Move From Stress To Helpful Choices & Action

This meditation is designed to support you when you are feeling stressed and struggling. With a practical approach using the ABC of Feelings First Aid which stands for Awareness - Breath & Body - Choice, Thor holds the space of moving through stress to a state of choice and helpful next steps.

Thor’s First Aid for Feelings ABC (Awareness - Breath & Body - Choice) is informed by Professor Linden’s research of the brain and Thich Nhat Hanh's practice of looking deeply.

Transcript

Give yourself a moment to arrive here.

Take your time to shuffle your body and yourself into a posture and a state that feels most comfortable for you at this point.

The focus for this meditation is stress and your experience of stress,

So chances are this may be a bit challenging for you.

Give yourself permission to take quite a wee while to land and just slowing down as much as you're able to,

Not forcing it,

Just allow it to happen in its own way.

Arriving from where you have been to where you now are may just take a wee while.

You have given yourself this space and this time to be here.

And when we're stressed we often lose our sense of space and time.

So my invitation to you is to remind yourself where you are,

And I do mean that literally,

What's the actual physical space you are in.

And remind yourself what day it is,

What day of the week it is,

And what time of day it is.

When we're feeling stressed,

Chances are we're feeling rushed and agitated,

And this kind of detail can bring us back to the present moment so that we're more in real time than rushing around in yesterday or tomorrow.

You have already recognised this,

At least to some extent,

So give yourself credit for actually becoming aware of that and taking the action to do something helpful and supportive to you.

This is your gift to yourself,

This time,

This space,

Investing it in your own experience.

With the experience of stress heightened,

It is highly likely that your mind will struggle to settle,

At least for a little while,

And that's completely normal.

It is also likely that your feelings may move,

Maybe like a little pendulum or like quite a lot of weather,

In whatever way your physical sensations and your emotions are showing up.

Rather than try and change them into something else,

Experiment with what it feels like to just allow them to run its own course or run their own course.

Your sensations,

Your thoughts,

Your emotions are perfectly normal and understandable,

And so give yourself that gentleness,

Just that bit of kindness during today's meditation,

Knowing that you can listen to this again and again,

As often as it's helpful to you.

So in your own time,

Gently soften the focus of your eyes or close your eyes,

Whatever feels most helpful to you at this point,

As you open up to this meditation.

My invitation to you is to bring that awareness to the actual experience you're having.

Chances are it is uncomfortable,

So just go gently with yourself,

Naming the different feelings you're feeling.

And they might be even conflicting feelings or contradictory kind of physical sensations.

You may feel tired and also that you need to move or that you feel excited,

But you need to rest.

All of that is completely normal within that experience of feeling stressed.

But rather than just stopping at the level of I'm feeling stressed,

The invitation here is to look a bit more deeply at the different components.

What kind of stress are you feeling?

What lets you know that these are the feelings you're experiencing?

How intensely are you feeling this?

Scoring it on the scale of 0 to 10,

Where 0 is not at all and 10 is its most heightened intensity.

Get curious about what might be the information,

What might be the clues in the stress and the stress experiences you are having.

It may be something practical.

It may be something more in terms of relationships and other people.

It may be in terms of your own physical resources.

Are you hungry?

Are you tired?

Are you cold or hot?

Are you thirsty?

Noticing those kind of physical contributing factors to your stress can be a way of just getting some of those quick responses,

Something that you can address quite effortlessly.

So noticing that as well as the maybe more complex factors of relationships.

And notice what would the absence of this feeling mean?

If stress wasn't showing up,

What would you not know?

You didn't have the feelings you're experiencing now.

What information might be lost?

Now that you've got that awareness,

Let's bring your focus to your breath and to your body.

Your breath is your portal to now.

We're always breathing in real time.

We can't catch up on breath from last week,

Nor can we stash away some breath for next week.

And so the breath becomes this portal to take us from where we have been to where we want to go.

It can be helpful to have a little technique or a mechanism here.

So we're going to use the five to seven breathing.

When you're ready.

So we breathe in to be four,

Five,

Breathing out to be six and seven.

And don't worry if you struggle a little bit on those last numbers,

Adjust the counting and the numbering to what feels helpful to you.

And we're going to do that a couple of more times,

Breathing in to three,

Five,

Breathing out to six,

Seven.

It's taking a moment to allow your breath to adjust and do what it needs to do.

And then for the third and final time,

Breathing in to three,

Four,

Breathing out to six and seven.

And then just notice any shuffles or tweaks that you feel like you need to do with your body.

Shuffling your shoulders,

Maybe wriggling your toes,

Just noticing that as that sense of adrenaline and stress starts to slow down,

How that releases in your body.

And then looking at the choices you have at this moment,

Or at least that experience of having a choice.

What would be more helpful to you at this point?

What are you learning about your experience that you can take with you from this meditation forward and into your day?

What needs?

Might need addressing or looking after?

What experiments might be interesting?

Give yourself a moment to observe and absorb what you are learning.

Notice the sensations you're experiencing,

The emotions and the thoughts that you are having.

As you live your breath,

Expand your awareness throughout your body,

Feeling these sensations from the top of your head all the way through your body down to the tips of your toes,

Noticing whatever details your awareness brings to your attention.

Give yourself thanks and the feelings that have come up during this meditation.

Without you investing your time and your focus in getting curious,

You wouldn't have that information,

You wouldn't learn why these feelings are showing up and what valuable information they contain.

It needs both you and your feelings to take your experience forward.

Then in your own time,

Expand your awareness beyond yourself and your body to the space around you and the sounds that you can hear.

And when you're ready,

Gently open.

Give yourself a moment to stretch or move in whatever way feels helpful to you.

You might want to make a note of any insights or information that you've become aware of during this meditation.

And remember,

It's more helpful to be curious than critical.

Reviews

Good one:
More helpful to be curious
VS critical.

Agree completely - It’s more helpful to be curious than critical.

Thank you. Being curious is much a better way than being critical. 💓🙏

Thor’s meditation felt a bit like a friend nudging you along a better path. Thanks 🙏 🤓

Excellent pacing, many thanks! 🙏🏻🙏🏻

Thank you! I will be using “remember it is more helpful to be curious than critical.” 🙌

Very insightful. Thank you for this lovely morning meditation. Are you from Manchester?
💜🌿🌷🌹🐾🦋🌸🎶🦋💐🌷🍄

A reassuring tone and helpful meditation focus.

I loved this.🙏🏼

Excellent. Thank you, a big help, so logical. I’ll be back and I’ve shared this in hope that it will really help them too. Namaste

Thank you! Helpful and expanding.

Thank you 🙏🏻🌻

So thoughtful! Love your point that “breath is the gateway to the now”!!!

Excellent. Thank you.

This was very helpful in quieting the sound that are my thoughts! They needed to be slowed down!😊

Very helpful during stressful time!!! I feel centered and back at homeostasis 🙏

Thank you especially for the closing reminder that it is more helpful to be curious than to be critical. I will try to carry that thought with me today...

Very helpful!
Thank you.
🙏♥️😇

Beautiful sentiment <3 thank you