Take a moment to breathe

New Year’s greetings to everyone, far and wide!  May it be a year of peace, health and prosperity for all.

Since the beginning of a new year is usually filed with resolutions– which are really thinly disguised attempts to change habits — I’m going to begin the year with a series of posts on habits.

Habits determine the quality of our lives. And they are fundamental if you want to reduce your stress around taking tests.

Life is made up of habits. Think about it. As you are reading this you are breathing (whether you are aware of your breath or not).  As your eyes take in these words do you know whether you are inhaling or exhaling?  Likely not because breathing is such an automatic habit — so much in the fabric of every moment of life -that most of us lose our awareness, or consciousness of it. Yet, it is the single most important tool we have for calming down and staying in the present. Wouldn’t it be helpful if we could use it to our benefit beyond simply staying alive.

Although everyone is breathing, very few of us have any sustained awareness of our breath.  Why is such an awareness important?  Because along the way each of us has adapted and even changed the fundamental habit of breathing so that it corresponds to our own emotional/mental state. Take a person who, every time she hears the word “TEST,” freezes up. In that moment she is stopping her breath. What’s causing her anxiety?  Surely not the four printed letters T-E-S-T. They are merely pixels on a screen, they are not “making” her anxiety. This person’s anxiety comes from her long-time habit of stopping her breath every time she reads or hears the word “TEST.” Her memories, associations and fears about tests have a stranglehold on the one tool that could really help her: her breath.

Try an experiment:  as you read this sentence, exhale deeply.  Keep going until all the air is out. Good.  Now what happens?  The inhale comes in automatically.  That’s the fundamental habit we come in with it at birth (it’s what kicks off life) and it’s what leaves us at death.  I remember sitting with my dear Aunt Rachel when she lay dying at the age of 105.  Over the course of two weeks I watched and listened to her breath, becoming every more shallow, ever shorter, until finally…. it stopped.

Keep your breath going, and keep your attention on your breath. As you click away from this blog xhale, and then inhale on the next thing you do, whether at your computer or away. Sustain your awareness of your breath in any activity you are doing today and forward:  whether it’s cooking, studying, taking a shower, or working out.  When you realize you’ve lost awareness—we all do, most of the time—bring your attention back to your breath. Exhale. Inhale.  Simple.

That’s your first task: just become more aware of your breath.. In a few days we’ll get into the next step of using this basic and most profound tool to our benefit.

OK. Get ready to click away from this blog.  Ready? Exhale.  See you in a few days

Are you all tied up?

As I write this I am in south India at an Ayurvedic retreat.  Ayurveda is the oldest system of healing arts known to man. It dates back thousands of years to the writing of the Vedas, or ancient texts.

One of the pillars of this remarkably comprehensive and far-reaching system is to establish and maintain balance of body, mind and spirit. Since this corresponds so directly with the work I do as a stress psychologist I want to take a moment, at year’s end, review this foundational aspect of good health.  Let’s start out with 

thinking of yourself as a team of three players.  They are called your body, your mind and your spirit. Your body is easy to recognize: it’s your blood and guts, flesh and bones.  Mind is a big word and harder to define. Let’s limit our understanding of “mind” right now to the part of you that comments on yourself (“I’m OK, I’m terrible, I can do this, I’ll never get anything right”). Spirit is the most elusive of the three, yet it is, on our “team of 3”, a player of equal importance. Let’s view spirit as the force that defines your goals and drives you to achieve them.

The model for balance

For an easy visual, consider your team of three like a 3-legged stool: one leg each for body, mind and spirit. When all three legs are equally strong the stool is a sturdy, dependable platform (elephants stand on it at the circus!). But when one of the legs is weak or shorter there is instability and inequilibrium. Not only does the platform give way, but a “shortness” in one leg will effect the other two.  If you are feverish (body), chances are you won’t be able to think straight (mind), and you won’t have much oomph to do anything (spirit).  To function as a winning team you need all three players to be in top form:  strong, robust and cooperating.

Of the three legs, the one we tend to undervalue and pay least attention to is our spirit.  There are two basic reasons for this: we can’t see it, and we negatively associate it with “religion.”  Both reasons are based on faulty premises. Briefly, what I mean is this: over several hundred years, western science has done a good job of convincing us that what we can’t see is not real; and a common belief is that religion is nothing more than a set of rules to which one becomes a mindless slave.

While this is neither the time nor place for a complicated discourse (“It’s New Year’s Eve, Dr. B!), I’d recommend we consider making a new year’s resolution to pay more attention to our spirit. That means taking time to reflect, to quiet down, to meditate and to consider where we are really going with our lives and where we want to go.  It’s easy to get all tied up, but that always leads to imbalance, discomfort and ultimately disease.  Without spirit we would be robots. So if you’re feeling robotic about your life it’s a sure sign that your spirit needs to be rejuvenated.

The word “spirit,” after all, comes from the Latin inspirare, which also means to breathe. When we breathe, the circle is complete: our body relaxes, our mind calms down, and our spirit can fulfill its direction, which ultimately is to be a healthy, balanced, giving member of society.

Calmness observed

After a long day at work yesterday I walked down a main and very busy thoroughfare in Portland. My head was full of the day’s events.  I was still carrying around a pile of cares with me as well as all of the anticipated concerns about tomorrow.

Unexpectedly I came across a fountain with a beautiful sculpture. I stopped. The calmness radiating from the white marble and the sounds of the fountain gently permeated my busy mind and tired body. I stopped walking and took in the sight and sounds of what I’d just stumbled upon. I took a long deep breath.

The noise in my head and the tension in my body faded quickly and then I was left simply taking in the statue and the fountain. I walked around it, looking at it from all sides. Then I caught its reflection in the window of the skyscraper behind it. Something about that was soothing.

Reflecting the peace within

It was like seeing the still center within all the movement around me.

As you go about your day look for the quiet spots, the silent spaces, the moments of respite. Let yourself become absorbed by them. Breathe deeply down to your belly. Feel your feet on the ground.

Revel in the peace. It’s around us —  and inside of us —  all the time.

Please share with us what you discover.

What can I learn?

Finding myself all worked up about not hearing back from a colleague in response to an email I’d sent a week ago, I started feeling disregarded, marginalized and unimportant. In a word, “angry.”   My wife and I talked about this situation at length and concluded the best thing to do was to face the situation directly: talk to the person I’d sent the email to and find out “wassup?”  Even though I don’t like fault-finding and placing blame, I found myself finding all kinds of things wrong with the other person (“What’s the matter with them? It’s rude not to answer emails!”).

As I considered the situation in a more methodical and detached manner I felt more settled in my breath. in another word. I calmed down. then a thought came, ” I’ll check to see when I sent my email out.” Made sense, right?

So I searched through my “Sent” folder and, after considerable hunting I discovered there was no record that I’d sent out that email!  I stayed cool. I moved on to the next logical action. I switched over to the “Drafts” folder and there it was– still sitting, on my computer.

Whoops!  I had made a mistake. I had gotten all worked up about someone else for something I had done, or not done. I took up a lot of mental and emotional hard drive all because I made an error.

So what did I do next? I quickly sent an email of apology, and I learned something from my wife. When she sends out an email she routinely checks, right away, if it went out or not. At first I thought, “Oh, I don’t have time for that!”  But on reflection, aren’t I taking up a lot more time, and energy, over my own mistakes that could have been avoided?

Think about it. What was your last “mistake”? Did you stay calm? What did you learn from it?

Take the time...

I was on my bicycle yesterday and I came to an intersection with a red light.

Before being hit by the taxi, when I was biking around town I would routinely sail through red lights and stop signs if I didn’t see anyone coming (well, full disclosure: even if I saw someone coming, if I judged I could sail through the intersection before they got there, I would).  Post-taxi, I honor every red light and stop sign.

So here I am, facing a red light, at a completely quiet intersection, no one coming in any direction.  The light says “Stop!”, and stop I do. Suddenly, I feel

something racing inside and an impatient voice  saying, “But I have to get to my meeting! (grumble, grumble)  This red light is holding me up! ” (more grumbling).

Then came the new, unexpected switch. The “little voice” said, “Why not treat this as a pause – an opportunity to rest, to breathe, to take in what’s around you?” In short, to be in the moment– to be present. So I sat on my bike, I took a deep breath, and with that took in the surrounding sounds, sights and smells. I had a moment of rest and inner peace.

Next time something tells you to stop– whether it’s a light, or a sign, or — well, you tell me— treat it as a gift. An opportunity to calm down.   Let me know what you discover.

What's your body doing?

Let’s start out with this rule of thumb: 

When you are thinking of of an upcoming test (or anything else in the future), remember to breathe.

Here’s a very common experience for test-takers:  “My test is next Tuesday (or tomorrow). YIKES!” Your heart rate goes up, your blood starts rushing, your stomach wrenches. You know the routine.

I don’t know about you, but often, when I’m thinking about something that I have coming up later today or tomorrow or next week (and it doesn’t have to be as stressful as a test), I find myself getting a little amped up. What do I mean by “amped up”? 

When I check in with my body while I’m thinking about what I have to do, I do notice that maybe my heartbeat has speeded up, maybe a little sweat is breaking on my upper lip or my legs feel a little twitchy. What’s going on here? I think of it as launching myself into the future. As if I were a cannonball on my way to whatever the future event is, I’m speeding through the air, only to explode on the other end.

“Amped up” or “worked up” – whatever you call it –  it’s not a comfortable feeling. Some people think it’s energy that’s preparing you for the event. Yes, that’s true– to a point. But chances are you are simply getting a bit anxious—thinking about something that hasn’t happened yet and imagining all the possible scenarios and outcomes (how come most of those tend to be not-so-positive?)  While we can’t control what thoughts come to us—try not thinking about the test you have to take next week—we can, while having the thought about the future, stay calm.

The simplest way?  Just breathe. You notice you’re thinking about the test, you notice your stomach starts to knot up.  Stop. Breathe deeply down to your belly. Ground your feet on the floor. Open up your senses to what is around you right now. The future event (that pesky test) won’t go away, but all those anxious feelings will. And wouldn’t that be a relief?

Remember: it’s a 3 legged stool. Your mind-leg takes over and throws your body-leg and spirit-leg out of balance. Get back in touch with your body. I’ll talk about getting back in touch with your spirit in another post.

Let me know your experiences with getting “amped up”. What happens to do? What do you do for relief?

An example of this is when we become distracted by our own old fears. I can’t handle this, I’m not good enough, I can’t keep it together…and other negative thinking. “Negative” here means minus-ing, taking away from.  But taking

away from what? When we’re thinking negatively about ourselves we’re taking away from our whole, positive, highest self.

Most of us are fed terribly negative messages about ourselves through our competitive schooling, though the media, through advertising– you name it. We buy into the message I’m not good enough. And then we start to believe it and, like any self-fulfilling prophecy, it comes true.  But it’s not the truth.

Here’s the truth:  you are already your best, positive, highest self.  You have all the potential in the universe. You actually don’t have to do anything at all except support it rather than take away from it.

When you start thinking negatively about yourself don’t get distracted and pulled into that undertow. As soon as you realize you’re thinking that way, stop, plant both feet firmly on the ground, breathe out, and remind yourself of who you really are: your bright, shining, best self,  the one who can make a positive contribution to society.    

The best kept secret is this: you are already that great being.  Put your focus on that.

You owe it to yourself and to everyone– your family, friends and community — to be the great being you already are. Get the negative thinking out of your way.

Are you tense?

At a recent lecture I gave at the University of California San Francisco medical school, I was teaching the first year students how to use the calming tools:  breathing, grounding and sensing.

Breathing is by far the most important of all 9 tools in the performance model. So much has been said and written about breathing, and no wonder!  When we don’t breathe regularly it causes all sorts of mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual problems.

After we worked on grounding, one of the students had a brilliant observation.  First, to remind you:

grounding means two things:  (1) feeling your feet on the floor and, if you are sitting, your body supported by the chair; and (2) releasing physical tension.

After practicing these two parts of grounding with the medical students one of them asked:  “Is the point of this that you don’t introduce tension into your system?”

This was a great realization: that we actually introduce tension into our systems by not grounding– by tightening up our shoulders, or our legs, or our hands, or our feet, or any part of ourselves.

When you are holding your breath or making your body tense you are actually trying to escape. It’s like you’re saying on the inside “Let me out of here!”  (the “flight” of “fight or flight”) .  When you breathe and ground you are keeping your system free of tension. You are, in the language I like to use, connected. You are not trying to escape. You are present to do what has to be done. This is essential for taking tests.

Observe yourself:  whenever you have an anxious thought about anything just notice what’s going on in your body. You are certainly holding your breath and/or you are making some part of your body tense. You are introducing tension into your own system.  The medicine:  breathe and release the tension. Repeat the process as often as necessary.  Doctor’s orders!

Keep observing,  keep using the tools.   Let me know what you find out and how it helps you.

Why are we stuck listening to the negative voice?

A student I am working with has a problem. Here’s what she says about it:  “Every time on a test when I’m not sure if my answer is right, I immediately have negative thoughts, ‘You’re not going to get this right,’ ‘You don’t know the material,” ‘You can’t figure this out.’ Why do I always think these negative thoughts?”

This is a great question and something I’ve wondered about for a long time. It’s a very common situation: in a difficult or doubtful situation most of us usually veer towards the negative. What’s going on?  In a series of posts I’m going to address this issue. Today we’ll look at one cause  and one method of dealing with it.

Notice first, the student says, in talking to herself, “You’re not going to get this right.” She doesn’t say, “I’m not….”  By saying “you” she’s looking at herself from the outside.  It suggests that she’s caught up in how others think of her. This is a habit that could have one of several roots: maybe she’s received negative feedback from teachers, parents, siblings, friends in the past; or she’s afraid of being seen negatively by others.  Whatever the reason, she’s suddenly outside of herself looking in. She’s out of the present.

Another way of putting it is that she’s disconnected from what she’s supposed to be doing: answering the question and moving on.  The negative thinking is not helping her.  And that’s the significant point, and what you should remember when you’re thinking negatively: it’s not helping you now.

When you catch yourself thinking negative thoughts, get yourself back in the present.

The best way to do this is to use two tools: breathing and grounding. Take a good deep breath to your belly and then feel your feet on the floor and your legs, back and butt supported by the chair.  Why is this important?  Because when you’re thinking negative thoughts you are minus-ing yourself. Taking yourself out of the present, putting yourself into what other people might think of you, and imagining the worst.

None of that is helpful.  What’s helpful is to read the question, think about it,  answer it and get on with the next one. And to be calm in the process.

Here’s a question for you:  what is your negative voice saying?  where do you think that’s coming from?  It’s helpful to do this. Here’s why. Once you frame it as something that has nothing to do with who and what you really are it goes a long way to weaken its influence on you. Besides, your responses will help me and the people who read this blog.  I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks! Go for it.

A month later I received the following email from the student:

“I just wanted to tell you, thank you so much for all your insight in your book, and for talking with me that day. I took my LSAT last Saturday, and the day before the test I decided to read your book. It was probably one of the most helpful things I did for myself all month! Even more so than studying countless hours of my test preparation books. I used your techniques before and during my test, and despite not knowing my score, I feel like the positive self talk and breathing helped me focus and be confident to answer all of the questions. So I just wanted to thank you so much for your work!”

I greatly appreciate hearing from someone who used the book and found it so helpful.   Notice that she opened it up the night before the test!  What does this tell me?   I’ve coached many candidates for the LSAT (as well as MCAT, DAT, GRE’s etc). What they say is the same as the student I’m quoting:  they study countless hours. They have put in self-effort, they have done so much to grasp the material. But when they get derailed with anxiety on such an important test (and many people do), their performance  suffers and they end up with sub-par scores. What’s going on here? Burning more midnight oil?

No.

You need to prepare your self—meaning you, the test-taker –  to be calm, confident and focused. In this case, it helped this student right before the test. She didn’t say this much in the email but my guess is she slept better and a rested body and mind help a lot during test. On the test itself she definitely recognized the tools helped her. Her experience makes the point: pay attention to the person taking the test—to yourself—it will  make a huge difference.