Cultivating Calm & Resilience In Challenging Times

Julie leads you on a 10-minute guided meditation where you'll learn evidence-based techniques to help you build your immunity by reducing stress, expressing gratitude, handling difficult emotions, practicing mindfulness, and cultivating compassion every day. Rewire your brain for happiness and resilience.

Please note: This is a live virtual workshop presented by Julie Potiker at this year's Yom Limmud eFestival.

Transcript

To start the session,

What I'd like to do is just a little soft landing so that we can release where we just were or where we think we might be and just be right here now together.

So to that end,

I'd like us all to find a comfortable seat if you're seating,

If you're seated.

Oh wow,

If you're seated.

Really feel your sit bones.

Feel where your body is making contact with the chair.

If you're standing,

That's perfectly fine.

Feel your feet on the floor.

If you're comfortable closing your eyes,

Close your eyes.

If that's not comfortable,

A gentle downward gaze.

We're going to take three delicious breaths together in through our nose and out through our mouth.

On this third one,

Sip in a little more air at the top and slowly exhale with a sigh.

Now just do a little systematic relaxation,

Relaxing your forehead,

Releasing any tension in your jaws.

Giving a slight smile to the outside corners of your lips.

Dropping that smile down into your chest,

Letting your shoulder blades melt down your back to keep your chest nice and open.

Noticing the sensations in your chest,

In your heart.

Noticing yourself,

Just calm down into the chair.

If your feet are on the floor,

Dropping your awareness to the soles of your feet.

Softening your hands.

Resting your attention on your breath just for a moment or two.

Letting go whatever excitement or worry.

Just finding yourself right here in this moment.

And then when you're ready,

Gently opening your eyes and coming back to me and we'll start our class.

Hello everybody.

That was just a little quick mini,

Just so that we can all be on the same page.

And what I want to talk to you about and teach you today is just a couple quick tips and tricks on how to calm down right now during all of the anxiety and uncertainty of COVID-19 land.

So the first thing that I want to teach you is soothing touch.

And it's going to be a Simon Says kind of activity.

I'll explain the science behind it first so that you don't think it's kooky.

Everything I teach is evidence-based.

It's all science-based.

So when we touch our bodies in locations with intention,

We actually release endorphins and oxytocin.

So when an infant mammal is crying and the parent mammal picks it up and says,

Oh,

The soothing touch and the general vocalization release a cascade of feel-good hormones in the infant and in the parent.

The amazing thing that science has shown is that we can do that for ourselves.

We don't need a parent to do it and we can be grown ass people and do it for ourselves.

So if you're feeling ever activated by something that you read on the news or God forbid you're watching the news,

Which people have been like sucked into the vortex of doing,

No shame there.

It's just really unhealthy if it activates you in a negative way.

The quickest way for you to move back into your window of tolerance,

Which we'll talk about is soothing touch.

So we're going to do a Simon Says thing.

Everybody can see me.

First put one hand on your chest.

Feel the heat.

Feel the feeling of your hand on your chest.

Now put both hands on your chest.

Put one hand on your belly.

Now both hands on your belly.

One hand cradling your face.

Now both hands like Shana,

Shana,

Poonam.

Hugging your arms like you're giving yourself a hug and actually do like a little squeeze so that you can really feel the pressure of you holding your own self.

Then putting your palms down on your thighs and just doing like a rub.

And then hand in hand.

I'm doing it up high so you can see but your hands are going to be in your lap.

So this is soothing touch and it's really miraculously simple that we can do this for ourselves when we're feeling activated.

And it's a very instantaneous tip and trick if you can remember to do it.

I like the hand in hand one because when we get back out into society,

Which is opening up now in many jurisdictions,

If you're feeling activated you want to have a less obvious soothing touch place.

When I was first teaching this and learning this my sisters would say,

Oh don't tell her she's going to put her hands on her chest.

You know you don't want people to think like oh my gosh she's either overly affected or overly dramatic or she thinks she's having a heart attack or something.

So you want to have one that's kind of subtle.

So this the hand in hand one or the arms one is the one that I always recommend for being in the workplace.

But if you're if you're home watching the news or a friend is telling you a story that's really sad or you're on Facebook and you read some of those missives from the front line,

My go to is hands on heart right away.

The next thing that I want you to understand is that what you think changes your brain.

So if you want to try to rewire your brain for happiness and resilience,

Which I wholeheartedly recommend,

It's simple but it takes practice.

So how you do it is by noticing that you're having a positive mental state and letting it land.

So that pushes it to a neural trait.

So that's a beautiful sunset.

What's for dinner?

No it's that's a beautiful sunset.

Wow look at those colors.

Isn't that gorgeous?

Okay that's enough.

So that just rewired your brain because neurons that fire together wire together and that created a happy bridge in your brain which counteracts the negativity bias that we have because we're primates.

That's the work of many people but the penultimate one in my mind is Rick Hansen and he's a mentor of mine.

He says that our brains are like Velcro for negativity and positive things fall off like Teflon which is why when you get a review at work and even if it's constructive criticism you might get eight accolades and the one constructive criticism is the thing that gets under your skin that you can't let go of.

So however many times during the day that you can notice you're having a positive mental state don't waste it.

Let it land.

Enrich it and absorb it so that you rewire your brain for more happiness and resilience and eventually and I'm throwing a lot of science at you because we don't have a lot of time but you can go on my website and get reams of information on all this stuff eventually your default mode network which is just your brain when you're not engaged in a task which can be a pretty unhappy place eventually your brain can be a happier place because you've been cultivating it and you've been watering good planting seeds of good happy things and watering them and you've been pruning out the bad ones because you're laying down happy bridges every day a dozen times a day.

So when I'm leading you in a meditation which I'm about to do you're going to get some good juicy feelings and just because you're following my voice and you're feeling these good juicy feelings I just want you to know that every time you listen to a guided meditation you're rewiring your brain for more happiness and resilience because you're allowing the positive mood the positive mental state to enrich and absorb so it's pushing it to a neural trait.

All right so we're going to do a meditation now and I'm going to invite soothing touch in this meditation and I'm and I'm also happy for you to now understand that you're going to be making happy bridges in your brain so everything that I teach there's a background to it that's grounded in science so none of it is cuckoo none of it is new age and it's all really healthy and it and it's going to help all of us to to be more balanced humans and then other people are going to mirror our neurons because they can't help it empathetic resonance mirroring neurons and it raises the whole bar for humanity so it's just juicy fabulousness alrighty so this meditation I want to do 10 minutes if that's okay with everybody I'd love to do 20 minutes but we don't have time so find a comfortable seat if you're laying down you might want to keep one elbow up so if you fall asleep your arm will fall down that's just a trick unless you really need a nap in which case it's been nice to meet you let's close our eyes as long as it's cool with you to have your eyes closed if you prefer a gentle downward gaze that's absolutely fine and to make for safety when you're meditating no matter who's guiding you if you ever feel uncomfortable in any way triggered by anything that anybody says don't stay in the meditation is my advice to you I've taken the two trauma sensitive mindfulness courses and so I'm very sensitive to the fact that trauma is in the room whether it's whether we're all physically present with each other or whether we're on zoom together there's trauma in the room never mind COVID-19 90% of human beings have experienced trauma 8% it becomes post-traumatic stress trauma so whenever you're in any meditation situation and somebody's guiding you to do something that's making you feel either hyper or sort of deadened stop the exercise for yourself and take care of yourself bringing your attention to your feet opening your eyes if they were closed getting a glass of water moving your body leaving the room whatever you need to do to protect yourself is the most important thing okay that's my big big disclaimer and so now we're ready and this this shouldn't be this shouldn't be traumatic or scary okay but if it is take care of yourself all right finding our seat finding our place closing our eyes if it's comfortable we're going to take three nourishing breaths but we're going to breathe in through our nose for four hold it for a count of four and then we're going to breathe out for six we're going to do that three times let your breath find its natural rhythm relax your eyebrows relax your eyes imagine your eyelids so comfortable release any tension in your jaws slightly open your teeth imagine a slight smile to the outside corners of your lips which helps tap us into our parasympathetic nervous system dropping that smile down into your throat your neck softening your neck and dropping down now into your heart your precious heart letting your shoulder blades melt down your back releasing your abs letting your hips relax releasing your thighs and your knees your calves and your feet and softening your hands you may want to place a hand or hands where you find it soothing just for a couple breaths to remind yourself that you've carved this time out for yourself and for each other this gorgeous self-care self-compassion and community love loving connected presence you're doing this right now and then relax your hand or hands down into your lap and i want you to imagine either from your sit bones or from the soles of your feet or both roots growing down into the earth so they're growing down from what you're sitting on into the floor of your room and then down from the floor through the foundation of the building down into the bedrock down into the soil these roots are strong and at the same time there's nutrients coming up from the earth into your tree this is you as a tree and back down under the ground you've got this strength going down vertically and magnificently there's roots growing out horizontally connecting to all these other trees so we are strong incredibly connected our roots are going down and sideways like hands holding hands and up above the ground we're firm and solid yet flexible big breezes can come all sorts of weather rain and we can move our treetops our branches can sway we can be flexible we can bend but not break we are firm in the back and soft in the front now imagining your heart in the center of the trunk and asking your human body what do you need right now what word could you take in on your inhale that would nourish you right now could it be peace or love or ease hope courage something that your human body with your firm back and your soft front could benefit from right now and breathe that word in on your inhale letting your exhale just be for right now you're breathing in a gorgeous gift for yourself now for your exhale you get to bestow this gift of a word and it could be to specific individuals that you love or that you know are suffering or that you can't be with right now because of quarantines and social distancing or it could be to categories of people like nurses doctors first responders so you're breathing in for yourself and you're breathing out for others it becomes a guided visualization breathing in for yourself breathing out for others I invite you to take this circle of compassion on your exhale to encompass planet earth now still breathing in for yourself I'd like you to narrow your exhale to the people in this room today in yom lamud breathing out for each other now staying in the meditation letting go of the words and taking in the words of this poem by Mary Oliver called when I am among the trees when I am among the trees especially the willows and the honey locust equally the beach the oaks and the pines they give off such hints of gladness I would almost say that they save me and daily I'm so distant from the hope of myself in which I have goodness and discernment and never hurry through the world but walk slowly and bow often around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out stay a while the light flows from their branches and they call again it's simple they say and you too have come into this world to do this to go easy to be filled with light and to shine now you might want to wiggle your toes wiggle your fingers and when you hear the sounds of the chime come gently back into the room so I'm curious to know how that meditation was and what came up and what I'm interested in doing is if anybody is interested in sharing just having you unmute and speak and then just try to keep your comments to a minute or two because I have two more like didactic pieces of material that I want to share with you but I really do want to hear and it's nice for other people to hear what came up and how that was it's always the worst going first but I hope somebody will do it so you just need to unmute and then speak I liked um I liked when you asked us to put our mouths into a bit of a smile and then the idea of dropping the smile down because it just felt really good to like smile for myself and yeah thank you so much and thank you for having the courage to go first I appreciate it and I love that smile thing I got that from Tara Brock who's one of my favorite teachers when I first started teaching meditation I used to channel her when I taught so it always works for me too I love it I love the smile in my heart not to not to cover over what's there what pain or heartbreak is there but to just love myself because of it which is really the tenant of mindful self-compassion which is the curriculum that I'm trained to teach anybody else feel so brave it's okay if you don't because I'll just keep teaching yes Linda I feel very calm and courageous and relaxed beautiful thank you courage thank you oh somebody said I I loved it I was outside in a swing chair that I've never used I opened my eyes and saw the trees felt you were reading to me I'm smiling and feeling so pleasant despite the noises outside that aren't annoying me as as they typically would oh that's so nice thank you yes Mona what do you got to the part where you said um to send it out to somebody else yeah you made me very emotional I brought tears to my eyes is that okay yeah I was doing something that I did before that I didn't feel like I could do anything for them uh-huh so there's a famous meditation teacher that says that loving kindness meditation should be done with wet eyes so I find that when I teach loving kindness meditation at San Diego State I've taught it for the last five years in this one same professor's School of Public Health class a lot of the students cry and then they get surprised you know that they're having a flood of emotion but really it's a it's it's a release of stress and it's and it's healthy as long as you can come back to the present you know what I mean as long as it's okay it's it's okay as long as it's okay I happen to think it's really nice and there's some science around loving kindness meditation which is that it makes people more altruistic so for meditation in general the science is ironclad that your heart rate and your blood pressure go down anxiety and depression lesson or and go down and for depression if your depression is is mild it's even more effective than antidepressant medicine that's not for severe depression your telomeres actually the actually don't shorten like like they normally do when you age so there's longevity and there's less inflammation so I mean the the benefits of meditation are astounding right a lot of people think they can't do it they can't clear their mind well you're not supposed to clear your mind which is why I recommend guided meditation it's easy you just put in your earbuds and you follow the voice and if my Jewish Cleveland Midwest voice isn't annoying there's a lot of my meditations on insight timer on the app and also on my podcast and everything's free so I really highly recommend you do it but with loving kindness meditation specifically they found people be people have become more altruistic they're more likely to help their fellow man well then why wouldn't you do that meditation right so no matter what meditation I'm teaching I'm gonna morph it into a loving kindness meditation so we get more bang for our buck whether it's may we be safe may we be happy may we be healthy may we live with ease or whether it's bringing in a word for ourself and a word out out for other people regardless of whether I'm doing a breath meditation and open awareness meditation I'm gonna have a chunk of it the lion's share of it that's gonna be loving kindness meditation because I think if we're gonna spend the time doing it we might as well raise the bar for humanity is there any questions before I move on yes Judy sure thing is you were asking us to choose a word for ourselves I chose the word peaceful for myself and the word going out my brother's going through a difficult time right now he's by himself and actually in Florida he's in the midst of a move and a new job and well that's good but he's kind of recently divorced and he's doing it on his own and he called me a little bit ago and my urge was to was to call him and not continue with this session but I knew I wanted to continue for the session for myself so I chose him to wish him I was looking for a word it was like courage and I felt my whole body just feel so much better feeling like even if I couldn't talk to him or actually be down there to help him move which I probably ordinarily would have done but I could reach out to him through my heart and just wish him courage and strength and then I realized I also wanted to wish that for myself so I switched the same word of that courage for myself and for him and it was really just beautiful I really want to thank you for just um also in this midst of uh our afternoon of Lee Moon it's really wonderful to be able to sit with you so you know everyone here so thank you oh that makes me feel so good I just I just actually took in everything that you were said and I and I rewired a happy bridge for my brain so thank you okay there's there's two more pieces that I don't want to leave out that are this is like the cliff notes of how to be how to take control of your power and be happier even when the shit is hitting the fan one of them is writing down a joy list so that so that when you so that when you're dealing with a difficult emotion and you say to yourself what do I need to to hear right now you can tell yourself what you need to hear so I'm going to run you through those little steps in a second but when you get to what do I need to do right now sometimes you can't think about what you need to do because you feel like crap so then you look at your joy list that you're about to write and you see oh have a cup of tea oh take a bath oh call a friend oh I could do those things those things aren't beyond me so what I'd like to do I'll I'll be quiet for two three minutes and you could when the session's over when you're done with your mood for the day you could spend more time like 10 minutes and really free associate all the things in your life that bring you joy so start now make sure you have things on your list that are really easy to do like if seeing your grandkids is one of the things but they're they live out of town make sure it's like face timing with my grandkids okay so I think we should stop but I want you to go back to that later today to flesh it out and then if you can make copies of it and have it handy like put one in your bathroom put one in your bedroom stick one in your car so that you have your joy list handy it'll be helpful for when you need to change the channel and the next thing I want to talk to you guys about that's so important like could be the most important thing I say is keeping a gratitude practice so a lot of people already do this so I don't have to say too much about it I just have to say if you don't do it you need to do it and I I don't like journaling and I actually have a problem when people tell me what to do like I don't want to be told what to do but the science behind keeping a gratitude journal or a gratitude practice in general is so overwhelmingly compelling when you guys email me through my website I can send you this one document that has like 40 of the studies of a gratitude practice all collated so the gratitude practice improves your health your relationships your emotions your personality your career what it basically does is it creates a positive feedback loop so I I make these little gratitude journals and they're blank inside and because I don't like to journal I answer two questions what did I enjoy today and what am I grateful for today because I don't want to write down five things you're grateful for today I find that annoying so and I don't want to if I'm going to be annoyed I'm not going to do it so this this technique is the least annoying way I have found to get the benefits and you don't need to write a lot what did I enjoy today what am I grateful for today it could be I I love to sail and I live in San Diego I have a sailboat it could be sailing sailing you know my family a soft pillow whatever but you need to do it every day so a trick that I have is I keep it by my toothbrush because if it's on my nightstand it gets buried and then the last thing that I really want to teach that I think super important is how to deal with difficult emotions because we have a lot of difficult emotions right now during COVID-19 it's scary and it's uncertain so in this in the mindful self-compassion curriculum they have a thing called the self-compassion break and then there's also a thing called RAIN and it's basically the same thing and I like RAIN a little bit better so the acronym the acronym is R-A-I-N and there's a lot of this stuff on my website and in my blogs so the R is recognize that you're having the difficult emotion so that's name it to tame it the A is allow it to be there but not for very long just so that you can deal with it the I is to investigate what's up why it's happening and the N which is really the most important it's the self-compassion piece is nourish it used to be not identified like don't run away with the storyline but then the mindful self-compassion movement swept in and they changed it to nourish so how this would work would be you are reading the newspaper or god forbid watching the news and you see something that is really upsetting soothing touch that happens first then you name it oh my god that's anger that's fear that's disgust that's loathing whatever that really that's going on that's your reaction it would be great if you could feel in your body where that's happening because we're embodied it's not just intellectual it's all over your body when you when you have a reaction like that you could put your hand where you feel it so you've named it just naming it calms down your amygdala and creates space around it that allows it to be there you investigate why it's there that's a no-brainer right now in America and actually all over the planet stuff is freaking scary right and then nourish and not identify what do I need to hear right now and then what do I need to do right now what do I need to hear right now could be this too shall pass if I want to channel my mom and my mother-in-law it could be you've got this it could be whatever unfolds I will be there to meet it it could be where's the thing from the basham told that I love since I'm speaking to my Jewish my Jewish folk let me fall if I must the one I will become will catch me the Baal Shem Tov cha-ching okay that's very cool let me fall if I must the one I will become will catch me he's like I got my own back right what do I need to hear right now and then what do I need to do right now what do I need to do right now you look at your joy list do one of those things on your joy list and then while you have while you're changing your channel by doing one of those things on your joy list let it land enrich it and absorb it so that you're taking in the positive mental state and then write it down in your gratitude journal that that sews up the entire practice we have three minutes left so if there's any questions somebody said does the time of day matter what's the best time of day for meditation it doesn't matter the the science says the sweet spot looks like it's around 12 minutes it doesn't matter it could be five minutes it could be a half hour I recommend insight timer it's free I think they're the best how about we all unmute and just love each other Nancy thank you so much for this I do meditation with my reform congregation but I've also been doing transcendental meditation for about the last seven years and one thing that's interesting about or different about that is that there's a mantra that I was given but a lot of times I substitute it for something in Judaism so I'll do Shalom Shalom Shalom or use some of the wonderful phrases that you mentioned do you ever use things in Judaism or words in your practice well I taught a class with a Hasidic rabbi so yeah I taught a four-week class with him was really interesting we did a Kabbalah class so yeah it depends on it depends on the audience but it for me it's important that it's compassion in and compassion out to get the benefit of raising the bar for humanity the science benefit but thank you anybody else before they kick us off how do we find out about your app oh so if you go on my website mindful methods for life everything is there's a library on there there's my my podcast and then there's everybody's free apps that I think are good plus insight timer apps there's everybody's free newsletters every single one of my teachers that I respect it's all of their books are on there I mean it's um it just got put in the chat it's mindful methods for life.

Com and I welcome any kind of questions you guys can email me you know I'm I'm available so I hope this was great I think they're probably going to cut the room off I would love it if you could type in one word of how you feel Julie I've read your book and that this very much brought to life all of the things that you teach thank you oh the name of the book is life falls apart but you don't have to my own mindful methods for staying calm in the midst of chaos and it's on Amazon and I give all my money to charity you guys I'm not like hawking my wares it's so nice to have met you all thank you this was fun.