Meditation as a way to reduce stress has interested me for a number of years. I’ve gone to YouTube and tried the beautiful meditation music, affirmations and the rest. It was helpful, but sometimes felt like too much work; probably because I didn’t know what the heck I was doing!
I learned the importance of reducing stress in my life when my doctor told me that I have chronic fatigue syndrome. It was a great diagnosis to get because it confirmed that I wasn’t crazy, lazy or losing my mind. I’ll delve into that story at another time. Chronic fatigue happily shares foggy brain with those who have it and being stressed out makes the fog denser and everything harder.
On the Hunt for Stress Relief
So, I seriously started looking into ways to improve my stress level, nutrition and my mindset. When COVID came along with the lockdown, Audible began to release some meditation and sleep books for everyone to listen to at no charge. Hey, I like free so I jumped right on it. 🙂 I found a number of meditations that helped me to relax before bed such as Agapi Stassinopoulous‘ “A Calm, Restful Place” and The Big Quiet’s collection. They worked, but I didn’t want to be dependent upon them so I kept looking.
Eureka! I found just what I was looking for. It’s called Everyday Meditation and consists of 20 episodes. The first episode teaches you how to sit still and chill. After that, the episodes cover breath work, visualization, a little mantra here and there and even walking meditation practices. It was really good series for me because it opened up my view of meditation. I finally understood that meditation is an active practice. It isn’t just sitting still listening to someone else’s words or music.
That’s What Friends are For
Stress Less, Accomplish More: Meditation for Extraordinary Performance by Emily Fletcher was given to me as a present from a dear friend. One day I called Nancy and told her all about my “big discovery” and how much I was enjoying meditation. She immediately tells me, “Well, that’s good, but I found something even better and it’s called Ziva.” She goes on to tell me about how she found it and how it has affected her life. And then she asks me if it would be okay if she sent me a copy of the book. And I’m really glad that she did.
While “Everyday Meditation” helped me to get into a routine of doing daily breath work and making time to be still, Emily explained the science behind meditation and medical evidence showing how the brain reacts to the practice. She gave a wonderful explanation of how “stress makes us stupid” and how we can stop the madness. The book contains concrete steps towards making stress less of a factor in everyday life. I guess the best way for me to explain it is that she helped me to make stress less sticky.
As long as we are alive, we will experience stress. And, of course, all stress is not bad. What is bad is that we don’t know how to shed the stress from an hour ago and keep moving forward. Most of us will carry a stressful situation with us way past its expiration date.
Paying It Forward
The book contains a mini-version of Ms. Fletcher’s Ziva Online class and downloadable audios that model the best practices for effective meditation. It also helped me to learn that there are different types of meditations for different situations. It was refreshing to have someone teach you a method that they’ve found helpful without tearing down everyone’s method to achieve their goals. Ms. Fletcher’s writing style was very conversational and funny. Even if I weren’t looking to decrease my stress, it was an enjoyable read.
All of these aspects of the book were very helpful to me. So much so that I took the online course (another gift from Nancy) and really honed my understanding of the book. Since I have friends who are single moms and I’ve taken a page from Nancy and sent out copies to them as well. They have reported their good results to me which is great. We’re all overwhelmed, but we don’t have to be. So take a minute, do a 2x Breath and enjoy the now because we’re never going to get this moment back.
