8 Mindfulness Exercises to reduce stress of ‘Social Distancing’
We all struggle with stress on a regular basis, whether we are old or young, big or small, conscientious or realistic. Stress isn’t just a feeling or an emotional state; if you don’t fix it, it will manifest in every part of your life.
To limit the coronavirus spread, health authorities have urged the public to practice social distancing — to stay home, avoid crowds, and refrain from getting in physical contact. Although it’s for the better, living like that can be isolated, frustrating, and even stressful.
Symptoms of Stress
Stress can cause the following symptoms: Lethargic; nausea; stomach discomfort, including diarrhea and constipation; aches, pain and muscle strain; chest pain and rapid heartbeat; insomnia; recurring colds and infections; lack of sexual desire and/or capacity. Concentrating problems, rushing thoughts; difficulty learning new information; forgetfulness, disorganization, confusion; difficulty making decisions; feeling stressed or overwhelmed; frequent crying spells or suicidal thoughts; feeling lonely or worthless; little interest in appearance, punctuality; nervous behavior, fidgeting, leg tapping.
Looking at these signs, it’s obvious that stress will touch every corner of your everyday life. Beyond these physical effects, stress may also have a significant effect on your emotions and your overall mood.
What is MBSR?
One way to deal with stress is by mindfulness-based stress reduction, or MBSR, which demonstrates how to use mindfulness in daily life. It’s a tested way to help you cope with the stressors of everyday life.
While originally developed to support hospital patients, MSBR has since been used successfully by a wide variety of people from all walks of life.
MBSR is a dynamic and customizable stress management solution.
This consists of two main components:
- mindfulness meditation
- yoga
According to the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts, more than 24,000 individuals have benefited from the MBSR initiative that began in 1979 (Center for Mindfulness, 2017).
While MBSR is often different from person to person in practice, it is based on the same set of rules. The following explanations are taken directly from the website of the Center for Mindfulness:
Having the activity a task rather than a chore, and thereby making the study of one’s life mindfully into an adventure of living rather than one more thing one “needs” to do for oneself to be healthy; a focus on the value of individual effort and encouragement and the frequent guided practice of meditation in its various forms, when one “feels” like practicing on a particular subject.
1. The Breath
- Begin by bringing your mind to the inside by concentrating on the breath.
- Take a few gentle deep breaths out of your heart. See your emotions, feelings, moods, and perceptions as objects flowing down a lake, coming into view, and disappearing out of sight.
- Now take the object out of the flow and concentrate on it. Let the other sensations and feelings go in the background. Note any new thoughts or feelings that emerge from observing the object.
- Sit back for a minute with these reflections and emotions. Whenever you’re ready to move on, just put it on a leaf and let it float downstream.
2. Body Scan
It involves actively sweeping through the body with the mind, bringing affectionate, open-minded, attention to its different regions, generally beginning from the toes of the left foot and then going through the entire foot–to the bottom, the heel, the top of the foot–and then up the left leg, including, in effect, the knee, the shin and the calf.
From there, the emphasis moves into, successively, and progressively, the entire pelvic area, including the hips again, the buttocks and the groin, the lower back, the waist, and then the rib cage, the shoulder blades floating on the rib cage in the back, all the way back and forth.
From the shoulders, we move to the body, always working together, beginning from the tips of the fingers and thumbs, then advancing successively through the fingertips, palms, then back again.
3. Object Meditation
Throughout object meditation, we look; we see; we are mindful of the picture of something in which we are present.
But we don’t let it go beyond our sense organs; that is, we see the picture, we see the movement, we see the flow. But just try to let it be there, not to add some story or adjective or description to something you see.
When you find yourself getting that little bit of paranoia–talking to yourself–a moment, don’t stress about it, it’s all right. Just go back over and over. Only listen. Enable yourself to open your eyes, so that as you see the flow–the movement–there’s a sense of peace in the body… there’s a sense of dissolving, of letting go.
While you’re mindfully concentrated at one point, allow yourself to relax, to really get to a position where you’re not doing something, where you’re watching, and gradually, allowing the watcher to vanish.
No more to do; just, to be. Stay with the vision. Just now.
The more we disappear, the more we allow ourselves to submit to being alone and to see.
4. Mindful Eating
Mindful eating (i.e. bringing attention to our food, on purpose, moment by moment, without judgment) is a food approach that focuses on people’s sensual perception of food and their food experience.
This has nothing to do with calories, carbohydrates, fats or proteins.
The object of mindful eating is not to lose weight, although it is very likely that those who follow this style of eating will lose weight. The goal is to help individuals appreciate the moment and the food, and to promote their full participation in the food experience.
One of the most strong meditation experiences I’ve ever had was eating raisins under the guidance of Kabat-Zinn. Here’s the raisin-eating moment I recall. I invite you to do this when you learn or hear about it first, and then have your own experience without the hassle of reading.
Do this, no matter whether you enjoy raisins.
- Get a raisin and set it in front of you. STOP; don’t put a handful of raisins into your mouth. (OK, so there’s a principle, but there’s a good reason that you’ll soon understand.)
- Imagine that you’ve just been dropped off on this world, and you don’t know where you are. You’ve never done anything on Earth. There are no assumptions, doubts, or perceptions without experience. It’s all new to you.
- Take a deep breath and pick a raisin. Notice the weight.
- Examine its surface — the different ridges, the bright parts, the dull parts; look at this unusual entity for the first time.
- Smell this substance and see how you respond to it.
- Roll the raisin between your fingers and listen to the sound. Note the stickiness of it.
- Notice what you’re thinking about this piece.
- Smell it and see how you respond to it.
- Roll It between your fingers and listen to the sound. Note the stickiness of it.
- Notice what you’re thinking about this piece.
- Place the raisin between your lips and keep it there for a few moments. How do you see happening inside of you?
- Let it roll back into your mouth, but don’t chew, just roll it around. Is there a taste here? Are you salivating? What are you trying to do?
- Yeah, well, bite back, just once. How do you know about that?
- Start chewing slowly, remembering what every bite brings.
- Bite down the raisin until it is fully liquefied until you swallow it.
- After swallowing, close your eyes for a few moments to consider the effects of what you’ve just done.
5. Walking Meditation
Some of the most effective and ground-breaking ways to attend to our body is to practice walking meditation. Walking meditation is a clear and common activity for the creation of relaxation, connectedness, and consciousness.
It can be done on a daily basis, before or after sitting meditation, or at any time on its own. The art of walking meditation is to learn to be conscious while you walk, to use the natural activity of walking to develop mindfulness and alertness.
- Choose a quiet place to practice without any obstacles in the way, where you can walk easily.
- Standing at one end of your designated path with your feet firmly planted on the ground. Let your hands rest comfortably, wherever they are comfortable.
- Open your eyes to see and hear the surroundings. For a minute, transfer your focus back to the body. Center yourself, and feel the way your body is standing on Earth. Note the weight on the bottom of the legs and the other normal sensation of standing. Enable yourself to be present and warn.
- Start walking a little slower than normal. Relax and let your walk be simple and normal, as though you were a king or a queen for a royal stroll.
- Pay attention to your body, please. Feel the feeling of raising your foot and leg off the ground with each step. Then, gently, put your foot back down. Feel every step as you walk.
- Once you get to the end of your route, pause for a moment. Balance yourself, turn around slowly, pause again so that you can see the first move as you walk back. You can play with speed, walking at whatever rate you’re most conscious of.
6. Mindful Stretching
Exercises loosen up the body, expand the cells, improve flexibility and strengthen the muscles. Such activities are not strenuous, but they are habits that we should implement at home.
Here are a few easy exercises. Grant each exercise two or three minutes. Often with a calm air.
- Stand with your feet close together. Turn your neck first in one direction and then in the other.
- Raise your hands to your neck and relax when lowering your head.
- Squeeze your shoulders together. Don’t forget to relax.
- Bring your arms above your head with your thumbs joined together, breathing in and out of your stomach.
- Enable both arms to drop down, fingers pointing to the knees, extending the back, without pressing.
- Straight back, fingertips pointing to the ceiling, hang on and gradually shift the body to the left, moving the right side and vice versa.
- Lie on the floor, with your legs close together, raise both legs off the ground, and hold on for a few seconds.
- Lay flat on your back, bend your legs, put your arms around your shine and raise your legs and head Do over exercise with one leg and then the other.
- Lie down on the stomach and raise one straight leg from the table, then the other leg.
- Stand upright, bring your arms straight ahead and bend your knees.
- Arms straight up in the air and lower gradually until they hang down with fingers pointing to the bottom. Enable the body to hang for a few seconds.
- Take some time. Lie back with your legs straight and rest for at least five minutes.
7. Mindful Watching
Mindful attention is the practice of deliberately observing anything within your field of vision. You do this to concentrate on [one thing] as much as you can. This brings your mind from a place of thought to a place of feeling.
And no, that doesn’t just mean you’re wandering around your bedroom and causing your eyes to land on random things. It’s not a complicated task, but it’s a bit more nuanced than sitting still and looking ahead.
To practice mindful seeing, sit down, start low, and visually concentrate on one thing. A great way to get started is to pick one thing to concentrate on, like looking at the coffee table, and what’s on the table, what’s on the floor around it. You see the shades. You see the textures.
Perhaps the best part of conscious thinking is that there is always no right or wrong way to do it. It’s not about hitting a goal. It’s about actually thinking, thinking, remembering, and being present at the moment.
Mindful seeing will certainly make the whole thing more approachable, particularly for those who feel like they’re” lost “when they try to meditate. Concentrating on physical things in mindful seeing will help you feel more grounded in action.
8. Surfing
Not the real surfing. Approach your thoughts and emotions as if you were floating on a storm. Shift your mind to the warning signs of a negative feeling of fear, fear, or frustration.
Imagine the negative feeling that comes to you like a wave that grows bigger and bigger as it passes, crests as it hits you, and falls as it moves away.
Imagine riding the wave as it passes, and let the negative feeling go along with it. Meditation is not like clicking a button that automatically relieves you of pain. This that, however, be the closest thing to it.
When we meditate, we take responsibility for our mental state.
We strive to adjust our responses to the interactions we have in order to create more positive outcomes. Regular meditation promotes knowledge of our thought habits, our feelings, and the way we handle stress.
When we are conscious of troubling behavior, we have the power to alter them.
