AWARENESS

YOUR THOUGHTS, EMOTIONS AND STRESS

-A stressed brain is not born, it is made-

BY: LIC. GABRIEL DEL ANGEL

Take care of your mental health, which has been greatly affected by the covid 19 pandemic, which has caused an epidemic of fear and anxiety unique in the history of humanity and that every day advances more than the virus itself and even becomes more dangerous and contagious, due to the fact that there is access to information through social networks, television and all the media that broadcast a series of information 24 hours a day, the vast majority of which are directed so that panic stealing your peace of mind, all this has developed a high rate of stress in humanity. I observe in daily life how there is a generalized fear to the extreme, there are people who to enter a public place, be it a pharmacy, a shopping center, a public bathroom, etc., they open the door with their foot, they do not use their hand. You would have to stop to think that you prevent covid widely with the doses of vaccines that were applied to you and with a good immune system that will not allow you to get sick, nothing complicated, right? However, for stress and mental illness there are no vaccines and you do not recover in 14 days isolating yourself at home, in addition to that stress lowers your immune system.

In order to understand what stress is, as it manifests itself through what you think and feel, it is necessary that you know that stress is an adaptive physiological response, where your adrenal glands secrete adrenaline and cortisol with the intention of regulating homeostasis and returning to your body its regular relaxation mechanism. Stress plays a special role in your survival, we would say that stress under control is normal and necessary, but what happens when the emotions of sadness, anger, fear, resentment etc. become permanent in your daily life ?, in that case your mind has 2 options:

1.- It can be oriented towards the search for solutions

2.-It can make you think negatively, imagining extreme situations that have nothing to do with what is really happening.

The negative things that your mind imagines never happen, but you live it as if it were real, and that negatively affects your body, your biology and your life in general. Your mind can size things up and get you addicted to negative situations. Once you understand the way it works, the way all those imaginary worlds affect you that give rise to your obsession, depression, fear, panic, anxiety, etc. you ask yourself, how do I get out of that state? The first step is to regain control of your attention to be able to get out of that maze of negative thoughts and emotions, so as not to get stuck in that state of negativity, what do you have to do? Through mindfulness, which allows you to observe what is happening in your mind, to allow you to develop discernment, that is, not to close yourself to what you are living at that moment, on the contrary, open the door and face it by asking yourself at that moment what are you feeling, first identify what you are feeling and then reason that it is nothing more than a thought and that if you are thinking it does not mean it is real, comparatively it is as if at this moment you think that you are a millionaire and perhaps many things come to your mind that you would do if you really were, but what happens when you reason and realize that you are not? Well, automatically your millionaire dreams disappear, why do they disappear? Because your mindfulness returns to reality, so now you know what the first step is, mindfulness to what you are thinking at that moment, face it and reason that it is nothing other than a thought without real value.

By changing your perception of things, your brain can receive new information that allows it to change the response of your biology, the practice of mindfulness returns your attention to the present moment.

To strengthen your mindfulness even more, you have at hand two very valuable tools, breathing and mindfulness meditation, both will not only help you get out of your crisis states but will help you preventively so that you do not fall back into They, for the moment I tell you that mindfulness is a type of meditation that addresses mindfulness, this means paying attention to the thoughts, feelings and behaviors that are happening at that moment, it is based on the millenary teaching of Zen meditation , although adapted to our modern Western life and there are variants oriented towards mental health, from the cure of anxiety to better job performance, something that large international companies already give their employees as a course, known as business mindfulness, but so that you know more about this topic in a next article I will talk about it.

The other tool I mentioned to you is breathing, how does it work? Breathing is a powerful tool that will help you transform your mind, your body and your emotions, the way you breathe affects your physical, mental and emotional state in real time, since accelerated shallow breathing activates the mechanisms survival of the nervous system, but if, on the contrary, you breathe slowly and deeply your body will always be in a state of relaxation, denying entry to those negative thoughts that cause so much damage, now I explain how to do it:

Take a comfortable seat, keep your spine straight, inhale deeply filling your lungs so that your chest expands, make sure that your breathing is not nasal only, but that your lungs actually fill with air expanding your chest, this you will do in 4 seconds, then hold the air for 2 seconds and finally slowly but slowly exhale in 6 seconds, repeat this pranayama exercise adapted to modern mindfulness for 5 minutes a day or whenever you feel that you are going to enter a crisis, It is important that your attention is focused solely on the 4-2-6 breath.

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With the best of my wishes that you are happy, perfectly healthy and free from all suffering.

NAMASTE.