Basic Training To Strengthen Your Mind
The Basic Basics
You can strengthen your brain’s capacity to downshift - turning on your parasympathetic nervous system and turning down your sympathetic NS, i.e., your stress response (fight/flight/freeze/fawn) by doing short training exercises. Here's a list of practices from master teachers.
These practices use common elements - your breath, your body, your attention and concentration, plus your imagination. Each exercise employs these elements in different ways - one, two or in combination. They’re short (2-17 minutes), since shorter is usually easier to actually do.
Breathing Practices
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
A few tips:
Repetition is necessary to get a training effect and the greatest benefits. You can do some kind of practice daily, several times a day, or do super-short practices, like 1-2 minutes of diaphragmatic breathing multiple times a day. If you’re dealing with chronic anxiety, significant stress, panic attacks, chronic pain, etc., aim to do some kind of short (5 minutes or less) practice daily and the longer ones, especially the progressive muscle relaxation exercises, at least a couple of times a week. You can do the same practices everyday or mix it up.
Benefit, regardless Over time, more or less regular practice will lower your baseline level of stress response and tension in the brain and the body. With less “static” in the system, our bodies, emotions and mental faculties are a little less burdened, even when life is difficult. This can happen whether or not you feel more grounded or calm or relaxed or better during any given practice. Sometimes the experience will be pleasant, sometimes boring or even pretty unpleasant. It’s all okay, stick with it and see what happens.
Wandering mind Expect your attention and your thoughts to wander. Your thoughts may wander to lovely or embarrassing or weird places. You may feel restless or sleepy or uncomfortable or bored or impatient or anxious or judge yourself harshly – the mind can really get busy! None of this is cause for alarm or feeling like you're doing it wrong.
In fact, that's how it works. It’s when you notice the thoughts or self-judgement or the fantasies or the emotions or the sensations – and then – gently/firmly bring your attention back, again & again & again & again, that you're doing the work. “The healing is in the return, not in never having wandered to begin with.”
Begin again, and again Meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg says,
You can strengthen your brain’s capacity to downshift - turning on your parasympathetic nervous system and turning down your sympathetic NS, i.e., your stress response (fight/flight/freeze/fawn) by doing short training exercises. Here's a list of practices from master teachers.
These practices use common elements - your breath, your body, your attention and concentration, plus your imagination. Each exercise employs these elements in different ways - one, two or in combination. They’re short (2-17 minutes), since shorter is usually easier to actually do.
Breathing Practices
- Diaphragmatic Breathing (DB) audio and written instructions from Dr. Margaret Wehrenberg – 6 minutes long, but once you’re familiar with it, the practice can be done for just 1-2 minutes
- 5 minute Breathing Meditation from UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center
- Relaxed Breathing Training, Version A 1-minute animated video showing the action of the diaphragm, paced at a calming rate. It's part of the Headache Relief Guide from Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, MO
- Easy Two Minute Meditation Once you’re comfortable with DB, this 2-minute video provides an engaging visual to focus on, supported by a recurring bell – nice for using at your desk
- Quick Calm Deep Breathing Super-quick demo and explanation of DB, including its use in stressful situations, from stress coach Jordan Friedman
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
- PMR audio and written instructions from Dr. Margaret Wehrenberg. Her advice to do 3 rounds of tense/release in each area is genius
- Progressive Muscle Relaxation Training 15 minute animation from Children’s Mercy Hospital
- The Tranquilizer: Self-Muscle Relaxation Short PMR practice targeting upper body and face, from stress coach Jordan Friedman
A few tips:
Repetition is necessary to get a training effect and the greatest benefits. You can do some kind of practice daily, several times a day, or do super-short practices, like 1-2 minutes of diaphragmatic breathing multiple times a day. If you’re dealing with chronic anxiety, significant stress, panic attacks, chronic pain, etc., aim to do some kind of short (5 minutes or less) practice daily and the longer ones, especially the progressive muscle relaxation exercises, at least a couple of times a week. You can do the same practices everyday or mix it up.
Benefit, regardless Over time, more or less regular practice will lower your baseline level of stress response and tension in the brain and the body. With less “static” in the system, our bodies, emotions and mental faculties are a little less burdened, even when life is difficult. This can happen whether or not you feel more grounded or calm or relaxed or better during any given practice. Sometimes the experience will be pleasant, sometimes boring or even pretty unpleasant. It’s all okay, stick with it and see what happens.
Wandering mind Expect your attention and your thoughts to wander. Your thoughts may wander to lovely or embarrassing or weird places. You may feel restless or sleepy or uncomfortable or bored or impatient or anxious or judge yourself harshly – the mind can really get busy! None of this is cause for alarm or feeling like you're doing it wrong.
In fact, that's how it works. It’s when you notice the thoughts or self-judgement or the fantasies or the emotions or the sensations – and then – gently/firmly bring your attention back, again & again & again & again, that you're doing the work. “The healing is in the return, not in never having wandered to begin with.”
Begin again, and again Meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg says,
Sometimes, even though it is just a few minutes each day, it can be surprisingly hard to find the time to sit. This too is a circumstance where it is important not to dwell in feelings of failure, but instead realize it as another time we can let go and, with kindness towards ourselves, begin again.
Persistence when things don’t come easily is also known as grit and grit is essential to success. Think about the ability to begin again as useful - a workout where you'll get stronger over time. Nobody truly expects to get achieve their fitness goals with a few trips to the gym, right? Same here.
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