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Headspace studio. Hello and welcome to Radio Headspace and to a brand new week.
It's Eve here. Yes, I'm back and so happy to be here with you.
I've really missed our daily connections a lot.
How are you? Okay, I know we can't have a conversation, but I feel like I'm chatting with friends, so naturally want to know how you're doing.
I've been up to a lot since I last hosted Radio Headspace, including some travel after a year of being at home, and I took a vacation at the end of May.
Not only was I ready, but I was really looking forward to it.
And of course, traveling in COVID times is not as simple as it once was.
Some of you may remember I introduced Airport Eve in one of my previous episodes.
Airport Eve is a pretty anxious traveler, known for showing up for her flight hours in advance.
I'm always worrying that something will go wrong and I'll miss my flight.
Anyway, as part of the process to travel, we had to take a COVID test 72 hours before traveling, and without a negative test result, you had to quarantine for 10 days.
So I booked the test, I think about 60 hours before traveling, and we turned up for it, but were told that the results were taking a minimum of three days to come back.
Now, this isn't what the nurse said, but all I heard was, you're not going to get your test results, you'll have to quarantine, your holiday is ruined, and you may as well not go.
It was a very physical experience.
My heart rate went up, I felt my breathing shorten, and my instinct in that moment was to fight it.
Now, we were in the car, it was a drive -through test, and this information was being relayed over the phone.
And looking back, I am so glad I was in the car because it gave me just a few seconds to recognize what was happening and to recalibrate a bit, to move from reactivity to response.
Now, in the grand scheme of things, it is definitely not the end of the world.
But after almost 15 months of being cooped up at home, it felt pretty important to me, and it illustrates that sometimes even the smallest of things can flip the switch and we go into react mode.
Now, the nurse didn't tell me that my vacation was ruined or that we wouldn't get the results.
I was telling myself that.
It was my internal emotional response that was fueling the situation.
Now, stress isn't inherently good or bad.
Simply put, it's our body's natural response to a perceived threat or to a change in circumstances.
And when that happens, our fight or flight response kicks in.
And a lot happens in the body and it happens very quickly.
A number of hormones like adrenaline, cortisol are pumped into the body, which is what causes our heart rate to go up, our blood pressure to go up, sending oxygenated blood to the major muscle groups.
And this is priming us to physically fight or to run away.
This is a good thing.
It can save our life or someone else's.
But when this happens, the part of our brain responsible for reasoning, critical thinking, rational thought shuts down.
Because you don't really have time to think, you just act.
The point I'm making here is that our body and nervous system have the same response to all perceived threats, whether it's a wild animal or in my situation, a potentially ruined vacation.
Which again was not the reality.
I was creating it in my mind.
The good news though, is that we can cultivate a greater sense of resilience and wellbeing through the practice of mindfulness.
So often what is missing when we react to a stressor is space.
Space to pause, space to assess, and to calm down.
And really here I'm referring to the internal stresses that add layers to a situation, which come in our thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
And when we practice meditation of mindfulness, we're training the mind to be more present, to be more aware, less judgmental.
And as a result, we start to build in that space.
So that in moments of stress, we have space to make a choice about how we respond.
For me, in that moment in the car, I was able to see what was happening.
I could physically feel it.
That part of my system was already firing.
But there was a couple of seconds where I decided to respond instead of reacting.
But I took some intentional deep breaths, which signaled to the parasympathetic nervous system that all was okay, which in turn helped to slow things down in my body.
The skills I've been developing gave me a moment to choose, a moment to respond.
And you might be wondering if we did make it on a holiday.
Yes, we did. But I had to sit with a lot of uncertainty and it was pretty uncomfortable.
But our negative test results came through just as we landed.
I'll leave it there for today.
And for anyone traveling, perhaps check how long the tests might take to come back.
That was a big learning for me.
Thanks for listening today.
And I'll see you back here tomorrow.
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