Chill Skills for Chaotic Times

I’m get­ting ready to teach a class with this title. And I’m find­ing I need to read over my own rec­om­men­da­tions for deal­ing with stress. “Do what I say, not what I do”, right? Another wise say­ing is, “We teach that which we most need to learn”. So, based on these two oft heard and least fol­lowed say­ings, I know I need to make some changes in the way I han­dle stress.

I have a beau­ti­ful room ded­i­cated to med­i­ta­tion. It has sooth­ing music, sacred pic­tures and stat­ues, can­dles, etc. I walk past this room prob­a­bly 20 times a day. Each time as I look in, I think, “I’ll be there in a bit”. But do I actu­ally make time for this impor­tant stress buster? Alas, not for a cou­ple of weeks. 

Time is the cul­prit. There is never enough time to accom­plish every­thing on my list. I feel pressed for time in prepar­ing this work­shop on Sat­ur­day. We are hav­ing din­ner with friends tonight and I feel stressed out about what dessert to make; and I always love to make dessert. 

Shal­low breath­ing and a short tem­per are big sig­nals that it’s time for me to take inven­tory and fig­ure out how to change the stress pattern. 

While stress may not cause ill­ness, it can cer­tainly con­tribute to it. Stress can worsen symp­toms of the com­mon cold; con­tribute to migraine headaches and stom­achaches. It can make ulcers flare.   

“Stress is an unavoid­able con­se­quence of the human con­di­tion. So why let it take a toll on your body?” said Dr. Paul J. Rosch, pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Stress in Yonkers, N.Y. “Take, for exam­ple, acute anx­i­eties that invoke the fight-or-flight response, which raises blood pres­sure,” said Rosch. “That type of stress can be a con­tribut­ing fac­tor of car­dio­vas­cu­lar disease”. 

Do you know what your excess stress sig­nals are? Do you know what really ticks you off? Do you know what you have con­trol over and what you don’t? These are impor­tant things to know about your­self before you can make mean­ing­ful changes in your life and reduce stress. 

I invite you to sit down and make a list of all the things that tick you off – rel­a­tives, co-workers, com­mut­ing, etc. Then sort them into two cat­e­gories; Things You Can Con­trol and Things You Can­not Con­trol. Doing this sim­ple exer­cise gives you a tool to eval­u­ate areas in your life where you can make changes to reduce stress. 

Me? I’m going to walk into that med­i­ta­tion room and start mak­ing more time for myself by sit­ting down and fol­low­ing my breath in… and…. out. 

Namaste’

A friend recently told me about a Thanks­giv­ing “do over”. Her sis­ter was unhappy with the fam­ily get together on Thurs­day. It didn’t cor­re­spond to her mem­ory of the family’s usual rit­ual. She decided to have a “do over” the fol­low­ing Sun­day that sat­is­fied her image of the per­fect Thanks­giv­ing; one that would giver her young son a dif­fer­ent view of family.

This made me won­der how many of us would like the chance to have a “do over” for those major events in our lives that have been less than sat­is­fac­tory.  Per­haps it is pos­si­ble to repro­gram hurt­ful words thrown at us by par­ents or teach­ers or friends that stuck and col­ored our self-image.

Or as an adult, there may be expe­ri­ences that have col­ored our world in “less than” imagery. Get­ting fired from a job, for exam­ple; or going through a con­tentious divorce or an end of a long-term rela­tion­ship that left feel­ings of bit­ter­ness, blame and inadequacy.

Per­haps some­one broke into your home and robbed you of pre­cious pos­ses­sions, cre­at­ing a sense of vic­tim­hood. The list goes on accord­ing to the indi­vid­ual experience.

There are sev­eral ways to rewrite an expe­ri­ence from the past. It is pos­si­ble to lit­er­ally write a new scene that bet­ter fits your vision of self love and peace of mind. Or you may want to sit and visu­al­ize a new out­come to that trau­matic event that has been dis­tort­ing your self-image for the last umpteen years. Through med­i­ta­tion, you can send in your adult self to res­cue your inner child from a trau­matic expe­ri­ence. On some level, doing this type of exer­cise has the power to shift us out of old dis­torted pat­terns cre­ated by the orig­i­nal event. There are no rules for how this is accom­plished. We are free to visu­al­ize any out­come that feels right and safe to us.

Think­ing back over your life, what upsetting/traumatic event sticks out? What does your “do over” look like?

Here is my wish for you:

May all beings be safe
May all beings be happy
May all beings be healthy
May all beings be at peace in their soul

Namaste’