I’m 5 months pregnant- First time, with a boy and so incredibly grateful and excited and well, all the feels. Letting the emotions flow through me daily- a constant practice.

Before I got pregnant I was having multiple panic attacks a week. If I didn’t have a Xanax on me at all times the thought of not having one would send me into an anxious state. I won’t get into why the anxiety crippled me, but what I did know is that there was some trauma that had been kicked back up and I needed to find new coping strategies to come back to a grounded state.

That’s where I’m at today— Learning new coping strategies. I teach youth how to calm their bodies and minds and how to connect to their feelings. Now, I’m diving into the next layer of learning, growth, and practice.

After getting pregnant my anxiety started to subside. There was this knowing deep within (or maybe it was the hormones pumping?) that I need to take care of myself. Not just take care of myself, but REALLY slow down, be present and nurture my heart, soul, body, and mind. I am practicing what I have been teaching youth for 11 years. To be still, connect to the moment, find a coping strategy that resonates and listen to the body/mind.

This anxiety disorder has taught me a lot. When it is kicked up I know that there is something in my life I need that I am not getting for some reason or another. It could be a steady place to live, more time with friends, play and laughter, exercise. The list could go on and on.

If you are going through an anxious time these three things have been a helpful practice. Everyone is different so

*Adding fish oil supplements to my diet: This normalizes dopamine levels in the body helping to regulate the amygdala (fight/flight center in the brain).

*30 minutes of exercise a day: Stimulates the release of endorphins, dopamine and serotonin levels in the brain- which can boost mood and overall sense of well-being.

*Self-Compassion: When noticing anxiety, gently place your hand over your heart, take a breath and say something kind to yourself. Remember that you are doing the best you can.

I need to remind myself daily that all of this involves enormous amounts of patience. I am the type of person who wants things to happen immediately. “I’m being mindful, why am I not feeling improvement immediately?!” Patience. Compassion. Time– Helps us heal from the inside out, children and adults alike.

*Every body and mind is different. Consult a specialist before making any significant changes to your diet/exercise/mental health routine.

I had a panic attack yesterday on my way to teach counselors how to bring yoga and mindfulness into their camp. My stomach was upset, jaw tight, heart pounding and breath shallow. Although I KNOW all the tools that I should be using, sometimes they don’t come naturally. Deepening the breath is very hard when you are in moments of panic/anxiety.  Ironically, I am teaching adults how to find their deep belly breaths, how to be in the present moment and where in the body they hold stress and tension. I teach this because I wish I had tools as a child to navigate some serious anxiety.

The more we can share tools that help build self-awareness, the easier it will be to access these calming techniques when we are in moments of panic. I wish I had muscle memory that when I started to feel anxious, the deep breaths, the sitting with the discomfort and not running away, the guided visualizations would help me get back to baseline.

The training went really well. I got out of the car, breathed in the smell of pine, did a few yoga poses and shook it off. I told the group that I am still learning and consistently practicing all these tools. I got to eat lunch with everyone in the dining hall and one counselor said to me, “it’s nice to know that the mindfulness instructor needs these tools, too!” Every.single.day. Truly grateful for the practices of yoga and mindfulness. They allow me to be my authentic self, to tune in and figure out what I need in order to put my best foot forward. We are all human, we make mistakes, we say things we don’t mean and do things out of reaction. When we find practices that increase self-awareness, it gives us the power to choose. Without self-awareness, we don’t get the choice.

The next time I am feeling overwhelmed I will try to:

• Pause + notice
• Root my feet into the earth, soften my shoulders away from my ears and be with whatever feeling has arisen
• Take 3-5 deep breaths
• Massage my temples, jaw and shoulders
• Send myself compassion and love for this tough moment
• Let it go

I teach yoga and mindfulness at Day One Recovery Center for teens through Sea Change Yoga. Sea Change brings the healing power of trauma-informed yoga & meditation to all.

The teens in Day Ones’ outpatient therapy program are there for support with substance and alcohol abuse. Yesterday one of the students was graduating from the program and left a testimonial on the board at the end of class.

This particular student shared how much mindfulness, in particular, helped him. He enjoyed learning more about his thoughts and how his brain works. He was always open-minded and excited about the class. The counselor mentioned to him that he did so well in the program because of his open-mindedness and persistence. He showed up and gave it his all each time.

Yoga and mindfulness offer people an opportunity to increase self-awareness. This empowers the individual to be able to get their thoughts under control, rather than having their thoughts control them.

If you’ve ever experienced stress or anxiety you might notice that your thoughts are fast-paced and potentially negative in these moments. We can teach youth to pause, take a breath and then choose their thoughts/actions- a lifelong practice. Planting the seed early will build that ‘muscle’ so it can become second nature.

The thing about all this yoga/mindfulness ‘stuff’ is it’s a practice. Over time it changes us. It changes our minds, bodies, and behaviors. It has the ability to empower us to choose. “Is this the road I really want to go down?” “Are these the thoughts/beliefs I truly want to choose?” If we don’t have self-awareness, we never get a choice.

Yoga and mindfulness help us strip away layers of ego to get to the core of our true being. Our authentic self.

When anxiety is in ‘beast-mode’ our thoughts tend to be negative. Think about the quality of your thoughts when you are overwhelmed, tired, thrown off and irritable. Imagine feeling that way ALL. THE. TIME.

Yoga and mindfulness are tools that build self-awareness, resilience, compassion and emotional regulation. If we can decide what thoughts, words, and actions we are going to choose rather than having our thoughts/emotions rule us, we can change our lives.

Hello!

Over the past 5 weeks, my colleague Erica Marcus and I have been leading Portland Public School teachers through a 6-week course titled, Mindfulness and SEL. Teachers develop tools for themselves and their students to increase resilience, self-awareness, and compassion through mindfulness.

Last week our class focused on “thoughts.” As I use mindfulness to navigate my anxiety disorder, ‘thoughts’ has been the most powerful concept for me to dive into. If we can be aware of our thoughts, we have the ability to choose which ones are truthful vs others that our ego decides to be true.

When we are in a state of fight/flight our thoughts can overtake our body and mind and we are not able to choose a different way.

I remember when I was at the height of my anxiety/depression and I saw this cartoon:

It made me feel shameful and guilty because I was waking up each day with the inability to choose. No matter how hard I was trying to get to the other side I just couldn’t… I was in a state of chronic fight/flight which left me with the inability to use my rational mind. Fear was all I knew.

If you are feeling stuck in a constant state of stress/anxiety you certainly are not alone. I realize now that shame and guilt are only going to make things worse. Beating myself up for feeling the way that I did was only causing lower self-esteem.

It’s that self-compassion piece that was missing for me. “Wow, being in a chronic state of fight/flight is really uncomfortable and hard”. Rather than “Julie, what is wrong with you? Get your sh*t together and pull through”.

If you are someone who is feeling a lot of overwhelm I invite you to give diaphragmatic breathing a try the next time anxiety arises.

Belly Breath

• Sit up tall then relax your shoulders
• Soften through the jaw, forehead, and temples
• Bring one hand to your stomach and one hand to your heart
• Inhale through the nose and begin to fill the belly up with air
• Full breath in then exhaling all the air out completely
• If the breath isn’t going into the stomach area, that’s common- especially if we are feeling overwhelmed. This is a practice that takes new muscles to develop. The more you practice the better you will get in moments of stress and anxiety.
• Practice, Patience, and compassion mixed with this deep breathing technique is proven to help slow the mind and relax the body.

The breath is one tool among many that we can try when we notice that our thoughts are like a million buzzing bees in a beehive. When we are aware that we are feeling an uncomfortable emotion, we can choose to sit with it and notice how it feels in our bodies and minds to create more resilience.

If you are finding that this is heightening your stress and anxiety then we can use a tool like belly breathing to feel better.

Some days we can sit with discomfort, other days it is just too much and we need a tool that can calm the nervous system.

Each day we wake up with a different demand or experience. Increasing self-awareness is the first step in changing the thoughts so we can begin to heal.

This past year I’ve had the opportunity to teach a 1 hour professional development called, Mindful Tools for Stress and Anxiety to classroom teachers.

I’ve been in and out of hundreds of schools over the past eleven years and have found that teachers are craving moments of calm so they can take care of themselves. When teachers are consistently taking care of their students in roles such as a nurse, best friend, parent, social worker and the list goes on, it’s very hard for them to manage their own stress and put themselves first.

Yesterday I got to my PD a little early and got to watch the school secretary during dismissal time. The secretary was managing at least 7 tasks at the same time while 400 children flooded out the door to be dismissed.

This was a sliver of the job I got to see. My mom was a secretary at an elementary school for over 20 years. I would see her overworked and overwhelmed as she put her self-care on hold for the benefits of the school community.

When we get to teach schools how to find moments in the day to pause and connect with themselves it serves as a self-care practice that will benefit everyone. The person experiencing stress and the school community. We cannot pour from an empty cup.

I’ve been talking about what mindfulness is and how we can create moments in the day to be mindful. We don’t need to wake up at 4:00am and sit on a pillow with our eyes closed for 30-60 minutes. We can find these mini mindful moments when we are bustling through the day. We can notice the air on our skin, the way a bite of food tastes on our tongue, the breath moving in and out or the way our feet feel in our shoes as we walk slowly to the bathroom for a break.

If we can empower teachers to understand what happens in the brain and how to shift from anxious to less anxious, they can then teach their students.

We are in an epidemic of stress and anxiety. It’s unrealistic to make our teachers teach stress management when most are trying their best to teach a particular curriculum, take a bathroom break when they need it and attend to multiple behaviors in the classroom. Basic needs must be met before we can truly feel capable of leading tools for stress and anxiety.