this primeval element, they had two choices - run or remain to fight. This was all well and good when people either obtained a meal or became one.

But today, we still have this same response, even if we're faced with an impossible deadline from our boss, high gasoline prices, plummeting stock prices, a traffic jam or an argument with a friend of spouse. And, of course, now our lives are increasingly stressed by the looming threat of senseless terrorist attacks.

In a world now filled with infinite minute shocks accompanied by the occasional serious jolt, we need to relearn an ancient concept: going with the flow.

Regardless of the outside source of stress, the human body still seems to think it exists in the wild environs of one million years ago. The body helps prepare humans for a life and death struggle by flooding our organs with a hormone cocktail, increasing heart rate and blood pressure. The nervous system becomes super-active. The blood supply is rerouted to skeletal muscles. Pupils dilate. The breath quickens.

For the involuntary mind and body, there's no difference between the stress of ancient threats and the events of modern life. We experience this fight-or-flight response hundreds of times a day. It's like cranking a car engine, revving the accelerator, but moving nowhere. Energy that could be used to repair tissues, build strength and increase healing is instead frittered away in pumping us up for confrontation or a big sprint.

We're washing our bodies in a chemical bath that's literally eating us alive. Look at your fellow Americans. Do they look at peace, rested, relaxed? 40 percent of Americans fall asleep while at work. 25 percent fall asleep while driving, according to the National Sleep Foundation.

This has devastating consequences for our productivity, memory, immune systems and creative capacity. Lack of sleep can hasten diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.

Deep, delta stage sleep produces growth hormone that repairs the body. If you aren't resting, this doesn't happen. Similarly, during REM sleep the brain seems to carry out an inner self-therapy through dreams, working out emotions and healing us from a psychological perspective. If you're staring into the dark at 3 a.m., worrying about tomorrow's meeting with the boss or the endless to-do list facing you, your brain isn't getting the vacation it needs.

Stress is connected to every ailment: skin disorders, emotional difficulties, gastrointestinal disorders (a particularly unpleasant phenomenon of modern life), heart disease. It's impossible to pinpoint an area of the body not influenced by stress.

So what's new, you ask?

It turns out human beings are blessed with an innate tool for reducing and eliminating stress. Call it "the flow response."

Here's one way to consider this concept: Take a hypothetical glass of water and pour it into a container. The water takes the shape of the container it is in, as opposed to fighting it. Water also flows toward the path of least resistance. It finds the channels.

The fight-flight response, on the other hand, is no good for most modern stress.

To go with the flow, you must start by identifying the source of your stress. If possible, change it. If not, incorporate the flow response.

One of my patients consistently confronts high blood pressure, increasing frequency of illness, insomnia, weight gain, job dissatisfaction and family dysfunction.
This patient feels frustration, anger and grief all the time.

I ask this patient: what must you do to change such desperate circumstances? Your job? No, he responds, the benefits are too good. He feels trapped by debt. He can't walk away from the regular paycheck.

Many of us feel this way. We experience anger and misery, letting the body suffer, knowing this situation is damaging. But we continue to sit in this big pot of acid - letting it eat away at us.

As they saying goes, when you stand, you stand. When you walk, you walk. But whatever you do, don't wobble.

If you've done everything you can to change the source of your stress, then make one of two choices: Choose to make a change. Or choose to remain in your current circumstances and consciously remind yourself of this choice.

Choice is liberating. Put everything you've got into that job or relationship, being present in the moment to make the most of it. While you continue to make efforts to change the situation, you're not allowing the temple of the mind to be contaminated by misery and resentment. Because you've made the choice.
If you choose not to be in a stressful situation any more, then go full speed in trying to find healthy options and embrace them. Don't dally. Don't wobble. Don't sit in that big pot of acid.

Cross the Rubicon. Don't tread water in the middle of rapids.

Initially, this decision may create new stress. But new doors may open to you, creating new challenges and opportunities. If you want to explore new lands, you must be willing to leave the comfort of the shore that you know. You must travel through uncharted waters. Until that happens, fill yourself with the flow response.

What are the steps for going with the flow?
1. Accept your current situation, with an awareness of what is making you unhappy.
2. Adapt to your current situation, by accomplishing what's asked of you, not letting your mind be preoccupied.
3. Reinterpret events in a positive light. How can you use your creativity? The road to success is paved with failure.
4. Try to maintain a sense of harmony with your task, relationship and function. View your work and relationships in a spiritual light.

When you take these steps, you calm the mind, learn delayed gratification and gain much more over the long term. You grow and mature in being able to survive and develop resilience. You become better prepared to face uncertainty.
In these dark days of a brave new century, uncertainty is something we must all learn to cope with.

When you're ready, you will make a change. But be aware that problems have a tendency of travelling with us. If you view your situation objectively, you may come to understand that you need to change yourself, instead of your job or relationship or geographical location.

I'm not asking you to acquiesce or to become passive. Instead, I'm exhorting you to observe emotional peace, equanimity and energy so that it's conducive to your success and happiness.

Mahatma Ghandi gave us a blueprint for this kind of behavior. He wanted independence and freedom for his land and for his people. He chose not to confront the mighty and oppressive British Empire head on. But he spoke truth to power just by observing a simple precept: they can't rule us if we don't want them here.

The problem, he observed, was with the people of India. He encouraged his countrymen to prove without armed conflict that the British must leave.

So Indians refused to wear clothes made in Manchester, instead weaving their own cloth. They made salt from the salt of the sea, instead of accepting imported salt from Britain. Ghandi walked to the ocean to make salt. And a human mass arrived on the beach with him. He established forever the preeminence of nonviolence as the most effective means of change, accepting beatings from British thugs without raising a hand in retaliation.

That's flow. By developing flow, Ghandi moved a great nation and drove out a colonial tyrant. Your human nature flows with the universe. Nature follows.

Go with the flow.

It could change the course of your life.

R. Murali Krishna, M.D., is president and COO of INTEGRIS Mental Health Inc., one of the state's largest providers of mental health services. He is also president of the James L. Hall Jr. Center for Mind, Body and Spirit. He has maintained a private psychiatry practice for 20 years and is a clinical professor of psychiatry at University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.