I tend to think that our lives get more and more complex, even if technology helps us automatize and manage activities while we are on the move.
It can be overwhelming to hold the different areas of our lives apart and be confronted with expectations from different roles at the same time. How can I be available to a team when school calls? How can I be a good daughter to my aging parents when a project deadline approaches? How can I possibly I write an inspiring coaching program for a client when my child is sick at home and needs me next to them?
Priorities tend collide and in the middle of is just a human being. A human being with own needs, a human being with emotions and dreams. How can we survive in the middle of it?
Many of my coaching programs revolve around variations of this topic and one practice that I find very supportive on this journey is mindfulness. While I start small with my clients – finding minutes of mindfulness in a full day and observing maybe 3 breaths while not thinking anything else, there is also the possibility to train mindfulness in a more dedicated way: Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a method developed by internationally known researcher and meditation teacher and is taught locally by certified teachers. It helps deal with somatic and emotional symptoms of stress and supports you in being more aware of when and how stress impacts you, how you can work with it.
For those of you in the Munich region, my Integral Coach colleague and MBSR teacher Karin will launch a new 8-week course this month. Check it out, it may be an answer to the stress you experience in your life.
MBSR changed my life. I more or less stumbled into it while looking for a course for my staff working in a highly stressful environment (acute operating theatres). Therefore I enrolled for the 8 week course to test it out beforehand and started “sitting down” and “observe”. The subtle changes within me over time were recognized by my staff and I often heard “I want to be like that, too”. A lot of my staff did the course after me and we could share our experiences. Once a week we had a guided 20-30 min “session” during lunch break to keep the flow going.
I can recommend the MBSR course for anybody. Stressed or not stressed.
With Metta
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