Ep. 30: Doro Bush Koch - Guided Meditations, Mindfulness & Breath Work - BB&R Wellness Consulting
Doro Bush Koch shares what mindfulness is and how important it is to her. I've gotten into mindfulness for reasons that many of you are familiar with. Being in a family of public servants, mindfulness can be an effective tool that helps me cope with stress and anxiety. Things that I’m sure you all know too well.
Mindfulness helped me so much, that I made it my work. I love mindfulness, and I love sharing it with others. We just hear about the body, but a healthy mind is equally as important. As Tricia said, it all goes together, yet we often neglect the health of our minds.
We live in a world that runs at an accelerated pace. Many of us spend our time rushing from one thing to the next thing. We also spend too much time thinking about the past and all of the things that we should have done or thinking about the future and all the things that we need to do. Let’s take a moment during this recording and slow things down.
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Show Notes
[01:32] Our days are often spent lost in thought, so we miss the experience of the present moment.
[01:40] We are really just missing out on our life as we are living it.
[01:44] A fast-paced life causes chronic stress. It activates our fight-or-flight stress response. This can suppress our immune systems and open the door to all kinds of disease.
[02:11] There are three ways we recommend to improve the health of our minds.
[02:20] There's mindfulness. There's breath work, and meditation.
[02:38] The best definition of mindfulness is paying attention on purpose in the present moment, non-judgmentally.
[03:09] Mindfulness is a great tool to accept the good, the bad, and the indifferent. When we are mindful we avoid triggering are stress response.
[03:37] Stress chemicals affect how our brain works. It affects the areas we need for creativity, decision making, and empathy. We need to be as calm and present as possible to live and work with each other.
[04:07] Eating mindfully is tasting the food and noticing the smells.
[04:58] By practicing mindfulness we can strengthen the brain's ability to pay attention.
[05:23] Breathwork can be used to reduce stress. The first thing we can do is just pay attention to our breath.
[06:12] One of the simplest ways to do this is to pause throughout the day and take a few deep breaths.
[06:43] The 4 7 8 breathing method. This will help with stress, anxiety, and insomnia. The regularity of practice puts a signal in your nervous system to relax.
[07:24] Breathe all of the air out of your lungs. Breathe in for a count of four. Hold your breath for seven. Whoosh out for a count of eight.
[09:05] Meditation is our favorite tool to reduce stress. Meditation is the formal practice of mindfulness. It's learning to quiet our busy minds and focus our attention using our breath.
[09:29] When we meditate we can't and we don't suppress our thoughts, but we do become observers of our thoughts. We can acknowledge our thoughts without judgment and let them go.
[09:49] We went to let our thoughts rise and dissolve on their own while we are loving observers.
[10:25] It's our minds that create our experience of the world, so why don't we spend more time training our minds.
[10:47] Meditation like any skill takes practice. We particularly like guided meditation because it uses visualization to bring about awareness.
[11:14] Set a timer for 5 or 10 minutes and see how it goes.
[11:29] Doro takes us through a four minute meditation. You are loved and all is well with the world.
Links and Resources:
“Meditation is the formal practice of mindfulness. It's learning to quiet our busy minds and focus our attention using our breath.” -Doro Bush Koch
“It's our minds that create our experience of the world, so why don't we spend more time training our minds.” -Doro Bush Koch
“Mindfulness is fully embracing what's happening at this moment in a loving way.” -Doro Bush Koch