How to eliminate stress on demand
Welcome back to my new but not-so-different articles.
In my last article, I mentioned that I was taking January off to reflect on how best to serve you through my writing. I did think and I am still not crystal clear.
But one thing is clear, I want to bring you helpful, practical actionable tips, and insights that you can implement to elevate yourself and those around you. It is increasingly clear, through neuroscience research data, that we impact each other sometimes consciously but most times unconsciously. For example, if we are stressed, our cortisol levels rise. When we sweat, particles of cortisol transfer to whomever is around us increasing their cortisol levels!
So, what do we do about it? That’s where I come in. I want to bring greater awareness to findings such as these and offer practical tips to overcome them so that we, as a collective, can live better healthier lives. Where we are wholesome and effective at work AND home.
That is my aim. And to be as succinct as possible in delivering these tips and insights. Some articles may just have links to videos or podcasts that I feel are important and relevant.
I hope to do this by informing you of what I am thinking about, a ‘did you know’ section, and a question that is top of mind for the week.
Let’s get started!
What am I thinking about?
Although I took January off from writing, my spare capacity was taken up by the migration of my mailing software to a new platform. I had 7 months’ notice to execute it. I did it in the last 7 days before the old platform expired! Yup, I put it off to the very last minute which brought its own challenges. Which is why you received my last article again. I did not get a setting right and my last article was resent during migration. I added some photos and edited the article a fair amount so I didn’t feel so bad about my technology glitch.
Long story short, this will be my first article using the new platform. Let’s hope it works.
Did you know…..?
Working with our brain and body, on-demand, to change our state is my passion. The easiest way to connect to both is through our breathing!
As we all know breathing is important. Dr Andrew Huberman simplifies breathing to help us through our daily stresses. Simple techniques to trigger our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system to alert and calm our brain and body respectively. It is a short (11 minutes) and useful (it could change your life) video. I use this technique daily. I hope you find it useful too. Each of us needs to know this.
Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0OBgihk2f8&t=371s
What would you do with newfound time?
I am still debating (with myself) how often I should write my blog. Weekly, fortnightly, or monthly. Now my intuition tells me that fortnightly seems like nice spacing. My weekly writing had become such a ritual that the first Saturday morning in January, of not writing, felt like a void. For a while that Saturday morning, I was not sure how best to use my time. Quite surreal really.
I met a Chief Executive Officer of a large organisation last week who is ‘addicted’ to learning via courses for both long and short courses. He is currently not enrolled in any learning and finds himself not knowing what to do with his time. Luckily, he is reading more and catching up on reading that he could not do before.
Quite ironic don’t you think? Most of us profess how busy we always are and wish we had more time. And yet when we do find pockets of time it throws us. We don’t do the things we promise we would do should we find time. Like cleaning the house, sorting out a cupboard or room.
I knew I had to change my ritual. We are creatures of habit, routine, and ritual. It’s good to change routines and rituals so we don’t get comfortable. To adapt we need just the right amount of comfort and discomfort.
I have spent the last 2 Saturday mornings diving deeper into a course I signed up for in October last year. I shall share more about this in the next weeks.
Until then, what would you do with your newfound time (when you chance upon it)?
As always, you can reach me at yoga@yoganesadurai.com