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Kamini Wood works with high achievers on letting go of stress, overwhelm and anxiety that comes with trying to do everything, and trying to do it all perfectly
Hi there, and welcome to another episode of Rise Up Live Joy Your Way, whether it's morning, afternoon, or evening. Thank you for taking some time to spend with me. So I got a question for you. So have you ever felt. That like your life is running at a hundred miles an hour between work, family relationships, and your own wellbeing, and it often feels impossible to just slow down and even catch a breath.
Maybe you've even found yourself thinking, you know what? I'll relax when this season [00:01:00] of whatever I'm going through is over. Or once I finished everything on my list, then I'll find my call. But here's a challenge with that mindset. Research and psychology and neuroscience tells us clearly that calm isn't something we must wait for.
Instead, it's an internal state. So. We need to start creating calm within ourselves. No matter how chaotic life gets, it's about finding that within ourselves. So today I wanna talk about how you can access calm immediately and consistently. So first, in order to do this, we have to understand how we can even find calm in the midst of chaos.
So let's first talk about what calm even is. So from a science standpoint, calmness relates directly to when your nervous system is in the state of balance. I usually refer to this as being regulated. When our nervous system is not hyper aroused or hypo aroused, it's in this like state of, uh, what's referred to as the window of tolerance.[00:02:00]
So it's involves when, when your parasympathetic nervous system known as the rest and digest system is, uh, naturally, uh, it. It's online rather than the fight or flight, which is the sympathetic nervous system. So, um, Dr. Rick Hanson, who actually wrote hard wiring happiness highlights that our brains are wired with this strong negativity bias due to survival mechanisms, right?
It's that the negativity bias is the thing that has a scanning for all the things that could happen, because what it's trying to do is make sure that we're gonna be okay. So this bias is the way that our brain naturally. Pays attention to those stressors so that we can hopefully keep ourselves safe. Um, but what happens is, is calm doesn't then happen automatically.
Instead, it's something that we have to intentionally cultivate in order to, um, in order to be able to access it on a, on a. Consistent basis. So, John Cabot Zinn, he's actually a mindfulness researcher and neuroscientist, underscored this in [00:03:00] his, in his research and talks about it routinely. So his studies, um, on mindfulness-based stress reduction, MVSR, uh, consistently demonstrated that even brief moments of mindfulness can significantly reduce stress and anxiety.
Because it alters the brain's activity. So in his research, uh, it was shown that regular mindfulness practices decrease activity in the amygdala. So the amygdala is a part of our brain that is the threat detector. And so when we increase the mindfulness practices, what we're doing is we are, uh, creating more emotional regulation.
And so we can access calm more often, essentially. So, um, there was a, a. Study that was also published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience that found that participants who practiced even, even brief mindfulness, uh, meditation sessions, so even as short as five minutes in a day, so not like hours long at all, but just five minutes in a day, they experienced reductions in their cortisol levels, which is [00:04:00] that stress hormone.
They, they experienced reduced reduction in that. And so when they, um. Had that happened, they were able to report that they felt calmer and more focused and less overwhelmed even in, uh, demanding situations. Additional research does emphasize too that the power of sensory grounding techniques, even again, even if it's brief, but those brief, um, techniques will reconnect you immediately to the present moment.
And so when your senses are reconnected to the present moment through these grounding. Techniques, it interrupts the brain's pattern of anxiety and worry, and it shifts the focus from these anxious thoughts into immediate, um, physical experiences that are happening right now. The American Psychological Association actually also had a study that showed these brief grounding exercises reduced a.
Acute anxiety. So if you're having acute anxiety just coming back to the present moment, it, uh, has a reduction in that as well as the stress levels. And the researchers emphasize that the grounding [00:05:00] techniques, uh, help anchor the brain into reality rather than perceived threats, um, or worrying about the future.
And so, again, it calms the nervous system. It reregulate the nervous system. So. Just thinking about all of that and the research and the science behind it, what are some things that you could do, uh, to really start practicing and to, to bring calm into your everyday? One is deep breathing. So research from Harvard Medical School demonstrated that, that deep diaphragmatic breathing, the slow, deep breaths involving your belly, so involving your belly rather than up here in your shallow ta chest.
It activates the parasympathetic nervous system again, that rest and digest. So even one minute of this deep, intentional breathing sends a signal to your brain, uh, and your body that you're safe and it reground you. And so even if you just place one hand on your chest and one hand on your abdomen and just breathe in slowly through your nose, but feeling your abdomen rise rather than your chest rise.
So feeling [00:06:00] almost like you're, you're filling up your belly with the air and then just exhale slowly through purse flips and repeat that maybe three, four times. That practice will rapidly shift you from this fight or flight or this stress into a place of calm. Uh, again, the second thing that I would offer is mindfulness micro practices.
So it's not about, oh gosh, I have to set aside an hour. It's, you know, set aside five to 10 minutes, but do these short mindfulness breaks. Um, and you can even set reminders during the day to take a brief, you know. Like I said, five minutes. You can even do one to three minutes of just simply noticing your breathing or simply noticing the surround the sounds around you.
Just really paying attention to your senses because these short pauses will have the cumulative effects of reducing stress and anxiety over time. And then when we were talking about grounding techniques, uh, some of the ways to ground, again, are to use your senses. So it'll, because it'll reconnect you to, to the present moment immediately.
So the 5, 4, 3. One [00:07:00] technique is, you know, naming five things that you can see noticing four things that you can touch, like actually physically feel, three sounds that you can hear. Um, identifying two things that you can smell in this given moment, and then one, one thing that you're, that you can taste. So what you're doing in that moment is.
You're bringing in all of your senses, but you're in this present moment, and that simple practice can shift your attention to whatever you were having anxiety about or worrying about. Back to the present moment, again, calming the nervous system and then. Visualization is another technique that, um, they talk about routinely in, in positive psychology, where just having brief guided visualization.
So you close your eyes and you briefly and vividly imagine yourself in a safe, calm, and peaceful place. Um. Maybe for you it's the beach, it's the forest. Maybe you actually have a memory where you felt safe. Uh, research confirms that when your brain will respond to these imaginate experiences as though they're [00:08:00] real ones, and it will activate those calming neural pathways, and you'll notice the stress and anxiety reduces well.
So it's just important to remember that calm isn't dependent on external circumstances becoming perfect. So it's not about. I'll be calm when X, Y, Z is over. Calm is a cultivated skill so that you can access it even in the most challenging moments that life's gonna throw at you. And the research has shown that just having these brief, intentional practices that you engage in on a daily basis will help, uh, build that muscle so that you.
You can access calm again, even in the middle of chaos. And it's important to remember that you don't need hours set aside for meditation, that you can do this in these small bite-sized pieces. And over time it'll accumulate and, and compound to be something that you can access more routinely. If you'd like to discuss how coaching could help you or even how coaching could help you.
Implement some of [00:09:00] these mindfulness techniques or grounding techniques. Feel free to book a time with me anytime@coachwithKamini.com and until next time, stay well.