Holistic Stress Reduction Series Part 1

Learning Your Way to Peace of Mind

Stress affects us mind, body, spirit, and emotions. Sometimes we need help finding inner peace.

Have you noticed when you’re under stress your ability to focus declines? You feel a tightness around your head or in your jaw or throat. Calm contentment seems as far away as a remote island, unreachable. Worse, it can start to seem like things will never get better.

We can’t always change the amount of stress in our lives. So, it’s good to know we don’t have to wait until life gets better to start feeling better. This first post in a four-part series gives you tools for greater peace of mind. Learn skills to put your mind at ease today, regardless of what’s happening around you.

This first post in a four-part series gives you hope for greater peace of mind. An easeful mind. A way to put your mind at ease today, regardless of what’s happening around you. Sound too good to be true? I get it. Let’s look at why I believe you have within you the ability to feel greater calm and focus and connectedness with others now.

Well-being Is a Skill That Can Be Learned

Our brains continue to change. When it comes to brain activities, what we do reinforces learning and makes it easier to do that thing in the future. Repetition changes brain connectivity. You’ve undoubtedly noticed that practicing a skill leads to getting better at the skill. Starting a new job where you’re expected learn a lot of new ways of doing things seems harder at the beginning, gets easier, and then becomes routine. The brain works this way. It builds and changes connections that make what we do regularly easier.

So, what does this have to do with stress?

This learned brain activity applies to positive and negative experiences. Most of us have learned ways of coping with stress that leave us feeling depressed, anxious, frustrated or angry, and—at the extreme—powerless, trapped, and miserable. We learned these ways of dealing with (or not dealing with) stress well.

Those stress reaction pathways in the brain have become the easiest response to a stressful event. These reactions contribute to symptoms of depression and anxiety. Often we know this, but it feels like too much to attempt to change in the middle of a stress storm.

What if you could easily train your brain to respond differently to a stressful event?

If you could, in a few minutes a day, train your brain and mind to respond to stress in a way that left you feeling more at ease, more in control of yourself, more able to respond with intention and balance, would you try it? Researchers into neuroscience and mindfulness have shown that we absolutely can train our minds to have a better response to stress. The Center for Healthy Minds team have combined the ancient wisdom of contemplative practices with the latest scientific knowledge of brain and psychological processes to create tools for well-being. The researchers have developed methods of improving mind health that you can learn in a few minutes a day. Best of all, they are not trying to sell you anything!

A Free Tool to Guide the Way

I have known about mindfulness for years, and I’ve tried some good meditation apps. Unfortunately, many of the better apps charge monthly or annual fees, making them hard to afford on a tight budget. That’s why I got excited when I recently learned about the Healthy Minds app (available in the iOS App Store and in Google Play). Developed out of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, this app makes learning new mental well-being skills easy. Healthy Minds app users report reduced anxiety, depression, and perceived stress.

App research shows that in “a few minutes each day you can train your mind—and even rewire your brain—to be more focused, more resilient, and to feel a deeper sense of connection and purpose.” This daily practice has the potential to “completely transform how you deal with stressful situations both at work and at home. Not a typical meditation program. It includes active meditations that you can apply to the daily life.” Healthy Minds app

This app goes beyond mindfulness, or awareness, to foster skills for connection, insight, and life purpose and values. It guides you through easy activities that help you build well-being skills. With these skills, you gain more options for how to respond to stressful situations. By responding to stressful situations differently, you reduce the negative effects of stress on your mind, body, spirit, and emotions.

Using the Healthy Minds App

Setting the “You Are Here” Marker for the Start of Your Journey

After you download the app and create an account, you will be prompted to take a baseline assessment. I recommend going through the questions so you can learn where you’re at on the awareness journey. As you take the assessment, remember that there are no right or wrong answers – no better or worse ways to respond. You only need to be here authentically as you are. Answer honestly for the best results.

Of course, your goal in using the app is improved awareness, but remember why that’s your goal. You’re not here to prove anything. You’re seeking greater well-being. You want a better experience of being alive in a stress-filled world. The path forward starts wherever you are today. And the Healthy Minds app will guide you better when you give it an honest view of where you’re starting.

The 3-Minute Introductory Experience

After you complete the assessment and see your current “Awareness” score, you’ll come to 3-minute a welcome audio track. In this audio introduction, the creator of the app talks about the science behind the Healthy Minds app. You’ll hear the promise of the app – “training your mind to be more calm and focused, to feel a greater sense of purpose, and to be more connected to the people in your life.” (Healthy Minds app instruction). Next, you will be guided through an introductory activity in mindfulness and connecting with your breath. The introductory activity shows you how to practice two well-being skills: “paying attention on purpose” and “appreciation.”

From there, the app takes you to a screen with options for skill practice. A little practice each day will reduce the distress of living with stress. You will probably start to feel the difference right away.

I encourage you to join me in giving this gift of self-love to yourself. We all deserve to feel better. If using the app isn’t an option for you, then look for a mindfulness book at your library or find a local or online mindfulness group where you can get support in practicing these skills. Try these resources for finding online groups: Insight Timer app meditation groups and Center for Mindful Self-Compassion online groups.

We’re on a journey in life. Coming to that journey calm, focused, and aware of our connectedness to others helps us have a better experience along the way.

Bonus Benefit

When we practice mindful wellness, we’re on our way to creating a “kinder, wiser, more compassionate world.” That sounds beautiful to me. It starts with improving the world within us and expands to the world immediately around us, and then it grows from there. I hope you will join me in mindful well-being so together we can change the world!

More Free Resources for Mindful Well-Being

The Center for Healthy Minds offers more free resources for well-being on their website.

Virtual Guided Meditation Replays with their founder Richard Davidson

Meditatcíon en Vivo, en español con Daniela Labra Cardero

Webinar: Cultivating Purpose in Uncertain Times Healthy Minds app