Dealing Better With Stress and Anxiety

For Stress Awareness Month (April), Rachel, our Physical Health Liaison Worker, shares some  practical advice on how to manage stress and anxiety better, and invites you to two meditation training practices.

Rachel writes:

“Let me start with the good news.

Stress is produced. You are producing and responsible for the stress that you are feeling.

It is not shipped in from another planet 😉

That means, if you have learnt to produce stress and anxious feelings; you can also learn to stop them.

And the bad news ? Not bad, simply the truth – it can take practice and commitment to wanting to stop stress.

Think of you as a ninja warrior every day in the fighting ring with your stress.

Will stress have control or have you gained control of stress?

Our will is important in gaining control of any habit that is damaging and destructive.

You must want it to change.

Step 1 – Personal responsibility 

Decide that you want to learn how to be and feel relaxed and well in life. No-one can do it for you.

Step 2 – Curiosity 

Bring your curiosity to the subject and let go, for now, of needing to understand or be logical.

Step 3 – Training 

Approach it as training. Why? It is only through training and practice that we get good at something. The aim is to weaken and shake the automatic stress pattern that you are doing to loosen its grip.

Start here with a practical exercise (read it through once and then close your eyes to practice).

Close your eyes and think of the common stress factor in your life now.
Feel it deliberately.
Notice as you focus and think about that stress factor what happens to your general way of being. Do you notice unease, survival mode, tension?
Now pay attention to how you hold your shoulders. Notice how you are breathing? Small? Restricted?
When you can feel how you are holding your upper body (neck, shoulders and upper back) and what that does to the way you breathe; increase it a bit more.
Deliberately go into the “stress persona”. Pay attention to the tension in the upper body, be curious about the mood or a worry that you create. Notice what you do with your eyes and your jaw.
Keep the efforts and tension and way of being and even intensify a little more.
Feel how much energy it takes to maintain it. Feel how trapped you feel in it and notice how familiar it is too.
After a minute or so, you will stop the efforts and drop and relax the shoulders and breathe deeply into your chest. Breathe fully and deeply into your belly and into your chest and pay attention now to stop the effort. Relax the eyes as much as you can. Relax the jaw.
Sit for a minute or two and allow any movement or sensation or flow in the body. Notice if you feel more space to breathe and more relaxation in your way of being.
Repeat as often as you want to continue gaining more and more control of this stressful trigger and situation.

We can create stress and anxious feelings through living our life with pressure.

Where in your life can you relax the pressure you put on yourself?

To gain more relaxation in our mind and body and in our life, we need space.

Space between our thoughts and space to not always be running and doing.

Try this 4 x 7-breath exercise as a step to begin to create space in your mind.

Set a timer for 5-6 minutes.

Breathe in for the count of 7

Hold the breath for count of 7

Exhale for count of 7

Hold at the end for count of 7

I hope these practical exercises support you in making steps to gaining more control over stress and anxiety.”

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