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Less Stress In Life
Less Stress In Life
Ep: 37 Mindfulness Diminishes Stress
Our mission is to give you tools and strategies that will help you move from being stressed to feeling your best.
In this episode we discussed how mindfulness can help you connect to your body, process emotions and decrease stress.
Co-hosts Deb Timmerman and Barb Fletcher are certified HeartMath® Trainers, and certified stress educators, who are skilled at helping people discover the power of living form the heart. To take the Stress and Wellbeing Assessment in Canada, click here. To take the Stress and Wellbeing Assessment in the US, click here.
SPEAKERS
Deb Timmerman 00:00
You're listening to the less stress in life podcast. Your hosts, Deb Timmerman and Barb Fletcher are on a mission to help individuals and organizations manage stress and change. Together, they bring you real conversations, inspirational stories, and strategies to help move you from being stressed to feeling your best.
Barb Fletcher 00:23
Hello, everyone. I'm Barb Fletcher. Welcome to our series of 52 Practical Tools for Less Stress in Life. This is episode 37. Our goal is to give you tools and strategies to move you from being stressed to feeling your best.
Deb Timmerman 00:40
Today, we're going to be talking about mindfulness and how it can help us decrease stress.
Barb Fletcher 00:45
Deb, Can you talk a little bit about what mindfulness means to you?
Deb Timmerman 00:50
Mindfulness to me means and living in the present moment, I'm aware of what I'm feeling, in my body, and I'm not judging those feelings, whether they are good, uncomfortable, it is what it is. So, it's experiencing life in the moment and being aware of what's happening around you.
Barb Fletcher 01:19
It's almost like observing what's happening as opposed to actually feeling all of those experiences the same way.
Deb Timmerman 01:27
Yeah, I think if I could sum that up, in two words, it would be awareness, awareness of what you're feeling, and acceptance. Accepting what is, I think in the early days, when I was doing mindfulness, we were encouraged to let those feelings come up, but then, if they were uncomfortable, pack them back in a box and put them on a shelf somewhere. And now the mindfulness movement has evolved some, and it's more about accepting those feelings. I don't think that you necessarily have to stay in that realm. So, if I'm sad about something, I may accept the feeling that I'm sad and I may choose to use a tool, like breathwork, or HeartMath, or from my cadre of things that I use to process that out and get my body back into a state where I'm feeling better. But I don't not acknowledge that I was sad.
Barb Fletcher 02:27
We know that when we push those emotions down for extended periods of time, they sometimes show up in a very uncomfortable way. Or perhaps they show up as disease. So, finding ways to process them in the moment, either through acceptance, or just recognizing what's happening, is really valuable.
Deb Timmerman 02:55
It is. I think, I spent half of my life disconnected and away from what my body was feeling. That's what I learned to do as a child. You know, when we're told don't cry, suck it up, buttercup. It's hard to stay with those feelings. And I packed them away and put them on a shelf, and they did come back to rear their ugly head.
Barb Fletcher 03:18
My husband is very diligent in practicing mindfulness. He has a practice, it's 30 minutes long, it's guided. And so, he's not feeling 100% today, and his words to me this morning, were my brain feels foggy. And so, I think the value in the mindfulness practice is that that clarity that we get from being present, we're more quickly able to discern when we're not 100%. Why do you think mindfulness is important?
Deb Timmerman 03:58
Well, I think first of all, if we are disconnected, we're living life in a disengaged way. So, if we don't embody those practices, and are not mindful of what's going on around us, I think we miss out. We miss communication. We're not tuned in to what's going on maybe around us and it's easy to get off track. And I think the other important piece is that it's research base. So, there's many of research studies now about mindfulness, and how good it is for our brain. So, it helps with our executive functioning, our working memory, and our spatial visual processing. So, it is really good for our brain health, and that's probably the biggest reason to use it. We have so many things that's not good for our body, . This is one way that we can connect in tune in. We don't need other tools or other practices or a video or something, it's simply zoning in to the here and now.
Barb Fletcher 05:05
The thing that I noticed the most when I'm mindful is that the relationships around me all benefit from me being present and aware.
Deb Timmerman 05:16
Yeah, you can really listen and really hear and engage in conversations and pick up cues, emotional cues, communication cues, that you would maybe miss if you weren't connected and present in that particular moment.
Barb Fletcher 05:32
In our HeartMath world, we've talked about essence, and what's really the meaning behind what's being said. And so, we know that when we're in that mindful space, we're able to tap into what's the meaning, what's the essence.
Deb Timmerman 05:48
Yeah, I think that's a good summary. I think, too, there's been a lot of studies about mindfulness. You mentioned a guided practice, I assume that's John Kabat Zinn's work out of the University of Massachusetts, which was the first mindfulness course, that I took when I was trying to figure out how to connect to my body. But that particular program was about mindfulness-based stress reduction, and its connection to helping us tune in to our bodies and feel what's happening with stress. So, it's a really effective tool for decreasing anxiety, decreasing stress, and also for helping with pain management.
Barb Fletcher 06:29
So that's one example of ways that we can tap into the mindfulness movement. Are there others that you can share?
Deb Timmerman 06:38
Well, I think, you know, we eat like automatons. I'm guilty of that. So being mindful about what we're putting in our mouths and enjoying our food and slowing down and getting into the smells and the sights of our food. That's one really great practice in a way, We all eat every day. Just tuning in and slowing down during that process. But we can bring mindfulness into our exercise, our walking, our time outdoors. You know, when we're out there really enjoying the essence of what is in the great outdoors is so healing to our souls, one of my favorite things to do.
Barb Fletcher 07:22
So, I'm sitting here, I'm blessed to live on a lake, and we have a butternut tree huge in front of us. And this is the time of year when all the squirrels and the Blue Jays do battle over who can get more butternut oaks. And so, as I was sitting here, just thinking about this topic, I could see the branches moving. And so, it would be easy to look out, thinking about all of the other things I need to do when we finished this call, but being in the moment and actually being able to see nature, living its best life out there right now is really my key to mindfulness.
Deb Timmerman 08:09
Oh my gosh, that reminds me of a story. One of my favorite preachers named Lee, that I used to work with him hospice, he was telling me about having to drive in and do a sermon on a Sunday morning after a snowstorm. And he said, usually, I raced to the church to get to my pulpit to open the door and start greeting people. And one particular Sunday, it had snowed, like tons of snow. And it was before they started canceling everything, at the drop of a couple inches of snow, like we do now. But he said that it was the most beautiful drive to work because of the snow he had to slow down. And what he saw was a cardinal come by. And he said in that moment, I realized that I really needed to slow down because that Cardinal was always there. I just wasn't stopping to see it. And I've remembered that story as a metaphor for life for a long time, because I think we miss a lot because we don't slow down. And there's so many rich, beautiful things around us that can really help us enrich and fuel our lives feed us, but we don't see it because we're going at too fast a pace.
Barb Fletcher 09:23
So almost like we need to move back to that childlike essence. Children are curious, they're excitable, they're sad. They feel all the emotions in rich ways. Some that make us probably more uncomfortable, but they are living in the moment.
Deb Timmerman 09:45
Yeah, so that will be our call to action this week. So, where could you be living in the moment? Where are you running too fast? Where (what) you missing? What are some ways that you can slow down and really connect with your breath, with exercise moves you do, with conversations. You can be a part of every aspect of your life. So, drop us a note. Let us know how being mindful this week works for you and what you notice that you haven't noticed before.
Barb Fletcher 10:17
Until next time.
Deb Timmerman 10:20
Have a great day, everybody. Less stress in life is possible. If you're new to this kind of thinking and would like to explore what's possible for you. We'd love to connect. You can reach us through our website at less stress in life.com. That's less stress in life.com