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Stress attack


kew

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I'm on Day 15 of my first Whole30 -- not that I think this is related -- and I am experiencing an enormous stress attack. I am starting to see myself as a stress-addict, and I feel like I am not able to breath properly from chest tightness. My throat actually closed up temporarily during my Saturday morning run, and I had to stop for a while to relax and breath properly.

So.... since reducing stress is supposed to be an important part of the Whole9....and since the external stressors of work and family aren't going away....any suggestions for really good guided meditation recordings? I've had some success with guided meditation in the past (preparing for childbirth, specifically), and I would use those CDs again, only they are not exactly appropriate any more, and might give my husband heart failure, besides!

I cannot at the moment see my way clear to adding any more major time commitments (take up yoga! go to therapy!), but some brief meditations might help me breathe more easily -- literally -- and get through the next couple of weeks and plan my way into the time I need for yoga, therapy, or whatever. There is quite an adult-onset asthma history in my family, so I have to consider the possibility that I have 'aged into' that legacy for real.

Any thoughts would be most helpful. (And maybe I should add that I am NOT diving into the ice-cream container and not chugalugging from the wine bottle, which would be my ordinary reaction to this kind of stress! So, go me & go Whole30 for that! But if there are any Whole30 foods which are, somehow, pacifying, I'm all ears for that, too.)

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I like to listen to guided meditations by Thich Nhat Hanh (and Sister Van Hegel) in a recording of Plum Village meditations. They give you a phrase and then you hear a meditation bell and you are given a few seconds to meditate on the phrase before they give you the next. The first one always makes me feel better: Breathing in, I know I am breathing in; Breathing out, I know I am breathing out. For some reason when I'm freaking out, it helps me to know that I know at least this for sure. There's another one, too -- Breathing in I feel my anxiety; breathing out I cuddle my anxiety. I like the idea of cuddling my anxiety and saying, there there, it's going to be okay! :)

I also like guided meditations by John Kabat Zinn and Andrew Weil, also. You can probably google around and find samples -- or I also know that the Sounds True site sells a lot of guided meditation mp3s and CDs and Amazon does, too. Hang in there and keep breathing -- it helps!

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