All right, okay. So the truth is that stress is actually defined as our mental, emotional, and physical behavioral reaction to perceived demands or threats. So you know, we go through life and those life events — there is life experience — and a lot of the time we react to those events, to those kind of potential challenges, on many levels, on an emotional level and also the physical level, and that can create stress in the body.

Now when we are stressed, our body produces a hormone that is called cortisol. And studies have shown that there are long-term and short-term effects of stress. A long-term effect of stress means high levels of cortisol in our bloodstream, and studies have shown that those high levels of cortisol are actually associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, increased risk of mental issues, hormonal imbalance and infertility, and many other illnesses.

So you know, when we are young our body in a way deals more easily with the stress, with those extra amounts of cortisol in the body. But the older we get, it’s actually kind of tiring and wearing out the body — and I’m talking about all the systems of the body. And so it’s important to be aware of what stress is and how it manifests in your life.

I did mention that short-term effects of stress — you know, like sometimes it can be anxiety, sometimes it can be lack of concentration. We’re going to actually see some of those warning signs later on as we progress with the talk today. So stress again has long-term and short-term effects on us, on our body and our health.

Managing Stress

How do we manage stress? Well, there are actually four kind of steps of managing stress.

The first is knowing how stressed you are, right — how stressed are you? So first step is actually measuring your stress, knowing how stressed you are.

Once you assess your stress levels, the next thing you want to do is identify your stressors or your stress triggers. Stress triggers can be external — for example, school demand, job demand, family demand, traffic, over-commitments, and things like that. But a lot of the time for a lot of us, stressors or stress triggers can come from an internal place, meaning self-doubt, pressure to succeed, fearing the unknown, and so on.

So it’s kind of important to put in mind — once you measure your stress — to go through your life and identify what are the things that are actually causing stress in my life and how can I break them down.

The third step is identifying your warning signs. So what are warning signs? Warning signs are signs that we can experience either physically or emotionally, very often not linking them to the fact that we are stressed. We’ll talk about and explore some of those warning signs later on.

And of course the last step of managing stress — so once you know how stressed you are, you identify what are the causes of your stress, you learn how your body reacts to stress and how to identify it — the next step would be to use some prevention methods that work for you. And we’re going to actually explore some physical and mental prevention strategies. But my main method of preventing stress is really using your mind and using mindfulness techniques, which I will introduce later on today.

Any questions so far before I move on?

Measuring Stress

Okay so — measuring your stress. So the truth is that there are various versions of the stress measurement, and all of them are basically based on some version of a Perceived Stress Scale that was originally created in 1983. It was developed as a 14-item instrument designed to measure the degree to which situations in one’s life are perceived as stressful. And further, a recent study in 2017 validated a 10-item Perceived Stress Scale and confirmed that this scale is not significantly affected by gender bias, at least among new students in the United Kingdom.

Now as I mentioned, I did post on the chat a link to a stress test and I asked you guys to please take a few minutes right now and click on that link.

So once you complete it — remember I’m a math teacher, so I have to use some kind of a math tweak — we’re going to use a Desmos activity where you guys will be able to enter your inputs as your stress scores and then later on your warning signs and so on. And I will project this on the screen. Now the Desmos activity is anonymized so your names will not show on the screen — it will actually be names of famous mathematicians.

So I’m going to stop the share for a minute, let you guys take that test, and I’m going to share with you the Desmos activity link. So once you’re done taking your stress test, click on the second link, the one to the Desmos, and go ahead and enter your stress score.

I see three of you on the Desmos already. Let’s wait a few more seconds for the rest to finish the test and enter their score. I’m seeing various ranges of the scores, so meaning some of you are very stressed, some of you are moderately stressed, and some of you are not so stressed, which is great.

There is someone here who is very stressed with a score of 26 — it says moderate but 26 is a relatively high stress score which is a little bit concerning to me.

So you can see the kind of varying degrees of stress for our audience today. So as I mentioned, the next step in managing your stress is examining your stressors — what are the things that cause that stressful reaction in your body, that spike of cortisol in your bloodstream.

Well, I’m going to release the next slide. So on the next slide I want you guys to enter what are some of the things that cause stress in your life. And as I mentioned, there could be external stressors like job demand, family demand, traffic, finances, over-commitment, injustice. And stressors can also a lot of the time be internal, like self-doubt — you’re doubting yourself with everything that you do, that can cause a lot of stress. You have a really high pressure to succeed so you’re really hard on yourself and you expect a lot from yourself and that causes a lot of stress. It can be fear — fear of the unknown, what’s going to be tomorrow, or fear of change. Or sometimes it can also be some physical issues that you’re dealing with and it can cause a lot of stress as well.

So what you see right now is the response from each and every one of you. I’m going to click on overlay and we can kind of see the spikes. So it looks like job demands is kind of high for quite a lot of you. Family demands — life experience can be devastating. I know personally, a few years ago I experienced a devastating loss that actually impacted my ability to function and perform, even in my job and in my household, for a long period of time. And actually that was kind of the motivation to do this workshop and to spread the word that we as humans, a lot of the time, tend to think that what we go through is unique to us, but that’s not the case. We all go through the same challenges of life, except that everyone has their life packaged in a different way. And sometimes knowing that you’re not the only one going through those challenges is kind of soothing and calming.

So we see family demand, we see self-doubt here is ranked quite high for a lot of you. Injustice, finance, fear of the unknown, racism for some of you is pretty high, pressure to succeed, traffic, technology issues can be stressful for those that are not comfortable with technology or just getting comfortable with it. School work. Lack of emotional support is a big stressor for a lot of us — we feel like we’re alone, there’s nobody to support us. Speaking in public, some illness for some of you. I see living situation as being stressful, and of course when you’re in college maybe you live in a dorm with a roommate that you don’t like or whatever — that can cause a lot of stress as well.

But the point is that you bring it to your mind, you recognize those things that cause stress for you. And once you recognize, you can — when challenges come — you can pause and identify, “Okay, this is my stress trigger. I actually have an opportunity here to pause and do something about it.”

Any questions on the stressors or stress triggers or how to identify them?

Deep Breathing

So once you identify — you measured your stress, you identified your stress triggers — before we look at the warning signs, I want to give you a first tool. The very basic tool to manage stress is to use your breath.

Our breath has tremendous impact on our mind and on our nervous system. On a normal day, we don’t use the full capacity of our lungs — we usually only use one-third capacity of the lung, especially when we’re busy or stressed. However, deep breathing really helps with a few things. First of all, increasing your lung capacity. It helps with the circulation of blood and oxygen in your body. And it helps calm the nervous system.

So I’m going to demonstrate right now two types of breathing and I want you guys to tell me which one is actually deep breath and which one is not.

So number one is like this — and number two is like that. So which one was the deep breath — one or two?

So deep breath really means that you inhale through your nose and you really push the air down into your abdomen. You can visualize it as almost like you’re filling up a balloon with your abdomen. So let us now practice a few of those deep breaths together. I will guide you. If you guys want, you can close your eyes. If you’re sitting on a chair, just make sure that your back is straight so that your spinal cord is nice and aligned. If you’re lying down, you can just separate your feet and your hands apart and just be kind of comfortable.

So close your eyes if you wish for a minute. And let’s start with a deep inhale to a count of three through your nose — one, two, three. Push the air down into your abdomen. And exhale — one, two, three, four. So you want to pace your inhale and even more so pace your exhale.

Let’s do a couple more. Inhale deeply. Exhale completely. Inhale deeply. Exhale completely, all the way.

So what did you guys notice now, just in those couple of deep breaths? What did you experience in your body?

I feel relaxed — you immediately feel how it’s calming, right? It’s relaxing, it kind of tunes down your nervous system. I feel like it might be better with like music or something — yes, absolutely. So for the meditation towards the end we are going to use some nice music.

I see relieved and calm, less tired, more focused. Excellent, excellent guys. Your heart rate felt like it slowed down a bit, calm and less tense — that’s exactly what deep breathing does.

I remember when I just started working at Avila about five years ago, it was very stressful for me. It was a new job, a new place, and it was after that loss that I shared with you. And I remember I had days that were intensely stressed. I was going from class to class to meetings and a lot going on. And I remember some days I would just go into my office, close my door, close my eyes, take those three to five deep breaths, and honestly when I opened my eyes my day changed, my energy changed and I was more focused and more capable of dealing with what I had to deal with for the rest of the day.

So deep breath is the very basic tool for reducing your stress on a momentary basis.

Now as I mentioned, once you identify your stress levels and identify your stressors, you also want to look at what are the signs that your body gives you to indicate that you are stressed. So those are called warning signs.

Now if you guys will go to slide number six, you will see that there are some mental indicators and some physical indicators. Just kind of think to yourself — what is usually what you’re experiencing when you’re stressed.

Some of the physical ones could be heart racing, shakiness, nausea, exhaustion, change in sleeping patterns, changing eating and drinking patterns, procrastination, letting go of exercise routine, avoiding dealing with tasks at hand.

Some of the mental ones could be sadness, feeling of failure, increased irritability, poor focus and concentration.

I know regarding irritability — I know that for me it’s the biggest sign sometimes. You know, I would sit here in my office and my husband would come and ask me a question, and it was just a simple question but sometimes I could just explode on him. And that for me is like, “Okay, calm down, you’re irritated because you’re stressed.” So calm down. But my poor husband sometimes experienced that — he was being impacted by my irritability or my stress.

So I see inability to focus and lack of concentration is a big one for a lot of you. Letting go of exercise routine is also a big one. I see some of you have excessive yawning — that can happen. Remember there is a chemical reaction happening in your body when you’re stressed. Remember that hormone cortisol is being released into the bloodstream and it can have all of those effects on your fatigue and your gut and your stomach and everything. I see some nail biting here, changing eating and drinking patterns. On the mental side I see for a lot of you anxiety is the most common one. Sadness, feeling of failure, exhaustion. I see for a lot of you frustration and rage — so a lot of the time rage and frustration are actually a result of fear and anxiety. I see procrastination here is quite common to a lot of you.

So anyway, you know, putting this in mind — when you go through life and you go through challenging times and stressful times, pay attention to what your body is telling you. Pay attention to those warning signs and when you’re experiencing them, that’s a sign for you that this is the time to pause and do something about your stress.

Any questions before we move on to some of the recommendations, some of the prevention methods that we can use?

Physical Recommendations

Okay, no questions. Great. So you know, there are physical ways to manage stress and there are also mental recommendations.

So some of the physical recommendations — and I’m going to touch base a little bit on each point to explain why it’s so important.

Physical recommendation can be setting non-negotiable time for exercise, preferably on a daily basis. Now guys, why is exercise so important? Yeah, we all want to look good, we all want to have muscles and be fit, but why is exercise so important and so directly related to stress? What happens when we exercise?

So when we exercise our brain releases endorphins. And the endorphins are actually helping reduce cortisol levels in your bloodstream. So exercise is important. Also, another thing that a lot of people forget is that exercise helps your internal organs function better. It actually helps your body eliminate toxins, and high toxin levels and high stress levels are very risky to your arteries and your heart health — cardiac health in general. So exercise, even if it’s just 10 minutes of a walk a day, is very important. Now of course, once a week you want to have a more intense exercise where you use all your muscles, you move all your body, and you get a good session.

Limit Caffeine

Next physical recommendation — commit to at least one healthy and nutritious meal per day. Guys, what we put in our body, what we eat, impacts our gut health, impacts our stomach, impacts all of our internal organs. And when we are stressed, the easiest thing to do is to just grab junk food. But this junk food has a lot of toxins in it and those toxins are not helping your stress levels — they can actually elevate them. So healthy and nutritious meals are important at least once a day.

A minimum of seven hours of sleep per day, or rest when you’re fatigued. Remember when we sleep, our brain also goes to sleep and our brain also releases the chemicals that we need in order to function properly on a daily basis. So a minimum of seven hours a night is important, or just resting when you feel tired. We’re now living in an era where society is demanding, right — demanding success, and we demand a lot from ourselves. And I know as a student, the easiest thing to let go is sleep. Yeah, “I’ll sleep four hours.” But no, it really impacts your functioning, it impacts your focus, your brain function, and so on.

Next recommendation is setting a limit on caffeine. Anyone know why it’s important to set a limit on caffeine? And by the way, caffeine also includes soda like Coke, and chocolate, and all of those. Guys, caffeine is a stimulant substance, so when you consume high amounts of caffeine, guess what — it actually irritates your nervous system, it makes you even more stressed. Another thing about caffeine — caffeine is very acidic, especially when consuming coffee, and it creates an acidic environment in our body, especially in our internal organs, and that in turn is linked to increased inflammation in the body and can cause all sorts of internal diseases. So I’m not saying don’t drink coffee, but limit your consumption.

Another physical recommendation is using over-the-counter supplements. There are a lot of natural stress relief remedies like essential worth and rescue remedy. And now there is a big industry of CBD products and the research on the impact of CBD on stress and anxiety is growing. You guys can Google and see for yourself. So use some of those, have those on hand.

Break it Down

The next physical recommendation is when you have a big task or a big project, what you want to do is take that big project and just break it down into smaller and more manageable tasks. That way you tackle one step at a time, you tackle your task one step at a time and you still progress in accomplishing your task, but it’s more manageable when you break it down. Let’s say you have a big project due on Sunday and you need to read 10 chapters — you know you want to break it down. Today I’m going to read three chapters, tomorrow I’m going to read four chapters, whatever it is. Break it down so that it’s more manageable for you to do and comprehend and manifest.

Plan Your Time

And of course guys, plan your time wisely and realistically. A lot of the time we’re stressed because we don’t plan our time wisely. We tend to procrastinate, right? And so then we come to like, “Oh, last minute, and I have all this to do and I’m so stressed.” So really planning your time realistically and wisely is very important.

Another thing that is important regarding time is really setting clear boundaries between your work time, your family time, and your personal time. I personally know that over the pandemic, because we were all home, it was so easy for me to have days of 12 hours of work a day. But at some point you have to put the boundaries — you have to say, “Okay, work is done so far, now it’s time for me to either spend time with my family or do something fun for myself or rest,” or whatever that is.

And one last thing guys — at the end of every day, celebrate your successes. Celebrate your successes. Look at your day and see, “Okay, I accomplished this, this, and this.” Rather than focusing on what you didn’t accomplish — that actually causes even more stress. So celebrate your successes every day. Look at the positive. Look at the cup half full, not half empty.

Some of the mental recommendations that I would like to offer you guys today — deep breathing, like the one we just did earlier. I recommend creating some kind of a daily relaxation — it can either be yoga or meditation. Towards the end of the session today I’m going to guide you through a relaxation meditation that you guys can use on your own, and it’s very powerful.

Sometimes connecting to people that you care about is helpful in alleviating the stress. You know, sharing our energy and caring for others often makes us feel good, purposeful, and connected. So that’s another thing that you guys can do.

Pay Attention to Your Thoughts

And you know, the big thing for me is really paying attention to your thoughts. A lot of the time our thoughts are our enemies because we can’t control our thoughts — our thoughts will come up — but how we react to them, that’s what determines our reality down the road. And so I know for myself, a lot of the time I hear this negative self-talk — “I’m not good enough, I’m not doing enough” — all this negative self-talk in my head that causes me even more stress. And a lot of the time I can just say, “Okay, stop. Stop. Thank you for sharing. Stop. Now I choose to listen to my positive self-talk. I can do this, I can progress one step at a time, everything gets done at the end of the day.”

Also guys, understand that whatever challenges you experience in life are temporary. What the reality is today is not what’s going to be tomorrow. Right now you guys are in college, you’re going through four years of intense studies and stress and work and everything, but that’s not going to be forever. You’re going to push through, you’re going to graduate, you get a good job, and then life will become a little bit more settled hopefully. So really understanding that challenges of life are temporary and you want to connect to the bigger picture of your life — where you’re going, who you want to be, what you want to leave as a legacy in this world when you leave it. Connecting to the big picture of your life.

I also already mentioned — celebrate your successes at the end of each day rather than focusing on what you have not accomplished yet.

So I see some of your recommendations here are great. You guys already — I see going to the gym, eating your favorite food, talk with a friend, write down in your journal. These are all great great tips guys. Listening to music, I see here. Taking a nap, exercise, sports. Some people here watching TV or playing video games — that helps them. That’s great. And that’s awesome guys.

All right, any questions? Now I want to say something about the self-talk. The truth is guys that according to many teachings — both Kabbalah and yoga — we exist on two levels. We have the physical level, our physical existence, but we also have the internal existence which is the soul. And the soul is directly connected to the divine energy or God in the universe.

Now a lot of the time our negative self-talk comes from the body, the needs of the body, the momentary needs. And the positive self-talk comes from our soul. And the truth is that when we get up in the morning, we have a choice of what channel of thoughts we’re tuning into — the one that is destructive and worrying and negative, or the one that looks at life as opportunities for growth, for change, for fulfillment. It’s really up to us. Really, really up to us.

Any questions guys?

Relaxation Meditation

So for the last few minutes what I would like to do is guide you in a relaxation meditation. I’m actually going to stop the share but I will share some subtle music.

Can you hear the music? Is it soft enough? Can you hear my voice as well? Okay.

So what I’m going to ask you guys — if you are in a lying position, just separate your feet apart, separate your hands apart, and just let your body loose on the mat or whatever you’re lying on. If you’re sitting on a chair, try to have your feet touch the floor so that you’re grounded and your spine is straight.

Visualization

I’m going to guide you to visualize your body’s picture in your own mind and kind of mentally suggest your body to relax. As I guide you, we’re going to start from the feet going all the way up. I find it sometimes helpful to visualize white light kind of entering my body from my feet, all the way up.

So again, I invite you to be comfortable. You can lift your eyes slightly above the field of vision and close them. If you’re sitting on a chair, you can place your palms facing up, just resting on your laps.

And let’s start with a couple of deep breaths, bringing our attention to the breath.

Inhale deeply. Exhale. Inhale deeply. And continue to breathe normally.

Body Parts

Just visualize your body’s picture in your mind, and mentally repeat after me as I suggest your body parts to relax.

I’m relaxing my toes, feet, and ankles. I’m relaxing my toes, feet, and ankles. My toes, feet, and ankles are relaxed.

I’m relaxing my shins and my calves. My knees and my thighs. My shins, my calves, my knees, and my thighs are relaxed. My legs are relaxed.

I’m relaxing my glutes and my hips. I’m relaxing my pelvis. My hips and my belly. Relax.

I’m relaxing my abdomen. My chest, my ribcage. My abdomen and my chest are relaxed.

I’m relaxing my lower back, middle back, and upper back. Relaxing my spinal cord. My back is relaxed.

Relaxing my fingers and my palms, my wrists and my forearms. My elbows and my upper arms. My hands are completely relaxed.

I’m relaxing my shoulders and shoulder blades. I’m relaxing my neck and my throat. My shoulders, my neck, and my throat are completely relaxed.

I’m relaxing my chin, my mouth, my lips, my tongue, my cheeks and cheekbones. My eyes, my eyebrows, my nose and nostrils. My forehead and my ears. My face is completely relaxed. Really relaxed.

Relaxing my scalp and my brain. My head and my face are relaxed.

I’m relaxing my internal organs. My heart, my lungs. My liver, my pancreas. My spleen, my kidneys. My gut, small intestines and large intestines. My reproductive organs. My internal organs are relaxed. My body is completely relaxed.

Observe

Just observe the sensation in your body. If you fell asleep, that’s great — it means that all of the muscles of your body were relaxed. If you’re still awake, bring your attention to the point between your eyebrows — that’s the third eye chakra. Just observe what’s going on in your body. Let your thoughts come in and out, just observe them.

Visualize

You can even visualize yourself lying or standing or being in a peaceful beach where the sun is shining, the birds are singing, or in a beautiful forest — whatever the place of peace is for you. Just embrace that relaxation. Embrace that sensation with all your muscles.

Breathwork

Now come back to your breath. Let’s take a couple of deep breaths together.

Inhale deeply. Exhale. Inhale deeply. Exhale.

Body Movement

Now very gently bring back motion into your body. You can wiggle your fingers and your toes. Just gently, you can move your arms gently and your feet. Bring back motion again into all parts of your body.

Stretch

If you feel the need, you can stretch. And when you’re ready, very gently open your eyes and come back to the here and now.

Welcome back guys. I would love to hear some of your experiences. If you want, just in one word or one sentence, describe what you experienced now in the meditation.

Thank you, I’m happy to hear that you feel refreshed. Thank you. Did I manage to make you guys fall asleep?

You felt like you let everything negative go — that’s great. You kind of grounded the negativity right. Oh you feel tired — interesting. But you know what, sometimes when you’re relaxed it’s more of a relaxation than tired but it does want to make you fall asleep right.

All right, thank you guys. If you relaxed, that’s great. I’m happy to hear that.

All right guys, thank you very much for joining me today. And I’m here for you if you have any questions or want to reach out, please do so. And I wish you good luck on your exams and the rest of the semester, and happy holidays and all the best to you. Thank you, thank you, thank you very much. All right guys, later.