Mindfulness Reflection

Hello everyone and welcome to class number two. In this class we wanna cover a couple things, the first thing is mindful moments. And essentially what that is, is that’s finding ways to incorporate mindfulness into our day in an easy, convenient and effective way. So you’re going to be doing the two to five minutes of some sort of breathing technique, or maybe the body scan meditation once a day. But then we want to find other ways to incorporate mindfulness in your day. Cuz that will make sure that you really get the benefits from this practice. The second thing we’re going to go over is sleep. And how important sleep is not only to make your body healthy but to make sure your brain is healthy and ready to perform at your peak. With that, we’re gonna talk about the drawbacks of not getting enough sleep. And then give you some tips on how to make sure you are getting that rest and that restorative sleep that you really, really need to function at your best. And then I’ll give you at the very end one quick mindfulness activity that you can use before you fall asleep, to help you fall asleep. Nice and easily. So those are the two things we’re gonna talk about. Before we do that, though, I wanna continue a little bit on the class number one. I wanna talk about a couple things. One is breathing, and the importance of breathing and how to breathe, and then the second one is to identify signs of stress. So let’s go into those now. All right, breathing, I have a question for you. Do you know how to take a good, deep breath? I may think that’s kind of a silly question. Of course you know how to breathe. But let’s see if you do. What I want you to do is I want you to try something. I want you to go ahead and put one hand on your belly. Another hand on your chest and then I want you to take one deep breath, all the way in and all the way out. So go ahead and take that deep breath now. Breath in very, very deeply. Fill up those lungs and now breathe out. Let all the oxygen go out of your lungs. Once you’re done with that, I have a question for you. Which hand actually moved out the farthest? Was it the stomach? Or was it the chest? If it was the stomach, you know how to take a deep breath correctly. Why don’t you try that again? Go ahead and try that one more time. Again, put one hand on the stomach, one hand on the chest, and take one big deep breath. Breathe in, inhale. And exhale all the way out. Hopefully that time your belly went out the farthest. That’s what you want to focus on, that’s belly breathing. And the key things about belly breathing, there’s two main things with belly breathing. One, is that it allows for the most oxygen exchange in your lungs. So you wanna focus on that. Putting that belly all the way out when you’re breathing when you’re breathing in. The other one, is that it actually relaxes the muscle fibers in your body, and those muscle fibers, when they relax, they actually signal to your brain to go into that relaxation response. You see when we’re when we’re stressed and in that stress response, our muscle fibers usually contract and that causes things like irregular breathing, not being able to get enough oxygen in and out of your chest and your lungs. So you want to focus on doing that with your belly. Let’s try two more breaths really, really quick. And this time you want to focus on having that stomach go out just a little bit further in your chest when you’re taking that breath in. All right breathe in, fill up those lungs, push out that stomach, breathe out, push in that stomach. Breathe in. Take the oxygen in with the stomach all the way out. And exhale. Have the stomach go all the way in. So that’s a quick tip on how to breathe correctly. When you’re taking those deep breaths throughout this program. As we’re talking more and more about different breathing techniques, I want you to start to focus on that a little bit. Focus on getting that good healthy breath that’s gonna get all that oxygen out of your lungs and into your lungs and also help you to kind of relax those muscle fibers so you get into that relaxation response a much easier. Next, then we’ll go on to signs of stress. Let’s take a look at that now. In this next section of part one, I want to talk to you a little bit about the signs of stress. You see, stress manifests itself in each and every one of us a little bit differently. And it’s important to identify for you personally how stress manifests itself so you can work quickly, identify it and then use many of the techniques we’re gonna talk about in this course to help manage that stress so it doesn’t get to that toxic level. There’s typically four different ways that stress can manifest itself. One is through the body, the things that are going on in the body. The second one is through the brain. Third is the emotions that you may feel when you’re in that stress response. And fourth and final one is the behaviors that may happen when you’re in that stress response. So what I want you to do now is kind of think of a stressful situation for you, when you’ve been in a stressful situation, try to think of that one. Then, maybe grab a sheet of paper and what I want you to do, maybe pause this after I’m done kind of explaining this. Pause this, grab a sheet of loose leaf paper and on that sheet of loose leaf paper, what I want you to write is the body, maybe skip three or four lines, write brain, skip three or four lines, write emotions, skip three or four lines and then write behaviors at the bottom of that sheet of paper. Why don’t you just pause that and go ahead and do that now. Now, what I want to do, is I want to talk to you a little bit about how it may manifest itself in your body. So, in your entire body. Stress, I’ll give you a couple of examples. Stress, for me, where it typically manifests itself is in a couple of places, one unfortunately is my stomach. When I’m really, really stressed out, I usually have stomach pains, I got to go to the bathroom more often than I would normally and my stomach start to grumble and different things like that. Another thing that I have noticed now that I’ve got enabled to kind of more identify is that my heart too. My heart would start pounding. A lot faster when I’m in that stress response. Other areas that you may see stress identify itself within your body, is maybe some people, some people sweat a lot. And they start sweat a lot on their head, and their arms and their body starts to sweat a lot when they’re in that stress response. Other people, I’ve got a family member of mine who gets headaches really bad migraine headaches typically when they’re in that stress response. And then people sometimes will get pain in their body. Back pain is a typical one that you typically see. So take a moment now. Think about that stressful situation that you’re in, and jot down maybe one or two things that happen in your body when you’re in that stress response. Next, let’s focus on the brain. What happens in the brain? Where does your thinking happen when you’re in that stress response? How does that impact your thinking? Well, for me, a lot of times when I’m in that stress response and in that toxic level of stress, I start to go to worst case scenario type stuff. I start to think, my gosh, what is the worst possible thing that could happen in that situation? And then start to think that that’s exactly what’s gonna happen. I get kind of use some of this mindfulness techniques to kind of bring me back to reality and really evaluate. Remember, we said that prefrontal cortex goes down that amygdala takes over and I’m thinking the worst automatically. Maybe that’s what you have had happen to you. But there’s other things too that may happen. Here’s a few of them. One, you could be more forgetful, maybe have trouble remembering things. You promised somebody that you’re gonna do something, but you’re in that stress response and you completely forget it. Other people have that their mind is racing. They’re constantly thinking about all the stuff that they got worries over and over and over again. On, and on, and on, over and over, and over again, and then other people have trouble making decisions, where they can’t make a decision because they’re in that stress response. Remember, again, that pretty frontal cortex is down, that’s the part of your brain that’s made to make those decisions, if that’s down you may have trouble making decisions. Why don’t you pause here then and let’s go ahead and have you write down maybe a couple of things that happen to your brain, you personally, happen to your brain when you’re in that stress response. The third one is emotions. What type of emotions happened in your body? For me a lot of times it’s anger, unfortunately. Sometimes I’ll fly off the handle, really, really easily. Unfortunately, it’s usually around my family members that I’ll fly off the handle, when I’m in that stress response and I just kind of get overwhelmed with it and I get angry really, really easy. That’s what usually happens in my emotions. How about you? What are some of the emotions that may happen for you when you’re in that stress response? A few of them are listed here. You got sadness, you could have kind of an overwhelming feeling of sadness, you’d feel a lot of pressure on you. When you’re nervous you got all these pressure, all these things you need to get done. Sometimes you may feel completely powerless or really, really lonely that you may have happen when you’re in that stress response. But take a moment now, think about some of the emotions that you have when you are in that stress response. And go ahead and jot them down on that sheet of paper. Last is the behaviors that happen. What are the behaviors that typically happen for you when you’re in that stress response? I mentioned for me that I get in that anger for emotions usually then that means I’m kind of lashing out at people. Unfortunately, when I’m in that stress response. Other things that may happen, a lot of people I’ve actually got another family member of mine who grinds her teeth when she’s in that stress response. And she used to do it so much that at one point her jaw actually latched. She had to have surgery because of all the stress she was under. And grinding her teeth at night kind of wore it down and boom it clicked one time and she couldn’t open her mouth completely until she had that surgery. Other things that you may have had happened to you, you can’t sleep, you have trouble sleeping because your mind’s racing potentially, you can’t sleep. Some people start to drink more alcohol or they start to eat more. A lot of times, they start to eat more fatty foods or things like that. That can happen when you’re in that stress response. So go ahead take a break now and jot down the behaviors that typically happen when you’re in that stress response. So take a look at that list. Scan that list. Identify those things. The more you have it in your brain that those are the types of things that happen when you’re in that stress response, the easier it’ll be to identify it, and then take the right steps to help you manage that. If you had trouble writing down a few things, had trouble identifying a few things, that’s okay, just put that sheet to the side. The next time you’re in that stress response, or maybe after you’re out of that stress response the next time, jot down a few things. Another great resource for you is family and friends. People that you’re closest to, people that see you in that stress response. Tell them to be honest with you and identify the things that you do, whether it’s in the body, in the brain, your emotions, or your behaviors when you’re in that stress response. That’s all for part one. In part two, we’ll talk about mindful moments. Assignment a. reflection: 1. The dietitian discusses that you “eat to live, not live to eat.” She describes that 80/20 rule ofeating. What percentage of “empty calories” do you think you consume in a day, and what results mentioned in the video do you experience when you eat “too many” empty calories? 2. What interventions can you apply to help meet the ratio of good calories/empty calories? Required Criteria 1. Answers the weekly reflection questions. 2. Uses two specific examples from the video(s) tosupport writing. 3. 4. 5. 6. Uses current APA format (including title page) Grammar and mechanics are free of errors. Contains no more than 3 spelling ortypographical errors. Writing demonstrates original thought withoutan over-reliance on the works of others.

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