FD Consultants Stress Management and Resilience Building workshop“Try to give yourself the gift of time, even for one day, and listen to your inner truth when sitting in your silence.” (FD Consultants)
The beginning of my 2020 was starkly different from the beginning of my 2021. At the time little was I to know we were about to head into a global pandemic. When the boarders were freely open, I was fortunate to start 2020 in Kerala, South India on a working holiday. My 5am alarm clock was music and chanting coming from the nearby temple. I would take an early morning stroll, before the heat of the sun zapped my energy, through the local village to the fishing port. Here, time seemed to stand still, as I watched the fishermen rhythmically lowering and raising their large fishing nets into the water, intuitively knowing when the time was right to catch their fish. Watching these men created a space for a pause; a moment deep inside myself. I took a deep breath in as the nets lowered, and a completed breath out as the nets rose. A technique I have needed to turn to often whilst supporting myself through this pandemic. I have had so many clients say to me in their assessment sessions, “I feel like I haven’t breathed properly for years”. How precious our breath is and how we take it for granted. It is our life source and so much healing and good health comes from breathing properly and mindfully. One exercise I teach participants in FD Consultants stress management workshop is to take a deep breath in and make the out breath longer than the in breath. This activates our parasympathetic nervous system, helping us to relax. For one client it took a full month before she could make her out-breath longer than her in-breath, which showed me she had been living life in the stress lane for a very long time. At FD Consultants we offer a half-day Stress Management and Resilience Building workshop. We recommend that “ALL” staff who join an organisation where workload and work pressure is high, or there is a risk of being exposed to traumatic material, whether directly or indirectly, should attend this workshop as part of their induction. Staff need to be given the space at the very outset to build strategies for managing stress, and to recognise the signs in themselves and their colleagues. We want to encourage organisations to build into their framework preventative measures to best support their staff. These workshops improve an organisation’s culture and create a healthy and resilient organisation. By giving staff the tools to recognise the signs of stress, trauma, burnout or compassion fatigue, we enable them to reach out for support when necessary. Research has shown that the earlier someone gets support, the quicker they will recover, and this can prevent long-term illness. I had time to digest a healthy dose of reading material whilst away. One of the books I read was, Joy on Demand, by Chade-Meng Tan. He believes, "we can develop major mental skills like the ability to access joy on demand, and in doing so, improve every single aspect of our lives. The mental equivalent of physical exercise is meditation" (Tan, 2016). By learning techniques to calm the mind, we can be more prepared during stressful times, and keep ourselves mentally well. Another book I enjoyed reading was Momo (Ende, 1984), a beautiful story about where time comes from. It is full of poignant messages about what we value in life, "time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart." In the story “time thieves” strip humans of time, humans start working harder and faster, and avoid at all costs sitting in silence. It is not until we learn to sit in our own silence that we can change unhealthy patterns, as the noise of “doing" drowns all other reason out of the mind. I have heard people attend our workshops stating that they never have time for themselves, as if it is something they have just come to accept. We need to listen to our self-talk and hear the warning signs loud and clear. If we are saying we never have enough time for ourselves, then something has to change, or we will become ill. It took me a week into my break before I could fully relax. I found myself feeling "guilty," and saying to myself, "I should be doing more". One of the topics we cover in the stress management workshop is the eight common stress thinking patterns, the eighth pattern being stuck in thinking of what we "should", "ought to", and "must" be doing. Many of the Keralan people I met through my work seemed to have embodied this wisdom. Lakshit, a life coach, said to me one morning "the more you chase the money, the unhealthier your lifestyle becomes, and the more you have to spend on putting yourself right again". His statement reminded me of the stress cycle, the longer we are in it the harder it is to see, and the more difficult it is to break. He also taught me to focus on the "experience" I offer to people. My dream is to setup a retreat, but at present I can’t work out how that can happen financially, but an “experience” can be gained anywhere, and anytime through human connection. His statement helped me to reframe my thinking by bringing my mind back to appreciating the present, rather than stretching too far into the future. Another beautiful soul I met who manages a small Airbnb by cooking, cleaning and driving his Tuk Tuk, Mr Jobin said, "I love my job, I constantly see the scenery change around me, it refreshes my mind each and every day." Enjoying being in the moment and connecting to nature are such simple and rich resources for calming the mind, and don’t cost us a single thing. If you want to find out more about our workshops, please email [email protected]. Try to give yourself the gift of time, even for one day, and listen to your inner truth when sitting in your silence. Fiona Dunkley (Founder of FD Consultants) For organisations looking for employee psychological support, FD Consultants are the trauma specialists and well-being service who will best deliver a reliable, quick, and bespoke support system in the workplace. FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly.
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