Day 4: Interrupting The Stress Response

Welcome to Day 4 of this 10-day series on living your life more fully with less stress and greater ease. Each day will offer very short videos that suggest practices to bring into your day.

Practice paying attention so that you can catch the onset of your stress. It is a lot easier to stop a snowball from rolling down the hill when you do so right at the top of the hill as opposed to halfway down the hill when it has already picked up momentum. Find ways to interrupt the stress response at its first warning signs.

Disclaimer: This video is purely for educational purposes and is not intended as a substitute for mental health intervention or treatment of any kind.

Transcript

Welcome to day four. So today I want to invite you to play a little game of sorts. As you go through the day, The invitation is to see how often you can catch yourself just at the first beginnings of stress starting to rise up in your body. And as you can catch those early signs of stress, I'm going to invite you to try one of three things or any of these, All of these. The first one is taking a slow, Deep exhalation. And so the idea here is to make the exhalation longer than the inhalation, Which helps to activate our the calming part of our nervous system. And so just by breathing normally through your nose. A nice, Long, Slow exhalation that's maybe even twice as long as your inhalation. The second thing that you can try when you notice those first signs of stress creeping in is to just hit the pause button and to ask yourself, How do I want to show up for these next moments? And what are the consequences of doing so? How is that going to impact myself? How is that going to impact those around me? And so just taking a moment, Really that quick pause. What are the consequences of the choices about how I can react to these next moments, Given that I'm noticing stress that's showing up right here? And the third thing I want to invite you to try is when you notice that stress starting. To pause and rest your eyes, And I'm just gonna kind of gaze out my window here for a minute, But if you're able to look out a window and just gaze out at the farthest point in the horizon. The farthest point that your eyes can rest and really take in the whole peripheral vision. And so you're expanding your vision and you're stepping back. Visually with your eyes, But this actually helps us to see a bigger picture. To see things from the widest perspective and from that place to be able to then ask yourself, What might be helpful? What might be needed? And so see what you can notice, How many times you can catch yourself today and trying any one of these three things. And seeing how it may help you, Again, Stepping out of that automatic pilot and responding to stress a little bit differently in your day.