HH389-Building Resilience with Mindfulness

Welcome back to another episode of health hacks as I continue my year in review series, and today I'm talking about building resilience with mindfulness and focusing on some of my episodes that I did in February of this year. Mindfulness is such a powerful tool to handle life's inevitable stresses. Of course, we have stress in our life. However, when we feel the stress levels coming up, what can we do in that moment to help calm our entire nervous system and our breath work is one of the most powerful tools that we have, because we always carry our breath with us, and it's absolutely free, and we can do this anywhere. Now, of course, you can also meditate, if that's something that you like to do, and just get quiet. And you can do that anywhere too. You can do that sitting on a park bench. You can do that sitting on the toilet. You can do that sitting in bed. You can literally slow your mind and just calm your nervous system as a result. Anywhere if you're interested in meditation, there's a number of apps if you haven't done it before. I do recommend guided meditation, because when we start to meditate, the mind will wander, and that's what the mind is supposed to do. However many people think, Oh, I'm not doing it right, because they still have thoughts flowing, the mind will wander. We want to get to a place where we just call it back without any judgment, and again, just focus on quieting the mind when we do guided meditations, then the mind has something to think about in regards to the meditation that will create less wandering, and so it is a really great way to start. And there's many apps from the calm app to Insight Timer to headspace that I have used over the years and recommended, and then coming back to breath work, just simply sitting and focusing on our breath gives us that space to allow our mind to quiet and let all the other turmoil in our mind go away. I liken this to a snow globe. If you shake up a snow globe and all the snow is going everywhere, yes, it looks very pretty. However, that's the turmoil inside your mind, and when we just let the snow globe sit back down on the counter, all the snow comes down to the ground again. It quietens, and you can have such great clarity. You can see right through the snow globe. And that's what it's like for your own mind. When you just sit and allow your mind to quieten, you're creating space for new ideas, new thoughts, to come in, as well as calming your nervous system at the same time. So our breath can help us do this as well. You've probably heard of box breathing, where you can literally inhale for a count of four, hold for a count of four, exhale for a count of four, and then hold again for a count of four and repeat that. Another very powerful breathing technique that I like, which is excellent at calming the nervous system, is 557, breathing, and that's where you inhale for five, hold for five, exhale for seven. And you want to repeat that at least 10 times. I did a health hack on that. It's episode 18, so you can go back and watch that one specifically to learn why it's so effective at calming your nervous system. And as I said, you can do that anywhere. You can do it when you're driving. You can do it when you're in the bathroom. You can do it sitting at your desk quietly. You can do it at a restaurant before a meal. You can do it at home before a meal. Anytime you feel your stress coming up, you can do that. And the reason it's really great to do it before a meal is because that drops you out of your stress state and pops you back into your rest and digest state so digestion can turn on and you can actually digest the food that you're eating. Another exercise that you can do is a 54321, grounding. Name, five things you can see four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell and one thing you can taste, because when you just slow down long enough to do that, it helps ground you and calm your mind. So some episodes that you might want to check out are episodes 367 to 377 where I'm talking about the tools of the unconscious mind series, and all of those episodes are helping you understand the power of your unconscious mind and how you are creating your own reality, and it will allow you to tap into some More tools to support you with mental resilience and stress management.