Simple Silence: Antidote to Stress

Alternative Stress Solutions

Seeking Silence: Antidote to Stress

It is easy to become stressed. Financial demands, loss of employment, marital riffs, co-worker conflicts, demanding bosses, problems with children, and health issues can all combine to increase your stress levels. As we know, stress takes a terrible toll on our bodies with serious health consequences such as heart disease and high blood pressure.

Stress is highly individualized. What causes stress in one person may not cause it in another. Some people actually thrive under certain stressful situations while others have a meltdowns in the very same situation. In general, when environmental demands exceed your ability to cope, it creates stress. If your coping is insufficient or ineffective, regardless of the demands, you have stress. Stress then creates illness, or makes an existing medical condition worse. In my case it showed up as a 2.5 centimeter cancerous tumor in my left breast. My stress was created when against my best intuition I made the decision to take a position as the director of a center for holistic medicine under a hospital umbrella. Although this was only twelve years ago, it was one of only twelve such organizations in the country at that time – we were pioneers in the field. Unfortunately, the world wasn’t’ quite ready for this concept and the administration of the hospital definitely wasn’t ready for us.

Consequently, I now liken this period of my life to climbing up a rope ladder that was swinging in a violent wind storm. Instead of being given a helping hand up the ladder the administration was stepping on my fingers. Being a model type “A” personality I responded with even more resolve to climb the ladder and in the process forgot to take care of myself. At a time when I most needed my meditation and yoga practice I spent every minute of every day in servitude to my egos need to claim a success. Looking back I can now recognize my cancer as a beautiful gift that allowed me to change my life in many positive ways. At the time it was quite possible that this stressful situation could have just as easily shortened my life.

While everyone experiences stress in their own unique way, there are some common symptoms. Perhaps I can help some of you to avoid some potentially life shortening pitfalls. Recognizing your own personal signs of excessive stress is the first step to managing it.

Begin by asking yourself the following questions.
• Do I often feel out of control?
• Do I feel constant pressure to achieve?
• Do I have difficulty concentrating?
• Do I have feelings of depression, helplessness, anxiety or panic?
• Do I suffer from frequent headaches?
• Have I experienced a significant loss of / or increase in appetite?
• Do I feel unusually tired?
• Do I cry (or feel the desire to cry) often?
• Do I ever feel faint or dizzy?
• Do I experience frequent nausea?
• Do I experience shortness of breath or feel tightness in my chest without exertion?
• Do I regularly feel the need to smoke or have a drink to relax?

If you regularly experience any of these symptoms you are at risk for developing a stress related disease. There are three basic ways you can intervene: change your environment, change how you cope, or change both. If changing your environment is unlikely, you can cut your stress – and your health risk – enormously by learning how to cope more effectively.

For me the most effective coping mechanism and antidote for stress is simple silence - meditation . I learned that by taking time to meditate before starting my day, I have a far greater tolerance for the little snags that cause me stress. Meditation actually creates a cushion between your nervous system and the outside world. This leaves a deeper reserve of energy for dealing with life’s bigger problems.

Scientific studies have been proving for years now that meditation works for stress-related conditions. Dr. Donald Williams, a Mayo Clinic psychologist, states, “For 30 years meditation research has told us that it works beautifully as an antidote to stress”. “What is even more exciting about the research is how meditation can train the mind and reshape the brain”; a comment by a neuroscientist in a conversation with the Dalai Lama during an interview for Time Magazine. That report also states that tests using the most sophisticated imaging techniques suggest that it can actually reset the brain, changing the point at which a traffic jam sets the blood boiling.

There are many effective types of meditation. Below I am offering a very simplified form for beginning a meditation practice.
Meditation Guidelines

1. The best time to meditate is early in the morning before you start your day. It is better to meditate for a short time every day than for a longer time twice a week.
2. Wear loose clothing that doesn’t constrict the body.
3. You can sit on the floor in a cross-legged position or on a chair, it doesn’t matter as long as the back is straight. Don’t lie down as you will relax too much and may go to sleep.
4. It is best not to eat just before you meditate, as you will be more aware of the body making it more difficult to mediate. If you are very hungry, a little food will help you not to sit and think about food. Caffeine stimulates the mind and too much can make it harder to meditate.
5. If you are a beginner try meditating for 10 to 15 minutes a day. Only after 2 or 3 months should you increase that to 30 minutes a day, after 6 months, 45 minutes, and after a year, 1 hour – but only if it is fun and if you feel you want to. There is no rush to increase the length of time.
6. Begin by closing your eyes and focusing on your breath, (no efforting, no expectations, no judgments), just noticing the breath as it comes in and noticing the breath as it goes out. Bring yourself fully present into the room, feel yourself seated on the chair, and feel yourself fully present in your body.
7. Drop into this precious present moment – that place between all that has gone before this moment in time and all that is to come.
8. As thoughts come into the mind, acknowledge the thought, thank it for being there and put it into a pink balloon and let it float away.
9. Begin to count the breaths: 1 breath in, 1 breath out, 2 – in, 2 – out, up to 10 and back down again, repeat for the next 10 – 15 minutes.
10.Quiet music in the background is very helpful in quieting the mind.

The greatest resistance to meditation that I hear from my students is, “I can’t fit it into my day.” In answer to their cry, I tell this story. I became the director of Wainwright House, a holistic, spiritual center in Rye, N.Y., so that I could expand my spiritual practices and holistic knowledge. At the end of my first year there it became evident that I had allowed the pressures of running that organization to cannibalize my time. I rarely would permit myself to step foot inside the magnificent meditation room overlooking Long Island Sound. Starting my second year I made a commitment to myself that I would meditate in that room for twenty minutes every single day or return to the corporate world. Too my great surprise I found that time actually expanded in response to my meditating. When we meditate we are tapping into the energy of “all that is”. So we are tapping into the world of synchronicities. For example if there was a presenter on the West Coast that might have taken days to track down, remember this was the time B.C (before cell phones). I would return to my office to find that his secretary had just left a message on my answering machine or an appointment would be cancelled, opening up time on my calendar. I also found my mind to still be clear at four in the afternoon, allowing me ultimately to be far more productive. I quickly realized that those days that I didn’t take time for meditation were more hectic and joyless.

Martha Beck in her book, The Joy Diet , sums it up something like this: For a society that has been socialized from the cradle to think that doing just about anything is preferable to doing nothing, it is a great surprise to discover that dropping into the peacefulness of the deep self teaches you how to approach all your problems, from the most trivial to the most momentous.

From my heart I invite you to, “just try simple silence” as an antidote to your stress.