Mindful Approach to High Blood Pressure Part 2

Stress is at the source of all abnormal blood pressure readings.

In this podcast we address how to begin to mindfully approach stress.

Meditation can help, but mindful living takes even less time.

We revisit how to "SitWell" (see June 21st Podcast) to reduce our stress.

Sign up for email updates if you like  to get the latest Art of Healing Podcast to you inbox every week.
Thank you for listening!

Welcome to the Art of Healing Podcast community.  This podcast is devoted to helping you find what works on your journey to health and wellness.  This podcast is devoted to providing information on many healing modalities.  Learn more about:

• Reiki
• Functional Medicine
• Meditation
• Energy Healing

and more!

Learn more about Dr. Charlyce here. 

Never miss an episode of Art of Healing Podcast...the podcast devoted to helping you heal your mind, body and spirit.

Sign up for my weekly newsletter, and never miss an episode along with other great content:

Art of Healing Podcast

Stay in touch socially here:
Healing Arts Links

Learn more about me and my offerings here:
Healing Arts Health and Wellness

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:55

Hello, and welcome back to the Art Healing Podcast. This is Charise, and thank you so much for joining me for today's episode, which is mindful Approach to high Blood Pressure Part two, mindfulness. So for the month of August, we have been discussing what blood pressure is, how to check it. We have discussed what could be going on inside your body that could be raising your blood pressure. And then we've also discussed, um, the approaches you can take at home in your lifestyle to help heal your blood pressure. And that was particularly the last episode. So for today's episode, I wanted to, um, hone in a little bit more specifically on the, um, mindfulness and the meditation aspect, how that can show up in your lifestyle as far as working with your blood pressure. Um, some of my advice to approach it on a minute to minute basis as well as in a more formal fashion. And then for next week, we will have a, a, a meditation practice we'll do together, um, that you can keep, um, as part of your, your regimen, um, especially if you're new to the topic and you're trying to figure out how to incorporate this. So, as we previously discussed, stress definitely is at the root of many diseases, and stress is likely playing a role in nearly all causes of high blood pressure. I'd mentioned in one of the podcasts that, um, my observation is that oftentimes the stress has been present for a long time, and the person who's experiencing this, you may be experiencing it yourself, that your tolerance of stress, your set point of what you might call stressful has gone higher so that you've learned to live at higher and higher stress burdens. Um, which, um, resilience is a form of that. Um, resilience. We need, we need to be able to recover from what life throws at us, but we don't always need, um, to not necessarily tune into how this is affecting us, um, on a physical level, on a mental level, an emotional level. So acknowledging that likely stress is playing a role would be the first start. And not that you need to judge or even to panic, but just recognizing that there's probably multiple aspects in your life that it would probably be beneficial to address. In the previous podcast, we did discuss, um, diet, kind of catch all advice on a way to eat it a little bit healthier and clean. Um, we discussed, uh, relationships, we discussed sleep, and so those are worth addressing. But, um, as you're working through this, we don't wanna create more stress. So the advice I usually share with my patients is that, um, we maybe wanna pick, you know, a very small, small aspect of, uh, your life that we feel can be influenced and something that you can influence even immediately. It won't take any other task or another steps and maybe to start to hone in on that. So for instance, like if it's sleep and doesn't appear that like you're getting enough sleep, then maybe we wanna look at your evening regimen and figure out if there's maybe some task that doesn't need to be done in the evening or look at your morning and see if there's maybe something you can put off so you can sleep in a little bit more. Make very, very tiny steps. We don't need to make big steps and create more stress. So when we're dealing with the unremitting everyday nature of stress and the fact there's probably many aspects of your life that are very stressful, learning healthy breathing as a habit really can go a long way, can really help keep your energy levels up, can really help with your mood. Of course, it's not the answer to everything. Um, in the June 21st podcast I mentioned the Sitwell versus the Achi slo, the names I gave to, um, habits of how you may keep your body in space. So when, um, I refer to Sitwell in the podcast, and this is also comes up at the 21 day meditation journey in the book, um, you, you are hoping to sit in a way that your, the part of your bottom that sits on the chair is supported and that your pelvis, um, is oriented in a way that your belly can expand easily and contract easily. And then you're also looking to see if your chest, which contains your lungs, which are huge, we often sort of forget that our lungs are really pretty large organs and they need lots of space. And we can create the space, especially while we're sitting by making sure that our chest doesn't cave in and the shoulders don't pull forward all the time that the shoulders are relaxed and they're sitting further back, which allows your neck to straighten up. And then naturally your head will sit where it's supposed to directly over your spine. So sitting, well, you can always find your sit well posture by doing some seated cat cows. You can do like a small version, like maybe if you're in a meeting, you don't want it to be too obvious, or if you're about to do like a brief meditation, it's nice to do, do an exaggerated form where you really roll the pel with pelvis forward and let the belly push out and really inhale into the chest. And, um, that's the, um, the inhale. And then you exhale by forming a c with your spine and contracting the belly inward so it's empty and it's small, and you purposely cave the chest in and roll the shorts forward, let your head drop. And doing both of those repeatedly can really help to you find your, your natural posture that, um, hopefully you can actually make a bit of a habit so that, um, your energy level stays up the entire day. I try to do that myself even throughout my day, um, just to fun sit well, so I make sure I don't sort of cave my chest in and a hunch over which, um, will start to make multiple changes in your body, which will lead to your heart racing faster, um, because you're not getting deep, effective breath in. And when that cycle repeats itself, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, it sets you up for having health conditions from, you know, minor things to headaches, to, to big issues like high blood pressure. So trying to just find the natural seated posture. If you actually only do that in a day, it can help. And especially if you're trying to figure this out, you're trying to figure out things with your health. I don't want you to feel overwhelmed. So, um, if all you do and all you take from this podcast is finding a healthy way to sit as perfect, and then you can build from there as you feel ready to take on more. We had talked about your schedule, um, in, I think in the previous podcast we talked about our schedules, our life lifestyles, and what our days look like. And if, if every moment of the day is scheduled or structured, what that could mean for us. And, um, one recommendation that I frequently make is that if you're considering adding meditation, some of the advice you may be seeing, or you may have heard, is it has to be 20 minutes a day or doesn't work. So if you're gonna try meditation, a guided meditation, or if you just wanna have your own minutes of mindfulness, there's no time limit, there's no quantity, it's simply doing it. So if you have one minute to spare, then that one minute's a blessing. If you have 20 minutes to spare, fantastic, definitely take advantage of that. But I like to point that out to people that, um, life is life, life will happen, and it can be hard to carve out that time for yourself. So never feel that if you only spend five minutes in a time of, of quiet that it's wasted. That's not how it works. That five minutes is for you. And, um, part of what we're learning about life in all of us in our stress levels is that having every moment structured, dedicated, doing outputting is not allowing us just to be, not allowing us to be in our own being sort of. So, um, it might be possible to find the five minutes at the start of your day, or you may find the five minutes throughout your day. Um, you may wanna look at your day at some point and even see if there's just random times where you really could take five minutes. Um, for instance, if you maybe are, um, waiting for a video need to start and your internet's taking time to get the meeting fired up, you can rest in that moment. Focus on your posture, take some deep breaths until the meeting fires up. And, um, in that few moments of devotion to yourself can really help to improve your health and your energy. We often think of an activity like meditation as something that has to be done when you're completely seated, still with no movement, but, um, you can definitely engage in meditation and definitely mindfulness if you're doing an activity such as walking. Um, if you're at a place in life where you feel like your body's too restless, and if definitely you've got things going on that's keeping the thoughts racing and your body just really can't sit still, then you really don't have to. So there's a number of guided meditations you can do walking, um, you can do a mindful walk, which is you simply go walk, um, without any distractions. You don't listen to anything. And while you walk, you take your attention to your feet, to your legs, you notice your breath while you're walking, then you take your focus to the scenery around you and make observations about what you see. You make observations about the temperature, maybe observations about yourself. And during this walking mindfulness session, um, there's no goal you're trying to accomplish. You simply just walk and keep your focus on the here and now. But of course, you can do a guided meditation while you're walking as well. Doing a few stretches before you begin to meditate can help with some of the restlessness. Um, so, you know, honestly, the practice of yoga really centers around, um, moving the energy in the body in preparation of a meditation practice previously mentioned, like a quick seated cat cow or a few forward bins can help if you're about to meditate. And those actually help even during your day

Speaker 2: 12:45

If, if you're feeling restless, um, you can do some side beans to help you feel centered, but, um, always not. Like if you feel that kind of anti restlessness, stretching the muscles can often help to relieve that. So, uh, thank you so much for joining me. This podcast is, uh, somewhat short. It was somewhat of a continuation of the previous podcast, but, um, lots of information covered and definitely, um, let's get back to together next week. Well, we'll actually perform a little bit of a meditation together, which, um, it's always nice. Um, i, I just, I really love that quiet time of meditation. So we'll do one together next week. Um, once again, thank you so much for joining me. Um, if you are wanting to start your meditation journey, um, I have written an ebook called The 21 Day Meditation Journey, your Journey to Health and Wellness that's available on Amazon. You can definitely pick up a copy if you have listened, you're ready to get started, but you don't wanna get too distracted looking for resources. There are so many resources and I often advise everyone that I work with that I, I really just want you to get started. So I, I, there's all kinds of apps, there's all kinds of ways. Whatever is resonates with you, it feels best for you. But I will also offer, uh, my book as well as a resource that can help you to get started. Very simply, very simple meditations. I design them in mind that they should not take much of your time and I think they will give you much more benefit, um, than they take as far as time. So thank you so much for joining me, and we'll talk next week. Bye-bye.