Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, I'm going to talk about three ways you can lower your stress levels as you go about the day. So these strategies really are simple and practical. They can be used in the middle of the most jam packed and busy days. If you're rushing around and there's a million things to be done, you can still use these strategies.

And why is this important to lower as stress levels again and again, throughout the day. So first, it will if, we can give ourselves small breaks incrementally from the stress that we have as we go about the day, we can downregulate the nervous system so that we just feel better more times throughout the day. But not only that we also improve our ability to think clearly and problem-solve well. So what happens often when we have ongoing stress throughout the day is the smart part of our brain, the frontal cortex, that's great at thinking things through rationally, planning ahead, solving problems, this part of the brain can go offline with ongoing stress. That's why you've probably noticed that we all become more reactive and sometimes make bad choices when we're under stress.

So as we release stress, we bring back that smart part of the brain so we can perform better, think clearer and feel better. Also regulating our stress levels on a daily basis can stop that downward spiral that often happens towards burnout, sickness and chronic stress. So here are three really simple and practical ways that you can relieve stress throughout your day. The first one, and this is my favorite one, is to just pause from what you're doing for one minute, 60 seconds. And take some long, slow, deep breaths.

Even doing this for one minute, can soothe and settle your nervous system and make you feel calmer and clearer. Second one, take a minute every now and then to deliberately release the tension in your body. You can try this now. So we have a tendency to hold a lot of tension unconsciously in the body - in the jaw, shoulders, belly, hands - as we go throughout the day. So even right now, if you notice any tension in any of those areas, just seeing what it's like to consciously soften a little and let go .Often when you do that, you notice an immediate sense of relief and relaxation that kind of spreads through the mind and body.

And the final thing is to just physically slow down a little bit, where possible, during the day, and be more deliberate in the way that you're moving and the way that you're doing things. So a lot of the time we just rush out of habit because the mind is revved up and the nervous systems are all revved up. But if you can slow down the way that you're moving, whether it's walking or doing something in the kitchen, doing some chores, whatever it is, you'll notice a sense of kind of calm and stillness come over the mind as well as the body. So today's invitation is simple. It's just to experiment with lowering your stress levels as you go throughout the day.

Perhaps just choosing one of these methods, or you could try all of them, just seeing how that feels in your body, mind, and life. As always, thank you for your practice and your presence here. Let's settle in now for today's meditation.