In a previous blog post about staying upbeat whilst job searching during the pandemic, one of the seven tips I listed was ‘sustain yourself’. This introduced the idea of mindfulness as a personal resilience skill, and also wellness in libraries.
In this guest blog post, Dr. Alyson Tyler, who is a yoga and meditation teacher and a LIS researcher and former colleague, explores stress and its impact on our bodies, how mindfulness can help counter stress, and when mindfulness might not be appropriate.
Mindfulness and how it can help with stress and resilience
The global pandemic has seen mental health issues surge, with the ONS reporting on it early on. The Mental Health Foundation study conducted a year after the first lockdown found a mixed picture in levels of anxiety and loneliness, but that certain groups of people fared worse, including those who were unemployed.
For LIS returners looking to get back into the job market, or if you’re unhappy in your present job and want to change, this might sound like a gloomy outlook.
So let’s get the depressing bit about stress and anxiety out the way first.
Our bodies on stress and anxiety
Stress and anxiety are natural states for the body (mind and breath). There is nothing inherently wrong with a short spell of stress or anxiety i.e. before an interview or an important meeting. You might experience slightly sweaty palms or armpits, or have ‘butterflies’ in your tummy. You might sense your breath becoming shallow and pulse quickening.
All these are normal and fine, in the short term. After the meeting or interview, the chemicals responsible for these physiological and psychological changes (mainly adrenaline and cortisol) will gradually leave the body, and after a few hours or the next day you will be back to normal.
However, if the body and mind face longer-term ongoing stressful conditions, the chemicals are continuously produced and the body stays in the stress response system (‘fight, flight or freeze’). The consequences are that the body isn’t able to do important things like healing, and we start to notice changes in our digestion, sleep and moods, with knock-on effects on physical and mental health.
It can also lead to longer term health issues such as:
increased blood pressure
heart and circulation problems
weight gain
fertility issues
chronic inflammation and impact on related illnesses
My free handout on stress has more on stress and the body.
Photo by Sue Bell on Unsplash
How does mindfulness help with stress?
A benefit of practising mindfulness is that it activates the ‘relaxation response’, the opposite to the fight or flight response. Adrenaline suppresses the relaxation response, so we need to directly activate it.
If you can activate the parasympathetic nervous system (and the relaxation response), through meditation, deep breathing or other techniques, the body can re-set. The effects include:
digestive system stimulated
heart rate lowered
muscles relax
breathing rate slows
blood pressure lowers
sleep is less disturbed
But, mindfulness is not a cure-all for everyone, all the time
Before you rush to download a meditation app or join a mindfulness class we need to be realistic about where we are mentally at this moment in time.
Meditation and mindfulness techniques generally encourage us to notice our thoughts, to sit with them, and to not get too tangled up in them. We may have thoughts which dwell on the past (positive or negative, angry, sad, frustrated etc), or worry about and anticipate the future (which can also be positive, negative, angry, sad, anxious etc).
If you are feeling very stressed, have moderate or severe depression, or do not find it helpful to be in your own company without external stimuli, meditation and mindfulness might not be appropriate for you at this point. And that is okay!
Noticing your thoughts or having time where rumination occurs can make people feel more depressed, stressed or anxious. If this applies to you at any time, do not worry because there are many other resilience techniques we can practice instead. I cover these below. In addition to trying some other tips, you may also want to seek professional support to help get you through a difficult patch and come back to mindfulness if and when it feels more appropriate.
The stress bucket
Imagine a bucket with no holes in. Pour in one cup of water – this represents a small temporary stress such as you’ve run out of your favourite tea for the morning cuppa. Pour in another cup of water representing an email asking you to do something right away when you were about to start another task. Keep adding small cups of daily mini-stress doses, and some larger jugs of bigger stressful things that are ongoing.
During an average day, you might have 10 or 20 mini-stress doses, along with ongoing things.
Unless you actively scoop out some of the water, or have holes in the bucket, you will eventually reach the top and the water will spill over. This is when we become overwhelmed – we don’t want that to happen!
To avoid the risk of being overwhelmed, we need to do things every day which let the water out of the bucket. This might be small things (the water leaks out of a hole), or bigger things (scooping water out with a jug).
Explanation of stress pot captured during a stress and anxiety workshop – Image by Alyson Tyler
Mindfulness
Mindfulness and meditation can be practised daily as techniques to help keep the water level in the bucket low, so that you don’t feel overwhelmed by stress.
Mindfulness as a concept in the West is generally regarded as having come from the mindfulness of breathing meditation techniques which can be found particularly in Tibet, India, Japan with their origin in Buddhism.
It was brought to the West and adapted into a stress management technique by Jon Kabat-Zinn and is now practised by Oprah and the US Navy SEALs, as well as millions of everyday people.
Mindfulness of breathing essentially means that you pay attention (are mindful) of your breathing. You focus on the sound, quality, movement, length etc of your inhale, any pause you may have, and focus on the exhale. Whilst you are doing this, your mind will also start doing something else (planning, arguing, worrying, etc). Then you’ll have a moment of awareness and realise you are meant to be focusing on the breath, and you start again to notice the inhale and the exhale.
Benefits of mindfulness
Each time you come back to the point of focus, you are training your brain, and building up your resilience.
There are proven benefits that arise from meditation including:
ability to manage stress
improves focus and memory
increases feelings of calm
improves sleep
increases feelings of self compassion
slows aging and extends life
Where to start with mindfulness
If you are new to mindfulness you might like to start with guided mindfulness audio tracks. In a guided session the person will talk you through things to notice, and will gently remind you to come back to the breath every so often. It is 100% normal for the mind to wander.
I would recommend starting with short practices of 1-5 minutes at first. I have several short mindfulness tracks on my website, or you could try more well-known people such as Tara Brach, Danny Penman (links below.)
Many people find apps really useful – Calm, Headspace and Insight Timer are three of the biggest ones, although do not feel obliged to pay for an app – there are plenty of high quality free mindfulness resources.
For me personally, if I use a guided meditation track, I need to like the voice of the person leading the practice. I would recommend you try different ones to find the voice/s that you like.
I would also recommend getting rid of the notion that you have to meditate for 20 minutes or more a day. You may find that 2 minutes in the morning is enough to keep you ticking over. If you try to fit in 20 minutes and only manage it once in the week, you may feel more stressed than if you had achieved 7 x 2 minutes. There’s no need to set yourself up to fail.
Instead, find a time of day where you can have a few undisturbed minutes (locking yourself in the bathroom if necessary!) and choose a manageable length of time. Honestly, it is remarkable how different you can feel after just two minutes of mindful breathing.
But remember, meditation and mindfulness are not the only thing you can do to reduce the impact of stress. They’re just one of the holes in the stress bucket.
Photo by Johnny Briggs on Unsplash
Resilience tips and techniques
Being resilient means being able to adapt, to cope with challenges. Some plants are more resilient than others to water shortages for example.
During a stress and anxiety workshop I led, one participant said ‘how come some people don’t seem to get stressed?’
The answer to this could be for various reasons:
maybe at this point in time they don’t have a lot of stressful things going on in their life (i.e. they are not adding more things to the bucket)
maybe they have lots of holes in their stress bucket so they never reach the overwhelmed point and thus appear to not get stressed
maybe they have a bigger bucket to start with through having built up their resilience skills
So what things can you do to help keep you resilient?
Basically, do small and big things, every day or week, that make you happy, and/or actively get rid of stress. This could include:
taking a walk outside
growing plants in pots or in a garden and watching things flower/produce things you can eat
exercise of any sort
meeting a friend or neighbour (in person or online)
taking part in an activity
hobbies of any sort
reading
dancing to your favourite song (in the privacy of your own home if you prefer!)
playing with your kids/grandkids
walking a neighbour’s dog for them
watching a film
crafts and arts
playing computer games
watching a comedy show (in person or online)
playing music
Try to spend some time every day doing something which brings you joy. Prioritise this. Even if it’s for only five minutes.
You might punctuate your day with multiple five minute activities, or go for an hour’s walk at lunchtime for example. It might vary every day. The trick to being resilient and being able to manage when things are difficult is finding what works for you.
However, this should not become another chore of something you ‘should’ do – if it becomes a duty it’s not fun and it may not bring you the benefits you need.
For me personally, I like to meditate for 2-5 minutes in the morning, do my short yoga routine, and I also like one walk (run or cycle) everyday, of at least 15 minutes. That’s my bare minimum: more is a bonus.
I hope this post has given you the inspiration to find what works for you and to start introducing mindfulness into your day.
Dr Alyson Tyler is a yoga and meditation teacher, massage therapist, freelance LIS researcher and former colleague. She lived in Wales for 20 years, graduating from Aberystwyth University and worked for the Welsh Government for 13 years in library policy. She now lives in Scotland and works part time for Ethical Consumer as the web editor.
2 thoughts on “Guest Post: Dr. Alyson Tyler explores stress and how mindfulness can help”
I’ve been using some of the techniques for around a month now and can recommend Alyson’s tips and techniques and useful resources such as the Insight Timer app. Has anyone else found the tips helpful?
2 thoughts on “Guest Post: Dr. Alyson Tyler explores stress and how mindfulness can help”
I’ve been using some of the techniques for around a month now and can recommend Alyson’s tips and techniques and useful resources such as the Insight Timer app. Has anyone else found the tips helpful?