Let’s practice kindness, and let’s begin with ourselves.
Stress weathers our bodies, brains, and souls and doesn’t choose sides. It affects every system simultaneously.
Our body’s intelligence knows how to transition from stress to rest and back again naturally, but when we’re under too much pressure, prolonged tension, and anxiety, it can prevent us from returning from the fight-or-flight response. Then our ability to rest and re-regulate becomes distorted.
Addressing the pervasive dominance of self-criticism gripping our culture, we can see that it is a thought pattern caused by our anxiety, hyper-competitiveness, overscheduling, and the rush and buzz of society. It’s easy to blur between maintaining discipline and being unkind to ourselves.
Tara Brach has developed a mindfulness practice called ‘RAIN.’ RAIN helps us learn to sit with challenging emotions with a compassionate and supportive mindset. I call this slow medicine. And it’s worth the effort because it resonates with our emotional body.
Remember, practicing self-compassion is not just a helpful hint; it’s a powerful tool for managing stress and promoting overall well-being. It’s hope for our modern lives of hectic stress.
RAIN is:
Recognizing when you’re swept up in complex mental states
Allowing space for all your reactions and recognizing self-judgment
Investigating where in the body the disturbance is rooted
Nurturing yourself with supportive self-dialogue such as “I acknowledge your pain” and “I’m here for you.”
We’re all in this together, trained to “high-effort cope,” which puts a lot of strain on us collectively. Our culture pressures us to perform at levels that wear us down.
The constant strain—the chronic source of stress—resets what is ‘normal,’ and the body begins to change. Like tree rings, the body remembers. This collective experience of stress is what’s causing us to weather our bodies from the inside out. Understanding this shared struggle can bring us together in our efforts to manage stress.
The health impact of chronic stress is not to be underestimated. It can damage our bodies because it causes a continuous feedback loop that wears us down internally. Prolonged exposure to elevated stress levels and chronic depletion can seriously harm our health.
No one is immune to stress, and every step we take toward our well-being impacts our nervous system’s ability to regulate and de-stress.
Inspired by Team Members Cyndi Clark, Reiki and Medical Qi Gong Master, Chelsea Henry, Client Care Coordinator, and Ha Cathey, Somatic Therapist and Healing Artist