Hosted by Jamies & Thenia, Produced by CityHeART’s Art from Ashes
This week’s episode of Motivation Monday is alllll about letting go of all that STRESS. Jamies & Thenia share all about how they relieve their own stress and how much they still have to learn in the areas of self-care, stress-relief, and letting things go in service of ourselves.
This episode of Motivation Monday aired live on CityHeART Radio on Monday June 10, 2024 at 10am.
Written by Jamies Shuford, Skidrow Advocacy Group & Long Beach Homeless Coalition
HOW TO CHILLAX TO PRESENT, PAST AND FUTURE STRESS. HAVE THAT SECOND CUP WITH US WHILE WE TALK ABOUT STRESS.
When an adult gets all upset, one of the worst bits of advice you can give is to tell them to relax. Even though it is really good advice and they absolutely should relax, the state of being worked up tends to feed on itself and they will automatically reject the possibility that all the agitation is harmful and unnecessary, even though it is.
The other problem with telling somebody to relax is that they generally don’t know how. If they knew how to relax and regularly practiced relaxing, they probably wouldn’t be so upset in the first place. The time to practice relaxing is not when you are all upset, but when you are relatively calm. It is most effective to practice relaxing when you are already relaxed.
There are millions of ways to relax, we each have our favorite techniques. It may be watching a movie, drinking some tea, getting a massage, or taking a bath. Every night we relax into sleep. Relaxing is as natural as getting upset. The world tends to provide everything we need to get upset, and that builds up. It is up to us to help ourselves relax. There is a skill to it.
Two important tools of relaxation are breath and attention. The first step in intentional relaxing is placing your attention on your breath. That can be done along with any other relaxation technique, you can bring your attention to your breath while sipping tea, taking a bath, or both. Attention and breath are always there for you. With your attention on your breath, give yourself full permission to let all of your tension go. As your breath goes in and out, tell yourself, “It is ok to relax here and now.”
Breathing is important because we breathe our tension. When we want to foster a calm peaceful mood, we help ourselves to breathe calmly and peacefully. When we are stressed, we may clench our teeth and breathe shallowly through our nose. Those habits tend to persist into relaxation, so after you bring your attention to your breath, breathe, and give yourself permission to relax, you can move our attention from your breath to your throat. Check to see if your jaw and tongue are loose or tight and if they are tight, let them loosen.
Those first steps of checking in with your breath, giving yourself permission to relax, and then checking in with your jaw can be done several times a day. It is a full technique in itself, but it doesn’t have to stop there. You can move your attention around your body and find all the tense muscles and let them relax too. By letting your attention move from one body part to another, you can find all the areas where you hold tension. As you breathe with the tension, you can relax the muscles and let the tension go.
The extra tension of releasing tension comes from your thoughts. As you move your attention around your body, your thoughts about those stressful things will keep grabbing your attention. Whenever you notice your mind wandering onto the stress inducing stuff, notice that your mind has gone there and bring it back to your breath and body.
Our bodies carry physical tension that is all mixed in with emotional tension. Sometimes, relaxing muscles that have been tense for a while can involve an emotional release as well. If that happens, relax into that too. The big trick of the relax response is to relax with whatever comes up. Notice it, bring your attention back to your breath, and let it go.
The simple practice of bringing your attention to your breath, letting your thoughts go, and releasing body tension in pockets of focused relaxation can build the skills you need to relax in the face of new and frightening stressful situations. In situations where you are unable to relax, like if you were bailing out a sinking boat, or taking a test, do what you can to relax while you bail, or take the exam, but then, when you get safely ashore, when the test is over, relax with the whole experience and let go of all the stress you couldn’t release in the moment.
The absolute nature of the relax response is that it is a response to everything. When you relax truly and fully, you are relaxed in the moment, relaxed with everything that has ever happened, and relaxed with everything that ever will happen. It is a one size fits all response.
No matter how good you get at responding by relaxing, the world will keep creating stressful situations. However, when you know how to relax, when you get good at the relax response, you can take on lots of stress and then put it down again when it is no longer needed. You don’t have to carry it forever. Since you know how to put it down, do it. Do it often.
