Cultivating Calm

 

 You don't have to go to a spa. Here's how to achieve peace of mind (plus health and happiness) from the inside out.

By Hagar Scher

 Once upon a time, I had the time and money to go on an eight-day retreat in Costa Rica. One of the most memorable aspects of the trip was a daily walking meditation. My fellow travelers and I would line up and begin inching along. Each step demanded my full attention; I didn't want to nip the heels of the person in front of me. At first, the experience of moving so slowly was deeply uncomfortable. Soon enough, though, I was rewarded for downshifting. Eyes fixed on the ground, I encountered the little wonders a snail takes for granted: the unique contour of each blade of grass, the vivid hues of wildflowers, the fragility of the clods dotting the path.

I was reminded of those walks recently, as I rushed (yet again) to an appointment I feared I would be late for (yet again), feeling that familiar, toxic mix of self-recrimination, frustration, and anxiety.

Perhaps it was the depth of my exhaustion — my son was only 6 months old — but my body rebelled. Right there, in the middle of a busy street, I found myself replicating the ritual of those tropical mornings. My pace slowed, and soon so did my thumping heart, whirling brain, and churning stomach. I took a deep breath and felt my eyes, which had been shrouded by stress, open to the world around me. I took note of the chubby clouds grazing the turquoise sky and felt undeniably happy...and calm. I arrived at my destination five minutes late, but instead of being angry and upset, I uttered a smiling apology and went into the meeting feeling focused and energized.

"Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it," writes Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk and author. We've all had those eureka moments of feeling that everything is right and good in our world. But we need to make a conscious choice to emphasize those feelings in our lives.

"We now believe 80 percent of illness is stress-related, that whatever your genetic weak link, stress will trigger it," notes Richard Brown, M.D., associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University. "Going to a spa is wonderful, but until you teach yourself ways to achieve peace of mind from the inside, you'll remain vulnerable to stress."

Learning to stay balanced is a lifelong endeavor. And yet, making small changes to your daily routine can help you reap big benefits

 Next: Change Your Surroundings

Beauty & Comfort

Every day, we're bombarded with threatening, jarring stimuli and messages — Boing! John Doe has sent you an instant message! Beep! You have a new cell phone message! Tonight's headlines: "Beware terrorists!" "Killer spinach!" Each time we take in a worrisome sight, sound, or piece of information, we activate the sympathetic nervous system, triggering the so-called fight-or-flight response. The heart beats faster, muscles tense, blood pressure and blood sugar levels rise, the digestive system and immune system are suppressed, and the body is flooded with the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol. These reactions are the exact opposite of those connected with the parasympathetic nervous system, which promotes relaxation — and calm.

"Radio, TV, and newspapers spew out potentially threatening messages, and our deep, primitive biological systems don't know how to differentiate between psychological stress and real, physical danger," notes David Simon, M.D., medical director of the Chopra Center in San Diego. "Whether we're conscious of it or not, we're constantly perceiving the world as a scary place."

One step toward cultivating calm is to dial down the amount of information you consume — a strategy I found indispensable while I was pregnant and especially vulnerable to being thrown off center. "The next step is replacing threatening stimuli with relaxing stimuli," says health psychologist Brian Luke Seaward, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Northern Colorado School of Public Health.

To test whether pleasant sensations actually promote calm, Nancy Etcoff, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist at Harvard Medical School, sent 27 people fresh-cut flowers to place in their homes, asking them to keep a detailed mood journal before and after the bouquets arrived. After a few days living with the blooms, subjects reported a decrease in negative emotions like anxiety and depression and an increase in positive feelings like compassion for others and energy and enthusiasm at work.

"Things that are beautiful to the senses capture our attention and quiet the mind in an effortless way," says Etcoff. "Changing your environment by bringing in your favorite music or photos of happy events and places and people you love is very calming and reassuring." The world is full of small harbingers of joy and harmony — you just need to seek them out and incorporate them into your daily routine. It can be as simple as taking a walk around a leafy park in the middle of a hectic day or burning a candle of your favorite scent at night.

Another way to foster the relaxation response is to engage in pleasant repetitive activities, says Alice Domar, Ph.D., executive director of the Domar Center for Complementary Healthcare in Waltham, MA. Those that involve easy concentration and lulling repetition, like knitting, swimming, even petting an animal, calm the mind. "During the course of a day, most of the thoughts women think are negative: They worry about the future or feel like failures for not having a spotless kitchen or fitting into size 6 jeans," says Domar. "Finding something you enjoy doing that distracts you from automatic, negative thinking patterns is important. It might be something you enjoyed as a child, when you were able to live in the moment and more easily experience joy."

Next: Take a Breather

Mindful Breathing

Not only can stress make you sick, it can also age you. But quieting the mind can have the opposite effect.

New research from the University of California, San Francisco, suggests that stress affects our bodies on the most basic, cellular level. Researchers drew blood from 58 moms, 39 of whom were caring for a chronically ill child, to measure the telomeres — protein complexes that protect DNA — inside their immune cells. Telomeres naturally contract with age; but the telomeres in the immune cells of mothers who reported the most stress were markedly shorter than those of the control group's, making the stressed-out moms nine to 17 years "older."

Thankfully, other research offers hope that we're not doomed to age prematurely. In separate studies, Sara Lazar, Ph.D., a neurobiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Columbia's Dr. Brown have found evidence that basic meditation techniques, such as controlled breathing, not only promote positive emotions but also help us stay youthful and vibrant. For example, when Lazar compared the brain scans of 20 experienced meditators with those of 15 non-meditators, she found that in the first group, two regions of the brain were significantly thicker: the insular cortex and part of the prefrontal cortex.

"With age, the whole brain thins," notes Lazar, "but meditation seems to slow the deterioration of the parts of the brain that are aware of emotions and physical processes in the body" — e.g., heart rate and hunger — and that integrate thoughts and feelings to make sound decisions. People who meditate daily might be better equipped to gauge how full they are, for example, preventing overeating, or have a better sense of their exhaustion level and decide to go to bed early when it would help them.

Dr. Brown has conducted several studies on how yoga breathing can alleviate anxiety and depression. Currently, he's examining the brain wave activity of individuals who have just practiced these techniques. "Their charts resemble the slow, rolling-hill pattern of the brain waves we see in babies who are in the 'quiet alert' state, like when they're looking in their mothers' eyes," he says. "In contrast, the typical brain wave activity of an adult is a series of chaotic, incoherent squiggles." 

Next: Soul Food

  

Fuel Your Mood

 For many people, the idea of calm suggests images of lounging under a beach umbrella, whiling the day away. But lethargy and calmness are two very different things, says Robert Thayer, Ph.D., a psychology professor at California State University in Long Beach and author of Calm Energy. Thayer, who has been studying ways to combat stress for more than 25 years, has identified four fundamental states of being: tense tiredness, calm tiredness, tense energy, and calm energy. In his view, most of us spend our lives yo-yoing between tense energy (you just downed a Venti-size coffee) and tense tiredness (the kids are finally in bed, the dishes are done, but you can't stop fretting about all the unfinished business on your to-do list). He believes the optimal state for daily life is calm energy, "a high level of physical and mental vigor coupled with low muscle and brain tension."

Thayer argues that calm energy must be attained through self-awareness and smart lifestyle decisions. In one study, he randomly assigned 18 subjects the task of either eating a candy bar or walking briskly for 10 minutes and then mapping their energy and tension level at several points during the two hours afterward. After an initial, fleeting uptick in energy, the sugar eaters reported plummeting energy levels and rising tension; the walkers, on the other hand, said they consistently were less tense and more energetic. "And yet, how do most of us deal with stress? We overeat and indulge in high-density foods," Thayer says. "Daily exercise is essential to feeling energetic and calm at the same time. The trick is to work out at the right intensity to find that balance. If you had a stressful day and are wound up tight, you need to release lots of tension and would do best with a challenging gym session or power walk, but if you're lagging at midday, you're better off with a short walk that will provide an energy burst without depleting you."

In the evening, calm tiredness becomes the ideal state for getting the rejuvenating sleep that's essential to maintaining your cool and calm. While a glass of wine seems like a simple, effective way to shake off the stresses of the day, "drinking offers a fleeting, superficial fix rather than an abiding sense of calm," cautions Thayer. Initially, alcohol turns off adrenaline production in the body, generating a sense of relaxation. But this effect wears off after 90 minutes or so, according to British nutritionist Patrick Holford, who specializes in food and mood. "Later, alcohol suppresses dreaming, a mental process that releases emotional stress. Not only do you wake up dehydrated but also tired and irritated."

A better way to ratchet down tension at the end of a long day is doing easy relaxation exercises. A 2004 Harvard Medical School study found that gentle yoga helped insomniacs increase their sleep time by an average of 12 percent. Judith Hanson Lasater, Ph.D., a renowned restorative-yoga teacher and author of Relax & Renew: Restful Yoga for Stressful Times, recommends practicing a pose she calls "basic relaxation with legs elevated" daily for 15 to 20 minutes: Lie on the floor with your head on a pillow, bend your knees, and rest your calves on the couch; drop your chin toward your chest, rest your arms a few inches away from your sides, close your eyes, and let go.

Recently, after a maddening day of cranky baby, irate mom, lazy husband, messy house, and overcooked dinner, I tried this position, hoping to calm my jangled nerves and maybe, just for a few minutes, reconnect with that lush, breeze a-blowing, happy Costa Rican vibe. True, my brain was never duped into believing we had traveled to greener pastures, but I felt the tightness in my jaw and shoulders diminish and my choppy breath get smoother. When I got up a short time later and came out into the living room, I decided to forgo my habitual, cranky nighttime chore mode and sit down next to my husband on the sofa. We read quietly, side by side, holding hands.

"Cultivating calm is like investing in a good long-term relationship — it feels good from the beginning, but as you develop, it gets better, sweeter and more rewarding," Lasater observes. "You learn to focus on what really matters rather than the task at hand. Eventually, it will change the way you behave in traffic jams, interact with strangers, and care for the people you love."

10 Minutes to True Calm

Neurobiologist Sara Lazar, Ph.D., recommends setting aside 10 to 15 minutes a day to retreat to a quiet space and practice basic meditation. One option is lying down and taking deep breaths in and out of the nose, expanding the belly and chest with each inhalation. Another is sitting with your eyes closed and saying to yourself "breathing in/breathing out" with each cycle. When your mind spins off to think about tonight's dinner or yesterday's spat with your teen, simply label it thinking and return your attention to your breath. "When you become aware of your breath and learn to observe your thoughts, your buttons won't be pushed as easily," says Lazar. "You'll be able to temper your reactions to difficult situations."