In the effort to try and lower stress in our lives, there are many ways that we can focus on minimising its effects. Today I’m going to discuss our reactions and how they can positively or negatively control our stress levels.
Here’s a little exercise to try. Go to a quiet room and sit cross legged on the ground, with a cushion under you. Close your eyes and begin to draw inwards. Sense your body…feel your shoulders drop, your spine lengthen and your legs grounded on the floor below. Begin to lengthen your inhales and exhales. Start to perform a mental body scan, by beginning at the feet and asking yourself what you sense as you move up your body. Do you feel warmth, cooling, compression or tingling? Be specific – do these sensations have shape, colour or volume? Are they familiar? How old do they make you feel? It’s normal at this point to begin to associate these sensations with a past feeling or memory.
This is fundamental in the observation process. Once we begin to associate the sensations with a thought or a memory, we are now having a reaction. What is the difference? A sensation is a primary, immediate experience located in the body. A reaction is a secondary experience located in the mind. Some examples of reactions – comparing yourself to someone else, the desire to eat compulsively, telling yourself the pain will never end, or comparing the past to the present.
The problem with allowing ourselves to react is that we miss the beauty of the present. It’s usually a case of not even realising that this is happening though. This is all part of training our mind. By skipping this process, we miss out on this spectacular feeling of simplicity. When transferring this to our daily lives, this is where arguments and disagreements begin. We feel something and then react immediately because our mind and its habitual thoughts have popped in. Whether it has associated something with a negative event in the past or reminded us about a feeling we didn’t like, we’ve completed pulled away from the present. Now we usually react without feeling grounded, and this reaction can initiate further problems.
