Resilience Week 5

"Resilience: The capacity of the body and mind to undergo significant stress arousal and recover from it, returning to a baseline equilibrium so that allostasis is restored.  Each time we experience significant stress and fully recover; we widen our window of tolerance to stress arousal and thereby increase resilience." 

Dr. Elizabeth Stanley

Dr. Elizabeth Stanley is herself a survivor of post-traumatic stress having been in the military and lived after a near death experience and endured a traumatic childhood. She created the course, "Mindfulness Based Mind Fitness Training” and wrote the book, Widen the Window offering insight on how to handle stress, past trauma and teach yourself how to be more resilient. The premise is that the more we gain agency over our own selves, the more we can learn to widen the window between what she refers to as the thinking brain and the survival brain. Dr. Stanley utilizes practices of mindfulness that will send a ripple effect to deactivate the survival brain when it is no longer needed. By these practices we build our muscle of self-awareness to start rewiring and creating a more resilient self.

One practice would be to find a grounded position, feet flat, shoulders wide. If you are feeling overwhelmed, anxious or in worry mode, first notice your breath, your clenched jaw, or your pounding heart. Not getting caught up in it, but with nonjudgmental awareness. Then notice where in your body you feel most stable or centered. Maybe it’s your feet connected to the floor, or it’s your seat feeling your body supported. You can even make this awareness more present by focusing on the feet pressing into the floor or the seat in the chair.  Even if you're pulled away by persistent thoughts, just keep coming back to the body connection. Sometimes it can help to sit perfectly still.

In my teaching I let students know the more we practice, the more it becomes part of our response system, instead of our past reaction. If you could take a minute out of your day, try it right now to just sit still in a grounded position. Then focus on your feet or seat, and where you feel stable or centered. Practicing when you are not in stress mode, will make it more natural to find when you need it.

This month’s focus on resilience from different points of view all reflected one key aspect, we can increase our resilience. As with any important achievement it takes time, energy and practice.