Begin to recognize the physical and mental patterns that happen when you feel stressed.
Reflect on the following questions and write down your answers. Don’t worry if you don’t have an immediate answer. It may take time to become aware of what your patterns are. Remember, your physical tension and mental patterns affect each other and to change either one, it is helpful to be aware of both.
If you are not currently feeling stressed, think back to a recent time that you were. Use these questions over the next few days to notice what happens for you in stressful situations and come back to the prompt.
On a scale of 1-10, how much baseline stress do you feel that you carry from day-to-day? Are there particular activities or times of day that you know are more stressful?
What are the thoughts you find yourself thinking when stressed? Are there particular stories you tell yourself? Do these thoughts and stories seem familiar? Can you remember another time(s) when you had similar thoughts?
Do you notice if different kinds of stress are held in different places in your body or are associated with different thoughts? For example, does work stress feel different than stress from arguing with a loved one?
Continue and/or repeat this exercise for other types of stress. For example, when arguing with a romantic partner you may feel heat in your heart area and think things like “They are always mad at me, I can never do anything right?” Where at work it may be tension in the chest and shoulders and thoughts like “I have too much work to do and I can’t get it all done, I’m going to be up all night!”
If this activity activated your stress response, try the following: find something pleasant to look at. It can be your view out the window, a picture of someone you love, or the color of the rug beneath your feet. Take a few deep, slow breaths and see if you can bring that pleasant sensory input more strongly into your body. Release your breath and save this activity to review in 3-6 weeks after you have done more of the Anjuli practices to see what changes.
Check out this personal Spotify playlist, specially created for this activity by Jules.
