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How many times a day do we spend a few moments taking care of ourselves?

There is an increasing number of people who live submerged in mountains of worries, almost without being able to enjoy the small moments of living.

Without realizing it, we enter into a spiral of routine that leaves us exhausted at the end of the day, hardly having time to do anything other than work, trying to make ends meet and overloading ourselves with family tasks. Living in worries turns weeks into days, and months into weeks. Time slips away between the hustle and bustle of the days, and there is no way to stop that frenzy that we have reached without even knowing how.

Suddenly, we start to get headaches, we find it more and more difficult to enjoy restful sleep, digestive problems start to bother us and we feel irritable most of the time. In fact, this is what happens when we make worry a mode lived: worry is activated in response to an external stimulus, perceived as threatening, which at the same time activates a chain of physiological reactions in the body, preparing it to fight. The alleged threat. A part of the brain, the hypothalamus, kicks into gear, triggering a rush of hormonal reactions that prepare the body to flee, thus combating danger. This is a very old mechanism, which belongs to our most archaic mind. However, now the danger no longer belongs to nature, but to our way of living. In this way, living in worry ends up wearing down our body, thus reducing its immune response capacity, leaving it exposed to possible pathogens.

In our medical center, there are more and more people who come exhausted due to the effect of worry, and who want to find new ways to live their lives day by day, in a more relaxed and carefree way, feeling that it affected their lives overall performance. One of the interventions we use most to combat worries are different techniques based on Mindfulness, a word that we could define as consciousness, consciousness developed by paying concrete, sustained, deliberate attention and without judging the present moment (Kabat-Zinn, 2008). By modulating our attention and observing our own consciousness, the sympathetic activity of the body decreases, our hypothalamus relaxes, which results in greater management of situations perceived as stressful (Sánchez, 2011). There are many studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of Mindfulness in combating stress (Sánchez, 2011). Meditation, one of the tools in Mindfulness, offers us the opportunity to begin to take care of ourselves, looking for a space to perceive time in a different way, a space to focus on the present moment, OUR moment present, allowing us to experience existence in a different way, leaving worries behind and filling our lives with fullness. With mindfulness training, the openness and acceptance of the experience as it is gradually arrives, allowing us to live in peace those moments previously overwhelmed by stress. If you want to leave your worries behind, take care of yourself, train your attention, and live every minute of your time.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kabat-Zinn, J. (2013). Mindfulness for beginners. Barcelona: kairos.

Sánchez, G. (2011). Meditation, Mindfulness and its biopsychosocial effects. Literature review. Electronic Journal of Psychology Iztacala, 14 (2), .231.

Ms. Sara Persentili