Stress Reduction Using Mindfulness Living More Fully

Welcome to this podcast series where I’ll be talking about the transformative power of mindfulness...in a practical way.  What is it and how do we actually use it? It’s a topic that’s near and dear to my heart because I’ve seen how powerful it changes the lives of my clients and certainly has my own as well.  Today I’ll be defining mindfulness and describing how it can be used to reduce stress through a 4 step process:
Observing how we hold stress physically Attending to our physical symptoms Noticing our thoughts and feelings Caring for our self-limiting beliefs, like perfectionism So let’s get started...What is Mindfulness?
I describe mindfulness as a state of awareness in the present moment, with curiosity instead of judgment.  It’s kind of like an unfiltered mirror that shows us EXACTLY what’s going on AS it’s going on, IN the here and now and most importantly WITHOUT all the noise and judgements that we so often have. When we slow down and observe whatever’s happening NOW, from a place of neutrality, objectivity or even compassion, then we can see more clearly what’s going on and respond differently to our environment.  When we’re being mindful, we can feel a greater sense of freedom to engage with whatever’s happening from a more authentic place.
Thankfully, a natural byproduct of mindfulness is that we’re more kind and more compassionate with ourselves and with others...something that is SORELY missing in today’s political climate.
Stress Reduction
Let me illustrate this by taking you through an example of using mindfulness with stress.
EXAMPLE:  Deadline @ Work
A frequent complaint I hear about AND certainly experience myself at times, is the EVER increasing volume of work and obligations we have in our job, and the increasing stress that comes with that.
So let’s imagine that you’re in the thick of things, mid-day, and you’re just freaking out — you have a deadline at the end of your work day and you feel way behind where you were hoping to be.
Instead of going on auto-pilot — maybe working too fast and missing things, or the reverse, where you’re procrastinating or completely immobilized — we might, instead, take 5 minutes to practice mindfulness...to recalibrate.
 BEGIN:  How We Hold Stress Physically A helpful place to start being mindful when we’re anxious is first to just notice what’s happening in our body as it is right now, without necessarily trying to change anything about it.  Are we holding tension in our shoulders or neck? Do we feel sick to our stomach from the stress? Do we have restricted shallow breathing? A lot of us hold anxiety in various parts of our body.  BEING mindful, we allow space for whatever it is that we discover, without the judgements of what’s right or what’s wrong...simply observing from a place of curiosity where things are at.
 TRANSFORM STRESS:  Attending to Physical Symptoms Once we’ve observed what’s going on for us physically, to reduce stress we can begin to attend to what we find in a caring way.  Maybe we decide to take a deeper breath, relax our shoulders, or get into a more comfortable posture. Maybe we notice we need some food to fuel and sustain our energy.  
We may notice that the intensity of our stress changes as we respond.  As we attend to this mindfully, we can lean into whatever natural spontaneous reaction is happening, without overindulging in it AND without ignoring or denying it exists.  We simply pay attention non-judgmentally and we learn how we hold anxiety. With practice we can learn how to self-regulate our stress so that we’re having enough of this alert energy to perform at our best, without it derailing us in the process.
 BEGIN:  Notice Thoughts & Feelings Related to Anxiety Next, using mindfulness to reduce stress, it’s useful to observe our thoughts and feelings in the present moment, again...nonjudgmentally.  We notice whatever is there from a place