Practice Mindfulness to Reduce Stress as a daily practice to support you. Mindfulness helps whether you’re struggling in your personal life or during a local or global crisis.
Explore Playfulness
Step One: Practice playfulness like wearing a silly hat, daily laughter practice, watching funny videos, or writing jokes in order to reduce the stress response.
Step Two: Remember that mindfulness is a practice. It’s called a “practice” because you need to keep practicing again and again and sometimes you forget all together. The more that you practice, the easier it becomes to move out of a stress response into a relaxed state.
When you are in a crisis that lasts for a long time, it is essential to move your nervous system out of fight or flight and into rest and digest. This is possible even in a situation that has prolonged stress see step one for ideas.
Notice Sensations & Feelings
Step Three: Start your practice by feeling the sensations in your body. Notice the physical environment that you are in. Feel what you’re sitting on. Feel your clothing touching your skin, feel where your hair is touching your face. Notice the colors in the room that you’re in. Be aware of the textures of the fabric in the room, notice the light, notice the sounds, notice your breath. Pay attention to sensations inside your body, whether they are comfortable or uncomfortable. If you’re inspired to explore this step, check out: The Body Storm Practice.
Step Four: Name the sensations without the emotion or judgement. For example, I have felt panicky many times in the last several weeks. It is helpful to name I feel that panicky feeling, it’s insightful to name the feeling and the sensation. For example, “I am noticing a vibrating erratic energy is inside and beyond edges of my body, especially around my throat.”
Step Five: By naming the experience, it helps me to see what else is available, and it brings my full attention into the moment. Next I can move into a deeper state of by naming it, working through the layers of resistance and acknowledge that this panicky feeling is present. When I can reduce or stop resisting, most often the experience will shift and some other experience becomes available.
Breathe Gently
Step Six: Breathe more deeply and feel more completely in order to release resistance. When I do this with the panicky feeling I also notice there’s a sense of peace in my environment.
Step Seven: Be open to what else is available. I am giving myself space to feel the challenging emotions, name them, experience them, and move the energy through my body. This practice has heightened my sensitivity to beauty, peace, gratitude, and emotions that are pleasurable. When you aren’t pushing away your experience, sensations, thoughts, it makes the energy of the emotions available. When energy is available, you can be more present in your environment and navigate your situation with greater ease and clarity.
Step Eight: Move into deeper connection, make better choices, and communicate from a more centered place.
Mindfulness practice to reduce stress takes practice
You might name uncomfortable emotions, settle into a deeper experience only to get popped right out of feeling better and land back into the panicky feeling. When this happens, simply start the practice again. This is normal!
Be in your experience without judgment and keep doing the practice. The less you can resist your experience, the easier it will be for you to rest in the present moment, even if it’s stressful.
And even as you do that, the present moment is always moving.
Mindfulness Practice to reduce stress is a never ending practice.
Do your best to be supportive, celebrate the moments where you can drop into the present moment and feel without resistance or judgement.
If you are ready for support to reclaim your power, purpose and pleasure I’d love to support you with Soul Purpose Life Mastery
