Brigham And Women's Hospital
Mindful Minutes: Relaxation Techniques to Manage Stress
Helpful strategies to reduce stress with the opportunity to practice techniques such as boxed breathing and grounding exercises
so thank you guys uh for coming today my name is eileen joyce i am a clinical social worker with um the breast oncology service at dana farber and today i'm just going to be talking briefly about just some mindfulness and stress reduction today's forum has been filled with a ton of really helpful information and it's stuff that you know we all came to this we we volunteered for this we we um signed up to get this information so it's it's a positive thing but it's still pretty heavy information we're talking about breast cancer and breast cancer risk so with uh with this little piece of things the hope is that you can take away this helpful information but leave some of the heaviness and the stress behind and you know stress is a normal part of life it it comes you know every day we deal with some kind of stress i and it has a range you know from minor little things that we deal with i can't find my keys things like that to really more intense stresses um and it serves a purpose it you know activates our bodies for you know to get out of danger and things so it does serve a purpose but we don't want to sit in stress because it's uncomfortable and it does have impacts on our body so just like our body has this natural kind of stress response to um to take care of ourselves and to get us out of danger we also have a um a relaxation response that calms us back down and the good thing is that there are things that we can do to activate that response to tell our brains that i'm actually safe it's time to relax and to engage that response and because a lot of us learn new behaviors um by trying them out versus just talking about them what i was hoping to do is just do a couple of little exercises um for those of you who may have attended last year we did the same thing but it's just an opportunity to de-stress yourself to try a couple of things and see if it's something that you want to incorporate into your regular practice i and so the first thing we're going to do is uh just a relaxed breathing and i i know you know everybody's like oh you know you tell you tell people tell you when you're stressed just breathe and it's easier said than done breathing is actually really helpful it's very accessible something you can do even if you're in the car in traffic and things like that um nobody needs to notice it you don't have to pay a lot of money or go to special trainings it's something you can do all the time and it has a really good effect on your body so we're going to do a breathing exercise and then move into just a really quick grounding exercise which is sort of a next step mindfulness practice um and the benefits of kind of slowing our breathing and slowing our body down um and focusing on our breath it actually uh gives our brain something to focus on because oftentimes when we're dealing with stress what we're dealing with is the thoughts you know the what ifs and the worries and you know and our brains are going a million miles an hour and so when we're focusing on our breath kind of shuts out that dialogue for a little bit and gives us our brain something else to focus on and physically it also cues that relaxation response so it relaxes your muscles a little bit it allows your belly to soften it allows your heart rate to slow and allows you to kind of breathe more deeply and all of that kind of cues your brain to stop pumping those stress chemicals to start relaxing like the dangerous past it's okay so if you join me i you can just relax in your chair and what we're going to do is something very simple it's called box breathing and it's a you inhale for four hold for four exhale for four and hold for four and we're going to do that five times just to kind of put our bodies into that sort of starting to relax and i like to exhale first so that your your lungs have room to open up and the other thing that can be helpful is that oftentimes when we're stressed we only use the top portion of our lungs we sort of start to like breathe into our chest as opposed to our bellies so it can be helpful to put a hand on your belly just to kind of feel if you're allowing your belly to relax and rise with the breath kind of getting the lower part of your lungs involved in breathing because that can also further cue that relaxation response so just a deep exhale and now inhale for four hold for four exhale for four and hold for four inhale for four hold for four exhale for four and hold for four inhale hold exhale hold inhale hold exhale hold inhale hold and exhale and hold and that just kind of again it signals your body to slow down a little bit get your heart rate slowed down and that's something that you can do any point in the day and then the next thing i'd like to do is just a simple grounding technique so if you can just sit back in your chairs and you know kind of sink in put your feet on the floor and slow your breathing and you don't need to close your eyes but what i would suggest is just lowering your vision a little bit so you're not distracted by the computer screen maybe softening your eyes and i want you to turn your attention to your feet and just feel your feet resting on the floor and feel the weight of your feet just kind of sinking into the floor pay attention to the point of contact where your feet are touching the floor and noticing the floor sort of pushing back and holding the weight of your feet and your legs supporting your body and just focus for a moment on that point of contact your feet being held up by the floor and just do a couple of deep breaths and now i want you to just shift your focus to your thighs and your pelvis and again just notice the weight of your body sinking into your chair notice that point of contact where the chair and your body connect and feel that the chair just holding your body and your muscles just relaxing into that support and again just breathing and focusing on your muscles relaxing the support of the chair and now just shifting your focus to your back and noticing your back pushing up against the chair the muscles in your back relaxing feel the support of the chair against your back allow your body to just let go and just sink into that support notice that point of contact where the chair is holding up your body supporting your back and just breathe and breathe into that space and if while you're breathing you notice a place of discomfort in your body you can just shift your attention to a place that is comfortable or neutral and just focus there for a moment and now what i'd like you to do is just briefly survey your body and notice if there's a place that you're still holding some stress holding some tension and breathe into that space breathe into that part of your body and just imagine yourself exhaling that tension and exhaling that stress allowing those muscles to just relax a little bit further and now we're just going to do a couple of deep breaths and now you can just start kind of moving your hands moving your feet refocusing and these are just a couple of very brief things that you can do throughout your day you can do it while you're in a stressful meeting or like i said in the car in traffic and actually these are things that it's helpful to practice when you're not stressed and throughout your day because what it does is it actually makes that these behaviors and your your brain's response more accessible meaning your brain is going to know what to do to relax if it's practiced it more and more often and when you're in a stressful situation it will be easier to prompt that relaxation response if you've practiced it over time if you've cued your brain to kind of slow down and if you want to take it a next level there are plenty of relaxation apps on your for your phone meditation apps so you can do a little breathing a little kind of muscle relaxation or grounding and then follow it up with a um you know a guided imagery a meditation that can really take you even deeper and kind of really engage that relaxation response and that's hopefully a nice way to kind of de-stress as we go throughout the day and i will turn things back over to dr king thank you so much eileen just the sound of your voice is just so calming for me so i really want to thank everybody for joining in with us this morning we know you could have been doing many other things with your saturday and we really appreciate you being here um i want to thank all of my colleagues and all of the behind the scenes uh team linda guton and mary beth and many others in our group who really helped pull all of this together thank you nancy and hannah for the great demonstrations and everybody for the great talks we will get this up on our website again as soon as we can it does take a couple of weeks sometimes for us to get all the editing done try to get those little glitches out but thank you for bearing with us through those glitches um and again please if you have additional questions you can reach out and we will be compiling everything that came through uh the chat and try and making sure we get some written information and resources back out to you so thanks again everyone and enjoy the rest of your saturday and have a lovely fall and stay safe okay bye
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