Stress and Mindfulness, with Modupe Akinola

(gentle music) Headspace Studios. Hi everyone. I'm Modupe Akinola, your guest host for the week. Welcome to Radio Headspace and to Tuesday. If you listened yesterday, you know that this week is all about rethinking the way we deal with stress. Now, when stress comes up we tend to want it to just go away, but research shows that acknowledging the stress we feel can help us understand how to work with it better so we can feel better. And one way to recognize stress is through mindfulness. So today is all about using mindfulness when we're stressed, how it can change the unproductive ways we react to stress and why we may have been ignoring the things that can give us comfort during hectic times. (insects chirping) My definition of mindfulness is being present and aware of how I'm experiencing the moment without judgment. So being able to say, I'm frustrated and not, you shouldn't be frustrated over this, but just say, I feel frustrated. It's this self-awareness and self-knowledge that helps you have a little bit more emotional and bodily control over some of the stressors we face by just experiencing them as they are. I think that we all can remember situations where you were stressed and you yelled at somebody, you treated a coworker poorly, you treated a family member poorly and it wasn't even necessarily something that they did or said that was different from the past. It was just you were in a space where you couldn't receive it in the way maybe that it was intended. And so that is one of the pitfalls of ignoring our stress is that we then kind of project it onto others in a way that can be harmful to them. Not to mention that when we don't acknowledge our stress, it's very hard for us to then what we call down-regulate from our stress. When you're stressed, all of these emotions and hormones are coursing through your system and you want to be stressed and have that happen. And then when the stressor is away and gone, to go back to normal where the adrenaline isn't high. And when we don't acknowledge our stress, then often what happens is all of those hormones are at heightened levels and you're kind of chronically experiencing that. And that can lead to wear and tear on our bodies in a way that can be harmful from a health standpoint. And mindfulness at least allows us to slow down and just acknowledge that your present state is your present state without having to do anything about it, without having to change it, without having to alter it, just be. One of the key premises of mindfulness is being present and acknowledging that that stress is there. So sometimes it's easy to ask, well what should I ask myself? What should I do? What should I, and I usually say, just breathe. Don't yell at your monkey mind for jumping from...