Tag: guided practice

Power Practice #11 – Manage Your Stress In Any Situation

by Chantal Pierrat

Erin Olivo Manage Your Stress

Understanding and being able to manage your emotions is one of the most important and most empowering life skills you can develop.

When your distressing emotions aren’t taken care of in a productive way, they can become the root of all of your most common issues—overeating, chronic relationship conflict, money mismanagement, substance abuse, and even, in many cases, poor physical health.

Getting distance and perspective from how we are feeling can be one of the most helpful ways to begin to manage distress and it is the key to shifting into Wise Mind. You can use this practice as an on-the-spot, quick fix whenever you’re feeling overwhelmed or stressed out.

Play the Power Practice:

“Sometimes focusing on what is truly going on instead of dwelling on what we think should be is all it takes to transform our emotional experience.”

Erin Olivo, Ph.D., MPH, is a licensed clinical psychologist with more than 18-years experience treating patients. She has been an Assistant Clinical Professor of Medical Psychology at the Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons, since July 2004. She was formerly the Director of the Columbia Integrative Medicine Program.

Dr. Olivo currently maintains a private psychotherapy practice in New York City where she works with adults and teenagers who are dealing with stress, depression, anxiety, unhealthy relationships, chronic illness, self-destructive behavior, addictions, and over-eating.

Dr. Olivo’s treatment approach is solution focused and integrates cognitive behavior therapy and DBT therapy with mind-body strategies such as mindfulness meditation and hypnosis. She teaches her patients how to regulate their emotions, manage stress and anxiety, and achieve a more balanced approach to life that she calls Wise Mind Living.

Ready for more? Try this Grounding Meditation with HeatherAsh Amara:

4 Steps to Radical Self-Compassion

by Chantal Pierrat

Like anything transformational, self-compassion only comes alive through practice. Here is my simple approach to this powerful practice – culled from the amazing self-compassion authors Tara Brach, Kristin Neff and Kelly McGonigal, plus bits and pieces from a lot of EWLive speakers who know their self-compassion stuff.

Step 1:  Do a body scan.

Take 5 minutes in the morning and evening to sit quietly, close your eyes and simply breathe. As I breathe, I notice my body and take inventory of places that feel contracted or even painful. And I just sit there, noticing and breathing until something miraculous happens – those places loosen up and I start to feel a tenderness toward myself.

Step 2: Feel the pain, feel the love.

Yes, this happens. Just like when you see a child skin her knee, and you instantly feel compassion toward her and want her to feel better. When we discover pain in our bodies and we simply recognize it, our human instinct for compassion sets in and BOOM – we start to send loving thoughts. If you want to kick it up a notch, physically and gently place your hand on the places of contraction in your body – it will feel… lovely.

Step 3: Hands on the heart.

This is Kristin Neff’s most powerful technique for instant relief if you are trapped in a cycle of worshipping your unworthiness. Put your hands on your heart – that’s it! Kristin’s version is more elaborate – but I am usually tight on time, and just this simple gesture can turn everything around in an instant.

Step 4: Recognize the change.

Perhaps the most important part of my practice is to witness, feel and record the outcomes from this practice. Recognizing the positive change that ensues when we are tender and forgiving with ourselves will reinforce the practice, and soon our impulse to worship our unworthiness will be replaced by an impulse of self-compassion. Rad.

Remember, the mind’s instinct to blame and shame is powerful, so you have to hit these practices hard one hard. I’m serious – hands on the heart 50 times a day if you need it. It will be the best valentine you have ever given, or received.

Share Your Self-Compassion Practices with the tribe in the comments below. We’d love to hear from you!

Power Practice #09: When You Don’t Feel Ready

by Chantal Pierrat

Are you easily able to discern the difference between your true voice and your inner critic?

Tara Mohr, women’s leadership expert and author of Playing Big: Find Your Voice, Your Mission, Your Message and 10 Rules for Brilliant Women, says brilliant, creative women are often really, really bad at this.

In this week’s practice, Tara invites you to uncover what you might be holding an “I’m not ready yet” story around, and suggests an interesting way to reframe the question to get an answer that comes from your wisest self.

Play the Power Practice:

“Women often don’t know what they’re ready for yet. Brilliant women especially.”

Tara Mohr is an expert on women’s leadership and well-being. Her work helps women play bigger in their work and in their lives. With an MBA from Stanford University and her undergraduate degree in English literature from Yale, Tara takes a unique approach that blends inner work with practical skills training, and weaves together both intellectual rigor and intuitive wisdom.

Tara has a deep commitment to amplifying women’s voices. She is the creator of the global Playing Big leadership program for women and the co-creator of two anthologies of contemporary women’s writings, The Women’s Seder Sourcebook and The Women’s Passover Companion.  Her 10 Rules for Brilliant Women have struck a chord with tens of thousands of women around the world. In 2010, Tara was honored as a Girl Champion by the Girl Effect organization, which supports girls’ education in the developing world.

Tara is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and has been featured on The Today Show, BigThink.com, Whole Living, CNN.com, USA Today, the International Business Times, Ode Magazine, Forbes, Beliefnet, and numerous other media outlets. She is also a poet, and the author of The Real Life: Poems for Wise Living.

Want “Mohr?” Check out her Emerging Women podcast, “Playing Big: the Work of Our Time.”