Mindfulness Exercises to Overcome Stress
When it comes to being consistent to achieve one’s goals, stress is one of the most commonly used excuses people use to abandon their behavior-change plans. Pressure from work or home can often make people feel hopeless, unsupported or unmotivated to successfully maintain the habits necessary for them to obtain and maintain their health, life or career goals. Fortunately, there is a steadily increasing amount of research that provides good evidence demonstrating the benefits of mindfulness exercises to combat stress. If you need help managing stress then keep reading to learn different mindfulness exercises to combat stress.
What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is a willingness to continually and non-judgmentally observe what is taking place in the present moment. Accepting stress is basically you reacting negatively to everything. Mindfulness takes the emotions out of the situation so you can look at it objectively. Its a little bit more complex to it though. Below are 7 pillars of Mindfulness:
1. Non-Judging: When you are non-judging, you are an impartial witness to your experiences. This includes: your thoughts as they arise, regardless of how positive or negative they may be.
2. Patience: Patience is actually a form of wisdom and when I try to teach it to my clients, I always take it to the bible: ‘Not my will, but His’… In other words, you are fine with the way things are unfolding regardless if they meet your expectations or not.
3. Beginner’s Mind: This is when you let go of your previous beliefs in an attempt to see things the way that they really are. You aren’t jumping to conclusions but instead, you’re being curious. Having a beginner’s mind means that you are open and receptive new possibilities as they arise in opposed to seeing a situation and thinking, ‘this is going to be just like that other time’.
4. Trust: True trust consist of honoring one’s own feelings, experiences, wisdom, intuition and trusting them to provide valuable guidance in various facets of one’s life. So stop trusting yourself only when you suspect your spouse is cheating or your kids are up to no good. This goes for all aspects of life!
5. Non-Striving: This is when you are choosing less to strive towards a certain outcome but instead, paying attention to yourself in every moment. By doing this, movement toward’s your goal will happen naturally instead of by force. In other words: Try less, be more. If you are focusing more on who you want to be and less on who you currently are, then you are basically telling yourself that who you are at this very moment is not enough/capable… and that’s not ok!
6. Acceptance: True acceptance consists of embracing things, including yourself, as they truly are, instead of how you would like them to be. Doing this is an important step toward meaningful change.
7. Letting Go: By letting go, you choose to acknowledge and embrace the flow and dynamic nature of life moment by moment in whatever ways it may shift, change or unfold, without attachment to any particular aspect of the experience.
Hopefully just reading this list will help someone relax just a little bit. Meditation is just one of the ways that you can tap into mindfulness. Try to sit in stillness and practice these principles and see how much better you feel and how much easier your life will flow.
Mindfulness to Combat Stress Related Health Issues
In a survey of healthcare providers, 90% stated that they believe stress management is effective in improving health outcomes yet 45% of these professionals noted that they rarely, if ever, discuss stress management. If you think stress isn’t that big of an issue, just review this list of conditions that is caused by chronic stress:
- Altered emotions
- Reproductive issues
- Increases insulin resistance
- Weakening of the bones
- Chronic inflammation (linked to arthritis among other conditions)
- Gastrointestinal issues
- Weight gain (obesity)
- Memory impairment
- Cardiovascular dysfunction (High blood press/cholesterol)
- Chronic pain
- Headaches
None of these stress related issues seem enjoyable. The crazy thing is, stress is nothing more than a perception and reaction to a situation. If the stress coming from the situation is strictly mental, then that means that we are killing ourselves for our work, our debt, our family members or spouses and etc. We are killing ourselves for false expectations set upon us by people who we wouldn’t even invite to our weddings. It has to stop. Even if you don’t have time to exercise or if you don’t know how to eat healthy, you can at least try a little mindfulness to help support your body against the negative effects of stress.
Different Types of Mindfulness Exercises
There are many tools available to assist your mental training in mindfulness that doesn’t require you to meditate. You can do almost anything and practice mindfulness. Just try to pay attention to your surroundings and how it activates your senses. Review the examples below to learn how to be mindful in everyday life:
- In the morning: When you wake up, pause and notice your breathing. How are you feeling?
- Showering: Pay attention to the sensation of the water, the pressure of the flow, the scent of the soap, and the sound of the water as it trickles and lands, feel your feet on feet on the floor.
- Eating breakfast: Notice the process of eating as you bite the food, chew and swallow, taking note of the smell, texture, and flavor.
- Walking: For the most part of an activity of mindfulness, our bodies know what to do without any conscious instruction. But when you are intentionally practicing mindfulness, try to be aware of how your feet touch the ground, the sound they make, the feeling of your body moving through space.
- Driving: Usually this is an autopilot activity. Have you ever found yourself arriving at your destination and almost wondering how you got there? The next time you get into the car, try and notice how it feels when you sit, breath into any areas of tension, take a moment to listen to the sounds as you drive.
Sitting Practice
Sitting practice is a meditation exercise that comprises sitting upright with your spine straight in a relaxed posture with your eyes gently closed and concentrating on your breath. In general, a good starting point is to set aside 10 minutes per day. But, if you only have 5 minutes or even 2 minutes, rather do it then excuse yourself. Remember, you are building a daily habit so that it eventually becomes second nature.
As you grow in your ability to sit with your breath, you can slowly increase the amount of time you dedicate to it. As you become more proficient and able to remain calm and un-reactive, we can expand this sitting practice to allow ourselves to pay attention to body sensations in one area of the body at a time, then to include the body as a whole, and finally to become aware of and look at the thought process.
Body Scan Exercise
Its amazing how often we take for granted what our bodies are able to do … consciously and unconsciously. Walking, talking, eating, and digesting. We take these things for granted, until they are taken away from us due to injury or sickness. Only during dark times do we appreciate all it is that we have available to us because of our physical being. The body scan exercise allows you to put energy into experiencing your body rather than being judgmental about it. Read the steps below to learn how to perform this exercise:
- If you are able to get into a lying position, if not, then just sit comfortably. Check into your breath and let it flow naturally without being forced.
- When you are ready, start by paying attention to the toes of your left foot, checking in and being aware of just the toes of your left foot. Breathing into your toes.
- Next, move slowly up your foot and leg, paying attention to the sensations as you go, being aware of your breath moving to each part as you rest your attention there. Check into your pelvis now. And then start with the toes on your right foot, slowly moving up your right leg with awareness, back to the pelvis. From there check in to your belly, your low back, breathing into the space. Then up to your chest and upper back, moving across to the shoulders. Now pay attention to the fingers of both hands, as they move up along each arm back to the shoulders. Now check into your neck and throat, your chin, jaw, cheeks, eyelids, and forehead, up the back of the head and the top of the head.
- Now imagine a small hole at the top of your head, yes like a whale with a blowhole. Let your breathing move through the whole body from one end to the other. Start with breathing in through the hole in the top of your head and out through the toes, then in through the toes and out through the top of your head.
- As you continue to do so, you might experience the sensation of your body dropping down or away, as if you’re melting into a transparent form, where all that remains in the breath flowing freely.
- Allow yourself to sit in and enjoy the silence and stillness for a minute.
- When you’re ready, slowly return to the body, sensing its form, feeling whole. Being to gently wriggle your fingers and toes.
The idea behind scanning your body is to feel each area, letting your mind linger there, just as you do with your breath in the sitting practice. Breathe into and out of each area and then let go as you move to the next area.
When doing the body scan exercise, you may find that as you let go of the sensation of an area of your body, the muscles in that area let go too. Tension may feel released as you become more mindful of those areas. If you become aware of some body stress but struggled to release it, don’t worry. Just linger there for a few breaths and feel or imagine that that tension is flowing out on each exhale and during the inhale, you are breathing in relaxation, energy, vitality and health.
Benefits of mindfulness
As we stay on this hamster wheel called life, the rolling motion becomes incessant and relentless. So much so that we switch to autopilot…and we begin to ignore the flashing warning signals from
the body. Increasingly, modern medicine is falling short of treating and managing ill health. It is predicted that by 2030, depression will overtake heart disease and become the single biggest health problem that we face.
Long story short, we as humans are not meant to be under stress every day for the duration of our lives. Unfortunately, this has become the expected norm for most individuals. I know for most individuals, they stay on this exhausting ride until they are forced off or wake up.
With growing awareness of the need and with ever increasing availability of programs on the topic, research is revealing that specific interventions that are underpinned by mindfulness are equal to medication in preventing recurrent depression. Studies have shown that at the age of 50, the brain function of people who meditate is 7.5years younger than that of those who don’t. Being mindful and practicing meditation can:
- Increase our positive emotions and decrease negative ones.
- Improve our cognitive function and our ability to focus and pour problem solving abilities.
- Enhance mental resiliency.
- Bring about actual pathological changes in the brain and thereby affect learning, memory, emotional regulation and empathy.
- Lessen physical pain.
- Improve overall health.
- Improve relationships.
Keep in mind that in order to see all of these wonderful benefits of mindfulness, you must commit to making it a daily practice. The daily practice is perhaps the most important component. Just as you wouldn’t expect to learn to surf by reading a book about surfboards and waves, learning mindfulness practice is no different than any other skill that involves both mind and body. Practicing mindfulness is like building up a muscle, the more you exercise it, the stronger it becomes. Only rather than building up a muscle, practicing mindfulness strengthens your mind.
Your perception and reaction to stress determines how stress will effect your life. If you are having trouble managing your stress and it is affecting your health, then it may be time to seek support. The STEW Project offers a variety of services that will give you the opportunity to look at your situations in a more positive and empowering way so that your stress won’t be as difficult. If are unsure about which services will best suit your needs then let me know. I would love to help.
In Good Health,
Amber Stew BS,
Holistic Nutritionist
Certified Master Life Coach
ACSM Exercise Physiologist,
CTNC Mental Health Specialist
TBMM Corrective Exercise Specialist
Hi! My name is Amber and I’m a Body Goals Builder, Master Life Coach, Certified Health Coach, CTNC Mental Health Specialist, Stress Alchemist & Fear Conqueror
I used to be a people pleasing, work-a-holic who stressed herself out to climb the wellness industry’s corporate ladder, while obsessing over her self image. I soon realized that none of it mattered if I wasn’t happy with myself, inside and out, and surrounded around people who loved and respected me.
I now help individuals who are stressed out, out of shape and struggling to find balance in their lives learn how to ease their worries, improve their health, create 10x more joy in their lives and manifest the life of their dreams. At the STEW Project, we are maximizing our living potential by Simply Taking an Emphasis on Wellness.
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