Stressed? Just slow down and breathe

Stress. Sometimes it seems like a catchall term to explain dysfunctions that are otherwise mysterious.

If your doctor doesn’t know what’s wrong with you and it doesn’t sound too serious, he might just write it off as stress.

Whether your doctor will be of any help in dealing with that stress is a question we can leave on the doorstep of the medical establishment.

Wendy McManus, a leadership coach in Orlando, FL, who focuses on produce professionals, observes, “This is a stressful industry, and I feel that my produce clients feel the weight of it, the intensity of it. They seem to be a bit more weighed down than my clients in other industries. The 24-7, the perishability, the razor-thin margins, the dependence on Mother Nature create such a pressure cooker.

“What is underneath the stress?” she continues. “Not setting boundaries, turning off the phone or computer. They’re not doing that.

“They could have a conversation with their manager or supervisor and tell them how it’s affecting them, but they’re afraid to do that. They could be delegating more if they’re in a leadership position.”

These problems can be summarized in a sentence: many professionals can’t slow down enough to slow down.

McManus’s solution for her clients is one that’s mentioned frequently these days, but it’s still a valuable one: “I teach them to breathe. Take 30 seconds, center themselves, drop down into their body, get into the present moment, and get their brain out of this past and future cycle of thinking.

“Most people don’t do that. We’re not trained to do that.” But “once you’re trained to do that, you become the calm at the eye of the hurricane.”

McManus adds that this is not the same thing as a traditional meditation practice, where you’re sitting in silence for 20 minutes, however valuable that may be. It’s a practice that you can do anytime, anywhere—ideally when you’re most frazzled and upset.

Conscious attention to the breath as a means of centering the mind is far from new: it goes back at least as far as the Buddha in the sixth century BC. And yet it’s something that most of us just never think of.

So, if you’re stressed, breathe—consciously. After all, you have to do it anyway.