An Interview with Antoinette Beauchamp: Understanding Your Energy for Stress Management

Antoinette Beauchamp is an energy leadership coach, speaker, author, and meditation teacher. As an ELI-MP, PCC, she inspires and challenges people to lead with passion, find balance, step into their power, and own who they were born to be so they can live with joy and ease. She has worked with thousands of people, including influencers, entrepreneurs, and C-suite executives to help them create monumental changes in their lives to launch them into the life they've always wanted to live. We asked Antoinette to break down energy healing and give us some tips to manage stress.

How do you define energy? What’s the difference between catabolic and anabolic energy and how do they relate to our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems?

My definition of energy is: a frequency that every living, breathing being holds. One’s energy can change at any given moment depending on external and internal factors. To the outside world, energy could feel or look like a mood, an attitude, or a way of thinking and therefore being.

Catabolic energy is contracting, destructive energy that breaks down. Anabolic energy is energy that builds, grows, and creates.

The sympathetic nervous system, or ‘fight or flight’ zone, carries similar frequencies and characteristics as catabolic energy.

The parasympathetic nervous system triggers rest in the body, which makes healing possible. In the simplest of terms: anabolic energy is easier to access when the parasympathetic nervous system is triggered.

How do we harness our energy productively?

Energy is productive at all stages, because it becomes our greatest teacher once we’re aware of it. So even when you experience catabolic energy, you’re learning. The more often a person is able to access anabolic energy, however, the more productive they become. Not just in relationships to others or in leadership positions, but also in terms of their life satisfaction, happiness, and health.

When we experience the feeling of stress, what is actually happening inside our bodies?

I just want to say for the record I’m not a doctor! But, what I’ve studied, learned, and experienced is that stress wreaks havoc on our bodies. Starting with our mental states, stress is awful for mental health. It can cause headaches, trigger auto-immune diseases (this happened to me), create injury on the body, and more. The more stress we’re under, the more our adrenal glands suffer, and the more likely our immune systems suffer as well.

Stress can cause emotional, mental, and physical illness. I’ve seen it and experienced it first-hand, and I’ve witnessed its effects on my clients. Stress and catabolic energy are best friends, and this frequency is where sadness, depression, anxiety, anger, disappointment, fear… and many emotional experiences that are experienced negatively by most people experience.

How do we combat our sympathetic nervous system when it kicks into gear and triggers catabolic energy and stressful feelings?

Combat is a word we don’t want to use when it comes to the sympathetic nervous system. Because, the sympathetic nervous system is inherently combative, and already attacking the body and mind. What we’d want to say instead is, “How do we heal and nurture our sympathetic nervous system in stressful situations?” In other words, “How the heck do we heal fight or flight?”. There are a lot of answers to this, but in its simplest form it’s very important to start a personal path of increased emotional intelligence, self-care practices, nourishment, positive influences, mindset work, a healthy lifestyle,, and more.

Studies show that chronic stress contributes to a decline in physical and mental health. How can someone address this through energy management?  

Energy management starts with awareness. The best way to build awareness is to work with an expert to help you identify where your thoughts are on a given day, how you’re perceiving life and life’s situations, your ability or lack of ability to cope in various situations, etc. Find a coach or a mental health professional to support you in creating a vision and moving from where you are to where you want to be. Stress is not something you want around for too long! Take action and know that it’s for your health and your life span, it’s not a trend you’re following!

What are some realistic adjustments we can make in our daily lives to manage stress?

Look at your stress levels on a daily basis. If you have no breaks within your day, try implementing the Intuitive Scheduling Method. I give this method to all of my clients as an easy way to start - your calendar has a lot to do with stress! Manage your at-home responsibilities by asking for help as much as possible, and start healthy habits like exercise, eating well, and/or meditation.

And like everything in life…take it one step at a time. Try to avoid extremes and implement changes through a bread-crumb process. It will help create sustainable, long-term change.

Follow Antoinette @Abcoached or visit her website www.abcoached.com.

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