S.T.O.P. | 2 Minute Mindfulness Practice To Relieve Stress & Anxiety

This short 2 minute practice is for when you are in full stress or panic mode. Use as an S.O.S practice for immediate relief, or to practice for any incidents. The acronym is as follows: S - Stop and breathe 3 deep belly breaths. T - Tune in to how the body is feeling and turn towards the moment to moment experience (tension, tightness etc). O - Opportunity to change our reaction. It hurts, but can I be with it? P - Possibility. With this new awareness, how can you best support yourself moving back in to your day?

Transcript

Stop.

An informal way of practicing mindfulness to decrease stress and anxiety in daily life.

Stop and stand.

With your feet on the floor,

Take two or three deep tummy breaths.

T.

Take a moment to tune in.

Tune in to the body,

Becoming curious and aware of our direct physical experience.

How is our body reacting?

As best we can,

Gently turning towards any pain,

Tension or tightness,

Without resisting,

Clinging,

Fighting,

Avoiding,

Or getting caught up in rumination on the whys and if onlys.

O.

Opportunity to change our reaction.

If it feels right,

Saying to ourselves,

This hurts,

Can I be okay with this?

And if there is pain,

Tension or tightness,

What would it feel like to breathe into it,

Letting it go with the exhale?

We are not trying to push it away.

We are practicing softening our resistance.

Maybe taking a moment to notice what is pleasant in your moment-to-moment experience.

Even something tiny that you may not have noticed before.

P.

Possibility.

Congratulations!

With awareness,

You have found the space to step out of automatic pilot.

With this freedom,

What can you now do to best take care of yourself?

Reviews

Very good

As someone who has meditated to ease anxiety for 13 years, this is the most calming of any I’ve listened to given the time:calm ratio (if that were a measurement). In short, I felt calm after two uses of this short meditation when it’d normally take 20 minutes to reach the same level of relief. Thank you.

Thanks, I needed something to ease while I waited for a stressful call - this helped!

A nice quick reminder of this practice.
Thank you 🤗

This is wonderful, and will help with my anxiety attacks! Thank you!!

This will really help me through my panic attacks!