Stress is an inevitable part of life, maybe even an inevitable part of daily life. Can you think of a day in your life that you did not feel any stress at all? Not one single moment where you tensed up just a tiny bit, or felt slightly upset? I certainly can’t. If stress is such an inescapable part of life, it behooves us to find a way to understand it and learn how to work with it in a positive way.
We feel stress when there is something that threatens our physical or psychological safety. So, stress can be a helpful thing. It tells us that there may be a threat in our environment that we need to attend to. When we feel stress, what’s happening on a physiological level is that our body is gearing up to take care of business, to protect us from threats, to get us to safety.
When we feel stress, when we feel unsafe, our sympathetic nervous system is activated. This is more commonly known as the “fight or flight” response or stress response (increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, narrowed focus, etc). On the other hand, when we feel safe, our parasympathetic nervous system is activated. This is more commonly known as the “rest and digest” response or relaxation response (decreased heart rate, digestion, detoxifying, etc).
There are lots of neuroscience and physiology around this that we don’t necessarily have to get into here, but in a nutshell, the stress response enables the organism to act upon the environment, while the relaxation response enables the organism to act upon itself.
If there is something we need to do to address safety, do it. If there’s a car zooming at us, we need to run out of the way. If there is a misunderstanding with a colleague, we might consider having a chat to clear things up.
But after we have taken the actions needed to address the stressor/threat, the fight or flight response may still be activated. Why is that? That is because the fight or flight response takes longer to taper off than the rest and digest response. Put another way, the effects of the sympathetic nervous system diminish gradually (think of the stress you feel long after an argument is over), while the effects of the parasympathetic nervous system diminish abruptly (think of stepping on a snake during a peaceful hike).
Mindfulness activates the rest and digest response and dampens the fight or flight response. When the stress response is activated longer than it needs to be, it taxes our body and mind. It hoards resources that can be going towards taking care of ourselves, such as digestion, tissue repair, and detoxifying. Mindfulness is an effective tool to shift us away from the stress response and activate the rest and digest response of our parasympathetic nervous system.
It’s up to us when and whether we want to use this tool. And like any other tool, the more we use it and practice it, the sharper it is and more effective it can be.
Mindfulness FAQ 