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When you joined us, we introduced you to the power cells: Power Up, Power Down, Enjoyment, and Reflection.
Enjoyment is probably the easiest to understand – having something planned every day that you enjoy. Power Up is also nice and tangible: enough exercise, good food, water, and good-quality sleep.
The theory of these is not complicated – while putting it into practice when you’re busy can be tricky, they are relatively easy to understand.
Power Down, though, can often stump people a bit, both in understanding exactly what to do and prioritising it. The good news is that fitting it in and getting it done – once you’ve understood how – is the most achievable.
We talked about things like going for walks in nature, watercolour painting, reading a good book, and listening to music – which are all excellent. They can all absolutely be classed as Power Down activities (sometimes Power Up and Enjoyment, too). They are all very beneficial – fit those into your life if you love them.
But Formal Practice is our recommended way of ticking off your Power Down cell for the day if you want to get the maximum benefit.
You don’t need to wear your trainers, buy anything, get a babysitter, or change anything about your life other than carving out five or ten minutes to yourself. You don’t even have to get out of bed. If you use social media or watch Netflix, you can find five or ten minutes daily.
Those benefits are incredible:
- Lower cortisol and adrenaline
- Boosted immune system
- Improved memory and concentration
- Maintaining healthy body weight
- Emotional Resilience
- Elevated Mood
- Feelings of wellbeing
- Clear thinking
So, for our definition, Formal Practice is a specific particular time devoted to some kind – using the word loosely – of meditative Practice. Let’s look at the overall benefits.
Lower Cortisol & Adrenaline
You probably know these are the hormones your body releases into your bloodstream when you’re under stress. They’re there for a good reason – to help you cope with immediate threats and challenges. But if they’re constantly high, they can cause problems for your health, well-being, and happiness. Raised stress hormones can harm your immune system, increase your blood pressure, damage your brain cells, and even shorten your lifespan.
Gold Star Power Down = Formal Practice
A formal Power Down practice can help you lower these hormones by activating your parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for relaxation and recovery. It can also help you cope with stress more effectively by increasing awareness and acceptance of your thoughts and emotions. This is not just theory. This is in practice. Several studies have found that Formal Practices reduce cortisol levels across different populations. The effect has been measured widely across ages, genders, and nationalities.
It worked for everyone.
A Boosted Immune System
After the last few years, we can all see the benefit of a strong, healthy immune system. This is your body’s defence mechanism against infection and diseases. Your immune system is composed of different kinds of cells and molecules that work together to fight off pathogens and foreign substances. However, your immune system can also be affected by stress. A formal practice can help you boost that immune system by reducing inflammation. This, in turn, enhances the production of antibodies, which help fight disease and illness (you produce more).
A study by researchers at Harvard found that meditation can increase telomerase activity. This enzyme protects the ends of chromosomes – the telomeres – from deterioration (Almost like the little covers on the ends of shoelaces). Telomerase is associated with cellular longevity, making your cells last longer and your immune system more active.
Improved Memory & Concentration
Memory and concentration are essential for learning, working, and enjoying life. They allow you to store and retrieve information, focus on tasks, and filter out distractions. However, memory and concentration worsen with age, stress, and lack of sleep. Power Downs and Formal Practices, in particular, can help you improve your memory and concentration by strengthening your brain structure and function. Incredible.
Meditation can also increase the size and connectivity of brain regions involved in attention, memory learning, and executive function – executive control. It can also enhance cognitive flexibility (I love that phrase), switching between different modes of thinking, context-switching, and adapting to changing situations.
Maintaining a Healthy Body Weight
I thought I’d give this a little bit more attention. Your body weight is influenced by many factors, including genetics, metabolism, – and, obviously, diet and exercise.
Why does having raised cortisol and adrenaline make you put on weight? They are two hormones your adrenal glands release when you’re under stress. They are part of your body’s natural fight-or-flight response. Their job is to prepare you for that potential threat.
When constantly stressed, your cortisone and adrenaline levels can remain high for extended periods. They’re not supposed to do that.
The Stress/Weight Gain Link.
Cortisol and adrenaline have different effects on your metabolism and fat cells. Adrenaline makes you energetic and alert and increases your metabolism (the rate you burn calories). It also helps fat cells release energy, which can be helpful in the short term in stressful situations. They give you more fuel to cope, get out of there, act, and do what you must – quickly.
However, cortisol has the opposite effect. It slows your metabolism and stimulates your appetite. It also tells your body to store more fat, especially around your abdomen. This can be harmful in the long term, as it leads to you eating more than you need and accumulating unwanted fat.
Why does your body do this at all? It’s an evolutionary adaptation that helped our ancestors survive in harsh environments. When faced with a life-threatening situation like being chased by a predator, cortisol and adrenaline would help them mobilise energy, escape, climb a tree – whatever they needed to do to be safe. The increased appetite and fat storage would also help them replenish their energy reserves after all this drama and prepare for future stresses.
In modern times, most of our stresses aren’t life-threatening – but more psychological or emotional.
For example, you may feel stressed about work, money, relationships, or other health issues.
These stresses do not require a physical response but still trigger the same hormonal reaction. This means you have high cortisol and adrenaline levels in your blood but no outlet for them. As a result, you may experience what we call chronic inflammation, high blood pressure, insulin resistance, mood swings, fatigue, and weight gain.
Gahh. Curses.
So, how do we prevent or, ideally, reverse this?
> Reduce Your Stress Levels <
While stress is a natural response to challenging or threatening situations, when it becomes chronic (i.e., it lasts for a long period of time) or is overwhelming – is when we get the problems. Formal Practice daily will help you break that cycle of stress by training your mind to focus on the present moment – and let go of negative thoughts and emotions.
You can’t just do that at will.
You have to train for it.
Doing this makes you more resilient. It means you can bounce back faster from difficulties and cope better with challenges. It is exactly like weight training for your mind. The more you do it, the better it works, particularly mindfulness meditation, which is the one that we’re going to start with (it may need a little bit more thought than the others).
Result: Feel Happier
These Formal Practices also boost your mood and feelings of well-being by activating the parts of your brain associated with happiness, compassion and empathy. Studies have shown that meditation, in particular, can increase serotonin, dopamine, and endorphin levels – all the happy, positive chemicals. These work as neurotransmitters that regulate your mood and make you feel fantastic. Meditation or these formal Power Downs can also reduce the activity of your amygdala, which is the part of your brain that triggers fear and anxiety. This is the part of the brain affected by PTSD. In PTSD, it’s as though the amygdala fires and doesn’t know how to stop. So you feel in permanent ‘fight or flight’.
Hopefully, that has convinced you to stick with us this month.
We have a lot to get through, but f you put what you’ll learn into practice – the effects are life-changing.
p.s. Most of what’s to come is much shorter than this first part.
We don’t want to lose anyone. It’s too important!