Jenna Zaffino:
Hi, everyone. I'm Jenna. Welcome to your take 5 practice. This is a practice that is so helpful in acute moments of stress or anxiety, and it will help you flex the muscle of mindfulness and sensory focus that we use in almost every practice in the mindful compass library. So let's begin by getting comfortable, finding a seat that allows you to feel ease in your body. If that's sitting cross legged like me, join me here. If you'd like to find a chair, the edge of your couch, something that gives you opportunity to create space in your torso and your trunk, so that breathing can be a bit easier. The take 5 practice asks us to tune in to our own sensory experience, which also means tuning out from the chaos or the stress that might be surrounding us.
So to begin, I'd like to invite you to recall a time of stress. For the purposes of our practice, let's keep it gentle. Maybe it was a time where you were cut off in traffic, or received a telemarketer phone call, something that was irritating, that definitely felt activated in your body, but maybe wasn't catastrophic. When you experience stressors, where does it land in your body for you? For some of us it's gonna land right in the gut. For others, it'll feel like an increased heart rate, maybe some flush down the center of our body, perhaps tension and headache, maybe a little dizziness. Our bodies are wired to react to stress, and to let us know that we might be in danger. However, I think you'll agree that often things like a telemarketer call or an annoying email are not as big a threat as our body might read them as. So, when we come across threats or stressors in our lives that have a capacity to knock us out of alignment with the energy that we want to be with or the way we want to be navigating through our day, it's helpful to have a tool to use.
The take 5 practice involves pausing, being aware of what it feels like to be experiencing stress in your own body, taking a moment, and then tuning in to your 5 senses. We'll first identify 5 things you can see, 4 things you can feel, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and one thing you can taste. Now, if any of your senses are compromised or not as strong as the others, feel free to get creative with this exercise. Maybe you'll identify a few more things that you can see if your hearing is compromised at all. Maybe it's a few more things you can smell or feel. It's up to you to make this one work for you. That's the most important part in all of the practices in the mindful compass library. So let's test drive it.
1st, we're going to recall that sense of stress where we feel it in our body, our stomach, our shoulders, the heat. See if you can sense what it might feel like to interface, to interact with that stress. We'll pause and then let's find 5 things you can see and name them out loud. Mirror, plant, ball, carpet, couch. Let's do 4 things we can feel. Hands, cold air, my shirt, my hair on my face. Three things we can hear, gentle music, the cracking of the building, and my own voice. 2 things we can smell: the dirt from the plants and a little bit of the perfume that I had on earlier.
And finally, one thing you can taste. For me, that's a little bit of coffee from earlier today. It helps to name these things out loud so you can sense them from within and also hear them outside. What we're doing with this practice is orienting ourselves back inside. Instead of orienting ourselves with just the stress, we're creating a bigger container that can hold the stress response and our ability to sense what's happening in our body right now. Now, if this practice does the opposite for you and makes you feel more stress, then this one might not be for you. Each one of us interacts with stress differently and has a different response to it. If this one feels good, if you felt a sense of, okay, I'm in the room, I feel what's going on, and I can shift my focus from the response to the stress to being in my body, then perhaps this is one that you take with you.
As you move forward into the week ahead, I'll challenge you to practice the take 5 exercise at various times throughout the day. I find it the most helpful in traffic, especially living in a city, to just take a moment and see what I can see, feel, hear, smell, and taste. It helps you come back into yourself and hopefully can help you access a sense of calm and control. I wish you the best of luck in putting this one into practice. It's a simple strategy that can shift you from reactivity to an appropriate response and keep you moving throughout your day. Remember, you are strong and resilient and the small moments matter. I'll see you next time.
