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In this podcast Shann and Ananga talk about what causes setbacks or relapses on the road to recovery from anxiety and how you can best support yourself when you hit a bump in the road.
Along with it's beautiful colours, autumn, being a season of transition, can herald signs of imbalance like nervousness, insomnia, constipation, erratic digestion and suddenly dry or cracked skin to anyone sensitive to change.
As the Autumn season is dry and light by nature it is provoking to vata so it is valuable for anyone suffering from stress or anxiety to know that this is the season that can be the most challenging.
Ayurveda's richly supportive science offers some beautifully simple ways to protect yourself, calm your mind and nourish your nervous system.
In this podcast, Ananga shares some tips to help you transition smoothly through the Autumn months.
In our recent Anxiety Slayer discussions, we've talked a lot about auditing out the things in your life that feel negative or drain your energy. In this podcast I want to share a simple exercise that can help you get more specific.
It's important in our lives in general to be able to distinguish between the things are contributing to our overall sense of wellbeing, and the things are detracting from it. It's even more important when we're struggling with stress and anxiety. As we've discussed before, anxiety can make your thinking confused and muddy, so it's helpful to practice noticing where you are putting your attention.
Are you making healthy choices in what supports you? Or are you freewheeling and letting negative influences creep in?
Here's a simple exercise to help you clear your mind and see how you can build more peace and self-support into your day.
Writing for Clarity and Self-Care
In this exercise we're going to draw up a support sheet to help you get clear on where your attention and energy are being drawn. The support sheet is simply a piece of paper where you draw a line down the middle and title the left column: "unsupportive - things to avoid."
It's here that you can note your observations about things that:
- you feel don't support you
- don't make you feel comfortable
- drain your energy
This is the column where you log the naysayers, energy vampires and buzz kills.
Title the right column: "supportive things to embrace"
This is the place to note the things that:
- make you feel good / positive / energised
- the things that help you feel relaxed
- the things that you notice do help you manage your stress and anxiety
- things that help feel more comfortable or more confident
This is the column where you log the people, places, reading material, audio support, or anything else that you notice has a supportive, positive impact on you.
You can do this exercise as often as you like, sometimes it's interesting to do it as a weekly process, perhaps you could have a Sunday morning support review where you look back over your week and see what's helped you and what hasn't, and really take few minutes to engage with your findings; let your intelligence and emotions react fully to what you're seeing on the paper in front of you. Have a think about it and use it to set your sails for the week ahead, starting again on Monday morning and encouraging yourself to make choices that feel fully supportive.
Or you may choose to do this as a daily exercise, where before you settle down to sleep you jot down a few thoughts in the left and right hand column of your page and respectfully acknowledge what you've learnt and what you might like to adjust tomorrow.
If you've had a day where you're aware that you've made really good choices and you have honoured and supported yourself - be sure to acknowledge that too, and give yourself a bit more support with a pat on the back.
Listen here. If you find this podcast helpful, please share it with your friends.
This morning as I was playing on facebook (as I often do first thing in the morning), I came across a wonderful quote from Mariam Williamson that said; "five minutes meditating in the morning literally blesses your entire day, it expands time, calms your nervous system and restores your cells, it makes forgiveness easier because it opens the heart. It interrupts the ego's proclivity for attack and defence, retrains your attitudinal musculature, and delivers you to inner peace. Plus it's free!"
I thought this was such a lovely quote that I shared it; and one of my friends on-line responded by saying that she was having a really difficult time in relaxing her mind and wondered if it just takes practice. My response was, yes it's a lifetime of practice, one moment at a time.
So one of the things that I'd like to talk about in this podcast is the importance of relaxation, whether you want to call it meditation or not, as long as you are making time creating space to breathe, to be still, to honour yourself, to understand when your beginning to wind out and to know that coming back to your breath means everything.
Our emotions become upset when we feel our needs aren't met, we may be feeling the need for some quiet time alone or we may crave company and laughter, we might feel the need to rest but are too busy to take a break, we might feel unheard, disregarded or just plain overwhelmed. Whatever the case ,and however you feel there is a way to honour and acknowledge your feelings without feeding them and allowing them to grow into an all encompassing mass.
These five simple steps provide an opportunity for reflection and personal growth, where your feelings are validated but they're viewed in perspective. A negative mood might feel like the only overriding feeling in your life right now, but there's a part of you that knows it won't be next week or next year.
By processing your feelings in a gentle relaxed manner where you take a step back and observe, you can find balance and recover quickly without zapping yourself or someone you love with a bolt of lightening.
The first step is to name the feeling, identify the exact emotion your feeling right now, be specific and fill in the blank: I feel - what? Angry, sad, hopeless, overwhelmed? pPck one descriptive word for how you feel and then acknowledge your choice of word - I feel ' x '.
Step two is to find where the feeling lives in your body. Emotions and thoughts have distinct physical sensations, so find where the emotion you identified is making it's presence felt in your body. Take a few deep breaths and sit with that feeling for a few moments, don't engage with it just watch and witness.
Step three is to allow yourself the luxury of private expression, talk to yourself about how you really feel and listen as though you were listening to a close friend, take a minute or two to fully express yourself. You could have a dialog in your mind, or talk to yourself out loud, or write your feelings on paper or in a journal. Let your full understanding of this emotional situation come to the surface of your awareness now and express it fully.
Step four is to release the emotion with your breath; physical movement is the key to discharging built up - stuck - nervous energy in your body. For this stage of your processing and releasing of this emotion put your full attention on the area where you feel it and begin taking deep active breaths. Breathe in strongly through your nose and then sigh out through your mouth, sit straight and keep focused on breathing into that place where the emotion is held in your body, and as you do you will begin to feel it loosen, lighten and release, keep breathing and keep clearing.
Step five is to acknowledge and appreciate. This concluding step of your emotional clearing ritual encourages you to acknowledge that you've just taken good care of yourself by healthfully processing a negative emotion, you've acknowledged and respected your feelings, you've expressed them fully and you've tried to release them from your system. Now it's time to pat yourself on the back and reward yourself.
What would make you feel good right now? Pick something uplifting, like listening to music, taking a walk, running a warm bath or sipping a cup of tea. Nourish yourself with a few minutes of self care and make a mental note of what you've learnt from this process, so that you can remember to use it again and again as you continue to make healthy choices in balance and growth whatever your day may throw your way.
March 17, 2011 in 
