Our Relationship With Stress And How Meditation Can Help

Stress. A word that has woven its way into our daily conversations, emails – work and personal, and most of all, our thoughts more than ever before. 

So many of the activities, errands, chores, interactions we once carried out without a second thought or even took pleasure in, now feel so laden with anxiety and apprehension. Many require forethought, preplanning, or simply can’t happen at all. 

A growing number of people are turning to meditation to help with this uneasiness and overwhelm, with varying expectations. 

It’s important to note that meditation won’t magically make your stressors disappear. However it can help “level” your emotions and bring a more balanced sense of calm to your body and your mind.

The first thing to realize is that it’s normal to feel stressed in stressful situations. Acknowledge the feelings. The difficulty in finding balance is when these disquieting emotions become all we feel, all we think about and our primary topic of conversation.  

Once we have accepted that our reaction is normal for the situation, we need to ask ourselves,  ‘Can I experience the other areas of my awareness simultaneously?’  

Ideally, we are able to freely access multiple levels of awareness. It’s normal for our awareness to undergo expansion and contraction. But if our attention is too honed into the part of our awareness that’s experiencing the stress we contract to the point of becoming blind to everything else that is happening around us.  

Through a regular meditation practice you will discover that your contractions are not going to be as contracted. You’re still going to feel all the feelings but your vision will be wider — you can experience a more universal consciousness.

One can approach a meditation practice to first learn to calm the mind then become aware of our states so that we can be open and expansive. When we cultivate that awareness to see and feel all that we are experiencing, the stress becomes less significant, less consuming and easier to manage.  

Learn meditations to calm the mind, expand and enhance your awareness and more in The Breathing Deeply Meditation Course. Led by an approachable compassionate teacher, discover 30+ meditations in easily accessible formats. 

Try our 30 day free trial to experience it for yourself.