PowerLiving with Kimberlee Langford
PowerLiving with Kimberlee Langford
Serenity in the Season's Rush - The Gift of Relaxation
Feeling the weight of the world on your shoulders can be more than just a metaphor when stress begins to take its toll. In our latest episode, join me and the SCM RN coaches as we unravel the tapestry of relaxation and stress relief, sharing the personal anchors that help us deal with the stresses that naturally occur - as well as during the holidays.
Through the power of guided imagery, I invite you to join me on a mental escape to nature's calm embrace, offering respite from the daily grind.
We also bask in the warmth of the holiday spirit, reminiscing about the cherished traditions and heartfelt connections that light up our family gatherings, infusing our lives with joy and a touch of cultural richness.
Don't forget the power of exercise! Stephanie will take you through some of the benefits of a good stretch and learning to practice progressive relaxation so that you can harness the power of relaxation in moments where you need it most. - Awareness is key here.
With the year winding down, it's the perfect time to reflect on the small cues that signal our need for a breather, like the tension that creeps into our shoulders, whispering for attention. This episode is a treasure trove of relaxation strategies, from the gentle progression of muscle relaxation to the rhythmic dance of breathing exercises, and the grounding presence of loved ones. Drawing from the wisdom of our team of nurses and my own journey in professional coaching, we arm you with practical techniques to sidestep stress and invite tranquility into your life.
As we wrap up, let me extend a heartfelt wish for your festive season and the year ahead to be brimming with serenity, happiness, and health. Happy holidays, and let's commit to gifting ourselves moments of calm—it's a present that keeps on giving.
Hello friends, it's Kimberly here, Vice President of Clinical Services with Specialty Care Management. Thank you so much for the time and our team here at Specialty Care Management we want to bring you a little gift. This is the gift of relaxation. You know many of us, most people, lead very busy high stress lives. High stress just like carrying a heavy load. Eventually we become used to cruising at a high altitude and before you know it, even though you're very stressed, it's hard to feel that because you've grown accustomed to that. Meanwhile it's doing a lot of damage physiologically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, Drain us of our energy, our vitality, our sense of well-being. High stress can lower immunity. It can impact your blood pressure, heart rate and even impact things like cancer, autoimmune disorders, and lead to ulcers, sleep and sexual disturbances. Being to manage stress properly, to relax, is a really important skill for all of us and our team here at Specialty Care Management. We want to share some of our very favorite tips with you, so this section will take us about a half an hour. Go ahead and settle in, and I'm going to kick us off with some guided imagery. This is one of my favorite techniques to use and I use it a lot in my private practice as a Reiki master and a professional nurse coach, so I'm really pleased to be able to share this with you. So go ahead and relax. I'm sitting in a chair with my back supported. If you're laying down, you just want to make sure that your back is straight and that your legs and arms are uncrossed. If you're sitting in a chair, you can hold your hands in your lap or loosely at your sides. Make sure that your feet are planted on the ground, not tucked up underneath you or folded or crossed, and go ahead and take a few nice deep breaths. One of my favorite accompaniments to guided relaxation is some soft instrumental music. One of my favorite tracks I won't play because it won't turn out well and because it's copyrighted is Healing Presence by Julie True or Tibetan Healing Bowls. You can find those soundtracks on Amazon. If you want to play those and follow along, you're welcome to.
Speaker 1:In the meantime, make sure that you're in a place where you won't be disturbed and allow yourself to relax. Go ahead and take a few nice deep breaths, in through the nose, Out through the mouth, Love yourself to make a little bit of noise and as you relax, as you exhale, let your shoulders drop, Let your body sink into the chair, the floor, the bed. The earth supports you and you can let your eyes close as soon as you wish and allow yourself to relax. Take a few more soft, full, deep breaths, Allow your stomach to rise first and then chest and then release, and as you continue to breathe slow and deep, allow your eyelids to close and from behind your closed eyelids you see that it's a beautiful day, warm and sunny.
Speaker 1:You're walking down a path in a beautiful forest and as you breathe into yourself, you find that you're breathing in the life energy of the forest around you and with each step you take you feel the energy of the earth flowing up through the bottoms of your feet. As you walk along, you notice another path going off to the right. You feel yourself compelled to follow this path. As you follow this path, you come to a clearing in the forest, and in the middle of the clearing is a small hill covered with soft, rich green grass. Climb up the hill and feel the grass rubbing against your ankles and lower legs.
Speaker 1:When you get to the top of the hill, lie down in the soft grass. You feel the grass and the earth beneath your body and gaze up into the sky. Gaze up into the sky and you see beautiful white clouds. As you are gazing up at the clouds, a beautiful beam of light begins to shine down through the clouds. This is no ordinary light. It comes from high in the heavens. The light shines all around you and flows into you, filling you with warmth and feelings of safety and love. The light focuses directly on a shape in front of you. Focus on the shape and be willing to let it go. Now gaze directly into the light and as you do so, the light begins to guide you. Follow the light.
Speaker 2:Now gaze directly into the light. Now gaze directly into the light. Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1:When you're ready, you can take another nice deep breath. You can allow your eyes to open, stretch, you can sit or lie there as long as you like. My hope is that you practice the gift and the art of relaxation. You'll be able to catch onto early cues of stress and be able to let that go and step into your very best. Self-blessings to you.
Speaker 3:Hello there. So it is that time of the year again when we get so wrapped up and hustle and bustle of the holiday season. For most people, the year spent with such busyness with school work, projects, work, everything that usually keeps us from connecting with our family. Many people feel very stressed coming into the holidays, but it's amazing that once they get together with their family, all that stress seems to dissipate. So with the holidays coming up, it is such a perfect time to plan ahead and see those loved ones that we have not seen throughout the year. So when I think of the holidays I'm sure as many of you do too I think of family, whom I have not seen throughout the year. I think of the special foods that those family members make, and I don't know if you're like me, but in our family we have certain people who are in charge of certain meals and recipes. So I know that if my aunt is going to be there, I know she's going to have that coconut rum cake that she makes every single year. If my sister's there, I know she's going to make her special Brazilian cookie cake. If my mom's there, I know she's going to make her most delicious flan, and this is what getting together at holidays and being with family is all about. It's sharing in the culture, it's sharing in those special holiday treats, and that's what everybody looks forward to. It's connecting with and being able to enjoy ourselves with the people that promote a stress-free environment.
Speaker 3:So throughout the year, our minds are so focused on things getting that sale or closing that deal, making it through the day, making it through the week, whatever it is but when the holidays comes around, that mindset gets put behind us. Now and our mindset is focused on family and reconnecting and catching up. We talk about what we've missed most with family members throughout the year and we talk about the memories we've had over our lifetime. And this quality time spent together helps us to reconnect. And not only does it help us reconnect, but it is so valuable and so healthy for our minds, for our spirit and for our soul. It reminds us that our families are important.
Speaker 3:And I don't know if you've noticed, but when I get together with my family, I get these warm fuzzy feels. And those warm fuzzy feelings, those are brought on by endorphins and dopamine that our bodies release. These are those hormones that enhance our mood and we do stress, excuse me. So family time is important and I hope that you can make this holiday season a time where you can reconnect with and spend quality time with those who you love. I can guarantee that if you haven't seen your family members in a while, you'll get those feelings. You'll get those endorphins flowing. So this holiday season, when you see your family members that you haven't seen in a while, pay attention to those stress levels and pay attention to what you're feeling. Those happy hormones will have you feeling happy. Have a happy holiday season.
Speaker 2:Hello, my name is Stephanie. I'm a registered nurse. As you know, I'm working with Specialty Care Management and I just wanted to give some holiday tips that I use to try to relax and use as a stress relief specifically during the holidays, but this can be used at any time and I hope that these are helpful tips for everyone. I myself like to practice yoga, meditation, aggressive relaxation, and I'm just gonna show a couple of tips that we can use and be able to perform, even at a simplest time when you are just sitting in your office or just have two seconds to yourself in the car. So for this, we're just gonna need ourselves and some relaxation music if you have. That usually helps With yoga.
Speaker 2:It's very important to focus on our breathing, so we are just gonna be doing some light stretches and trying to focus on our breathing With this. It's important to learn how to breathe, which sounds funny. A lot of us think we know how to breathe. We breathe every day, we don't have to think about it, but there is a mechanism to how to breathe and how to breathe well, and this really helps with different parts of our body and achieve health. So, to learn how to breathe, we wanna inhale for two seconds and exhale loud as possible for four seconds. So we're gonna do five breathing exercises, try to relax ourselves and achieve that relaxation that we are trying to acquire. When we're doing that, we also wanna put our hand to the heart. We can put our other hand to our stomach, so we are focusing on the rise and fall of our breathing. So we're gonna go ahead and start Five breathing exercises now. Wanna inhale for two seconds, inhale for four, inhale. It also helps to hold our breath in between. So as you're breathing, in inhaling, you wanna fold it a little bit, activate that diaphragm and then exhale it. So we're gonna do one more time.
Speaker 2:If we're really feeling very stressed and pressured, another great strategy is while we're exhaling and kind of screen regret and that really helps release that animalistic kind of notion that we might be feeling in that moment. So when you're really stressed out and feel like your bottle is completely fooled, so by doing that you're gonna be doing the same thing. And to heart, breathing is very important and I know we do it unconsciously on a day-to-day basis. But if we really take the time to focus on our breathing, it's going to help kick in our parasympathetic system and help kind of slow things down. By slowing things down, we're helping a different aspects of our body. One of them biggest one of them is actually our digestive system. So when someone's having trouble going to the bathroom with you literally you know think about it. Am I stressed out? Am I go-go-go? Perhaps you need to take the time and take some relaxation in order to kick in our other system. One is fight and the other one is light, right? So we want to try to tell our bodies no, it's okay to relax, it's okay to kick in our relaxation mechanism so that the other part of our body that's neglected can go ahead and work. So I hope that these are good tips for you.
Speaker 2:Another thing that we can focus on today is progressive relaxation. For progressive relaxation, it's just telling us our body and kind of in sticking it to our mind. So by doing so, you just want to. You know you can lay down, you can just sit up. This aspect, that'll just be sitting up. I'm going to be putting my feet forward and all I'm going to be doing is closing my eyes, focusing on my breathing and focusing on each body part. So try to be still, and in this aspect I want to start thinking. Okay, I'm going to start thinking about my feet and perhaps I'm tired and my feet hurt. I'm just going to start feeling what I'm feeling in my feet and trying to numb and tone out, zone out the rest of my body and you progressively go up to your body.
Speaker 2:It's always a good idea to start at the feet and end up your head. So when you're doing this, you're only focusing on that body, part, one by one, and you're kind of tuning out everything else. You're not thinking about what you have planned to do today, what you're going to be wearing, what you're going to be cooking, what you're doing this weekend. These are all things that you kind of put in the back burner and think about it at another time. So, for example, we'll do a couple of progressive relaxation.
Speaker 2:I'm going to close my eyes, my hands, my heart and when you start thinking about my feet, how I use my feet every day to walk, to go up and down the stairs, to accomplish tasks, to be standing up for work, to be standing up for cooking meals for my family and I'm going to try to zone out every other part of my body and just focus on my feet and what I'm feeling.
Speaker 2:It's like about two minutes, and this is all from what feels right, because we're not going to set a time for this. This is just what it feels right. After our feet, we can go up to our knees, which then leads us to our hips, which then leads us to our stomach. At that time, put your hands to your stomach, and you can also put your hands to each body, and then we're going to go to our chest and then, lastly, we're going to do our body. By doing so, we're trying to tell our bodies it's okay to relax, it's okay to calm down and whine ourselves down, especially during the holidays. We have to take the time sometimes to just unwind relax and establish a little bit of self-care.
Speaker 2:Self-care for everyone is different. The most important aspect is for us to take some time to meditate for ourselves and just try to relax. I know it's easier said than done, but I promise you, if you take even two minutes, five minutes of your day to establish some sort of relaxation where you can just zone everything out and focus on yourself and not think about anything else, you will start feeling much better. So again, I hope this was helpful and I hope that this new year we set the tensions, the goals, the long trust and we're able to utilize that every 2024 to be the healthiest year we can be Well happy holidays to everyone, feliz Navidades, and I'll see you guys later.
Speaker 1:Well, hello again, friends. I hope that you found our little gift of relaxation to be helpful for you. Learning to be aware of early triggers, early symptoms or signals of stress and then being able to respond to reduce that stress in the moment are really important. Being able to relax it sounds like an easy thing to do, right, but oftentimes and just our day to day and the stressful lives that so many of us lead, we get used to cruising at a pretty high altitude and, before you know it, we find that we have all the problems that go along with having been running really fast for a long time. And so it's important to practice the gift of relaxation so that you can be aware of some of those early signals that you are experiencing stress.
Speaker 1:Practicing some of the things that the nurses shared today learning progressive relaxation. You heard about breathing techniques. You heard about being able to spend time with family and friends. We practiced guided imagery and breathing techniques and yoga and things like this. So what we invite you to do, not just during the holidays, but all year long, is to be aware of where you are putting stress.
Speaker 1:For instance, I can tell when I'm under a lot of stress because I feel it right between my shoulder blades, they get really tight and I know that I carry a lot of stress and tension in my shoulders. So oftentimes when I feel that I can, because I've been practicing the gift of relaxation I can tell myself to release. And release it in the moment and be able to take advantage of the gift of relaxation. So we invite you to practice this. Be aware of those early triggers and try on for yourself some of the tips that the nurses have shared and see which ones help you the most. We hope all good things for you in the coming year. We're so grateful for the opportunity to be able to help you and look forward to celebrating your best year yet.
Speaker 2:Happy holidays.