Dear COE Community,
”Stress is unavoidable, but how we respond to it makes all the difference.,” according to an article in Psychology Today. “Stress is an imbalance between your current coping abilities and the expectations or demands placed on you, including demands that you place on yourself — both real and perceived, Stress affects everyone. It impacts the mind and body in direct and powerful ways” And after over 2 years of dealing with the pandemic, and a myriad of other challenges at this time of year, we have reasons to be stressed. So what can we do to deal with stress? The article states that “there are many methods and practices that can help you manage and reduce your level of stress. All of these represent tools to help you self-calm. Self-calming practices generally combine intentional breathing and focused attention to help relax and quiet the mind and the body. Intentional breathing is only one of a wide variety of practices that you can learn to activate your body’s relaxation response. The relaxation response is the physiological opposite of the stress response that triggers fight-flight-freeze reactions. The relaxation response helps to reduce and even reverse the physical, mental, and emotional effects of stress. Activating the relaxation response helps to facilitate the experience of that all-important, but often elusive, quality: serenity/inner peace/peace of mind.”
To read more, please go to
For a list of other self-care options, please see our COE self-care website for resources for faculty, staff, students, and the community at:
https://www.csun.edu/eisner-education/self-care/articles-information-self-care
As we experience both the joy but also stress of this time of year, finding ways to self-calm and relax is especially important.
Shari