Polina:
0:14
Hello and welcome to Smart and Well, a podcast supporting mental health and well-being for students and early career researchers. Today we are talking about stress and stress management. We explore what stress actually is and give some practical advice on how to deal with stressors in a healthier way. Our guest today is a certified trainer for mindfulness-based stress reduction. But before we begin the conversation with him, let's have a closer look at what stress is. First and foremost, stress is an adaptive reaction of our body. It helps us to cope with challenging situations. When we are faced with a stressful situation, for example, walking alone at night in a dark street with a person following us in some distance, our body very quickly initiates processes that help us to cope with the possible threat. Our pupils dilate to capture more information. Our attention and concentration is focused to quickly identify information that might indicate danger. This blood flow and respiration enable our body to provide more energy to our muscles to eventually fight or flight a threat. If we choose to run from this dark street to a lighter and more crowded place, we will be able to run faster than usual. Over the history of mankind, those who had a good stress response were those who were more likely to survive such threats. So, having a quickly reacting stress system is evolutionarily very adaptive. These processes I just explained happen together with the fast stress system and a very quick release of chemical substances such as adrenaline and noradrenaline, also known as epinephrine and norapinephrine by their Greek names. They help us get into the concentrated alert status. Another stress system is mediated by the stress hormone, cortisol, which peaks several minutes after a stressful situation and can work on a slower time scale. This stress system is a bit more complex, with parts of it contributing to the stress response and other parts helping our body to recover from it. So, in the first place, a stress response is good and helps us to cope with stressful situations. These situations don't even need to be as dramatic as the one I mentioned before. In fact, there are many micro-stressers in our lives. For example, have you ever experienced being able to work better when having a deadline? The stressor, in this case approaching the stress response to the deadline, can focus your concentration and help you be more productive. For some time. And that's the crucial point. If stressors get chronic and we don't really get the chance to fully recover, our stress systems get out of balance. The feedback loops between quick and slower stress systems don't work anymore, resulting in our stress systems being constantly active. Such a sustained bodily stress state can lead to all kinds of both psychological and physical symptoms, from feeling depressed or anxious to painfully tense muscles and headaches or high blood pressure, just to name some examples. So what do we do with this? It might be tempting to wish for never being stressed. However, knowing that stress responses are not bad per se, that would not be wise. Instead, our goal should be to make our stress responses more conscious and to give ourselves the chance to recover in between stressors, to allow our body to get back to baseline. Then our next seminar paper might even profit from the superpowers that our body gives us when being stressed a bit. We are happy to welcome today's guest, Luis Castillo. Luis is a stress management coach, certified teacher for mindfulness-based stress reduction and has lots of personal experience with meditation. He also did his PhD in neuroendocrinology of the stress response, that is, he researched the hormones that our bodies release when we are stressed. In his stress management courses, he has a strong emphasis on reaching postgraduate students, master students and PhD candidates. Welcome, Luis, thanks for being here.
Luis Castillo:
4:41
Thank you, Polina, I'm very happy to be here.
Polina:
4:43
So, we have seen that this stress response has evolved to help us cope with challenging situations. However, nowadays, stress is one of the main causes of health problems. Can you tell us more about why this happens? Why does stress affect our health, even when it has evolved to help us?
Luis Castillo:
5:04
Yeah, that's a very interesting question, right? So I think, to understand better this question, we first need to understand how stress manifests in our bodies and in our minds. Understanding how stress manifests can also help us to understand better the difference between the psychological and the physiological effects of stress. And so, when we think about how stress manifests in our bodies and minds, maybe we can first start with a little of an exercise, when we can use our imagination a little bit, you know, just bringing a very vivid imagination to this little exercise, and this will help us to explore our own experiences. So if you want and you can, maybe you can close your eyes, but it's not necessary, and so we will just be using the imagination. Just to imagine one day that you have a very important presentation at work, and so you have been working for several hours on this presentation, and on the day of the presentation the alarm clock didn't work, and so you woke up one hour later, then planned there is no time for breakfast, no time for shower, no time for coffee. You rush to get on time for your presentation. There is traffic, you know everything is on your way, and when you finally get there, everyone is waiting for you, looking at you, you start preparing everything that you need and you realize that the USB stick where your presentation is stored it is not there. You just left it that at home. And so just using these moments to direct the attention to the experience in your body and in your mind of that moment, just observing, bringing awareness to how would you feel in that moment, what can you feel in your body. So maybe you, Polina, maybe you can share what will be your experience in that moment.
Polina:
7:18
Oh, I guess I would feel really loads of things. This sounds like a nightmare. So I think first I would feel a sinking feeling in my stomach and my knees and then I guess some kind of like little buzz in my head and my heart would start racing and I would start feeling a bit warmer, maybe start sweating. My hands would start to sweat and my shoulder and back muscles would get tense. You can see, I have a lot of experience with stress. Yeah, I can go on, but actually loads of physical things.
Luis Castillo:
7:51
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, exactly right. I mean pressure in the chest, the breath changes, the heart beats also start to be more accelerated, and so on, and so there is a wide range of these physiological changes. You know that these physiological correlates of the stress response, and this is exactly how stress manifests in the body. And you know we all have experienced these kinds of physiological changes. But normally we don't pay too much conscious attention to this aspect of stress, right? So, we just get entangled in thoughts or emotions and we don't pay attention to how stress is manifesting in the body. Now I will ask you a very important question, and the answer to this question will help us to understand also why stress affects us so much, even when it is designed to help us. And the question is very simple, very easy. Do you like the way all this sensation feel in your body?
Polina:
9:00
Well, absolutely no.
Luis Castillo:
9:02
Exactly right. So we all know, it's kind of a rhetorical question, right? We don't like it? The answer is no, and usually, when we are not aware of this whole process, the automatic reaction of the brain is to resist the unpleasant. So we don't want the unpleasant, we want to push it away. And in this way then, if we are not aware of it, we end up wanting to push away an experience that is already there in the body, it is present in our bodies, and so, unfortunately, we cannot make it go away immediately, right? I mean, it takes some time, and so in the end, we are resisting something that we cannot make go away, and you can imagine that this drains a lot of our energy.
Polina:
9:54
So, is this the difference between physiological and psychological stress, then?
Luis Castillo:
10:01
Well, it's certainly it's one of the main differences, right? So there, of course, there are others, but yes, I mean, at least one of the differences is this one, in the body the stress manifests as sensations and generally they are unpleasant, like the ones you mentioned. Then in the mind, stress manifests as the resistance to the unpleasant sensations in the body.
Polina:
10:28
Does this mean that the resistance to our experience of physiological stress is then the main problem?
Luis Castillo:
10:35
I don't know if we can say that is the main problem, but it is certainly a very important factor that contributes to these, to the detrimental states of health that arise when we experience stress. So, as it has been mentioned before, maybe you already know that the changes in the body induced by this stress hormones are normally transient, right? So they go up and they go down. However, sometimes we keep activating this stress response, we kind of perpetuate this activation when we are resisting to the states of the body that are present, right? If you think about it, this then becomes like a snowball effect. So, first this stress response is activated, for whatever reason, the environment or whatever, this stress response is activated and then automatically there are unpleasant sensations in the body that are due to the physiological responses. And then, if we are not aware of it, then we develop this resistance to these sensations that are in the body, and then we want to push away these sensations because we don't want them, it doesn't feel nice and we want to push them away. And so then the stress response keeps being activated. It's activated again with the aim of pushing away the unpleasant experiences that are already present in the body. So then the stress response induces more and more unpleasant sensations, and then we end up, you know, in this cycle that goes on and on, leading to a prolonged exposure to stress response.
Polina:
12:15
So how can we stop this perpetual activation of the stress response? Is it possible to stop resisting the unpleasant experiences in our bodies? It sounds easy to say just stop resisting the unpleasant, but in reality it can be very difficult. I mean, how can I stop disliking the unpleasant?
Luis Castillo:
12:35
Yeah, so this is the question, right? This is an extremely important and essential question. And so, how can we develop a mind that doesn't react automatically with resistance to the unpleasant experiences in the body that are present with stress? To do this, we need to transform the relationship that we have with our own internal experiences, and I will repeat this because it's very important, we need to transform the relationship that we have with our own experience. So, first we need to develop focused and sustained attention, and then we need to develop the skill of awareness, peripheral awareness, and then we also need to develop some favorable attitudes that will help us to do this transformation. Now, the earlier we become aware of our internal state, the faster we can do something about it.
Polina:
13:41
How do we actually do that? So what does it mean to pay attention to the internal experience?
Luis Castillo:
13:48
We can say that the internal experience at any given time consists always of three main aspects. We call this the triangle of awareness. So, three main aspects. The first one is body sensations, and then emotions and then thoughts. From these three, the most fundamental one is the body sensations. There is a phrase that I really like that it says, nothing arises in the mind without a sensation in the body, and this is a huge tool that we can use. You know, we can bring awareness to the sensation in the body. All the hormones and neurotransmitters then shape the emotions and the feelings that we have, and then these feelings shape the way we think, and then, finally, the way we think shapes the way we behave. So, everything is linked. And then, of course, these links are more complex and the thoughts also affect the emotions and so on. It's a more complex process. But just for the sake of simplicity, we can say that the sensations of the body, or the physiological aspects, are the most fundamental part of our experiences, and so if we can pay attention and become aware of this process very early, then we can also do an intervention.
Polina:
15:15
We are saying that paying attention and becoming aware of our internal experience is important. Unfortunately, it seems that nowadays, paying focused and sustained attention is more and more challenging. We are distracted by so many things in our daily lives. Can we actually get better at paying attention and becoming aware of our internal experience?
Luis Castillo:
15:36
So, yes, that's true. There's a lot of distractions nowadays, but the good news is that, yes, of course, we can become better at paying focused and sustained attention. We can train our minds, and we can also become better at bringing awareness to our internal experiences without being distracted so much. We can train our minds to become better at perceiving the experiences that are happening in the internal environment, and with time and practice, then it becomes easier and easier and more natural. It's just like going to the gym. We're training the muscles of attention and awareness. There is a term known as interoception, so I will invite you to just, if you're interested, to just to google this term interoception. There is a lot of research nowadays about this and about all the links that this has with well-being, and so I will invite you just to read a little bit more about interoception. So, interoception is basically a sense that we all have, just as a hearing or sight or touch. This is a sense that allows us to feel what is happening in the body, and so, in that way, just as a musician trains the sense of hearing, for example, to identify all the little details of sounds and the pitch and everything, in the same way, we can also train our sense of interoception, just to identify all the sensations happening inside the body that are shaping our emotions and thoughts and behaviors and so on.
Polina:
17:21
So, the first step is to develop the skills of attention and awareness so we can identify our internal experience when we are stressed. But I have a question. When we pay attention to unpleasant experience in the body, sometimes they become even stronger. Like, for example, if you have any kind of pain in your body. The more attention you pay on that pain, the more you feel it. So if we develop attention and awareness to identify the unpleasant sensations that arise with stress, wouldn't these experiences become stronger and more unpleasant?
Luis Castillo:
17:57
Yeah, this is a very good question and a very good observation already. This already tells you about bringing awareness and attention to our own experiences, right? So this is already an insight. The key is how we relate to these experiences, and so it is here where the you know, the third skill that we said before, plays a very important role, and so we said that the first one was attention, the second one was awareness and the third one, the third skill we need to develop, is all about attitudes. Developing attention and awareness is essential, but it's not enough. We need to practice specific attitudes that we will then use towards our internal experience. So, we need to transform this relationship that we have with the experience, as we said before, and we achieve this transformation of the relationship through the application of these attitudes. Normally, the relationship with the unpleasant is of resistance. We want to push that away. Now, instead of doing this, we need to observe the internal experience with the more favorable attitudes. We need to create a space for our experiences to be in our bodies, in our minds, even when they are unpleasant. There are eight attitudes that can help us to create this space for our internal experiences, so maybe we can just very briefly review each of these attitides. The first one is non-judgment. This means that we observe our experience but we don't judge the experience as good or bad, or correct or incorrect, or strong or weak or whatever. We just observe it as it is. There are sensations in the body. Maybe we can label them. This is stinging sensation, pulsating sensation, cold or warm sensation, any kind of sensation. We just observe it, we label it, but we keep the intention of non-judging the sensation. Now, the second one is patience. For this one we need to develop patience towards our internal experience. We don't try to push it away or change it or fix it or anything. We just observe with patience the natural way in which the experience unfolds in the body. Maybe it starts very subtly and then it arises and it becomes stronger, but then with time it just passes away. And so we constantly develop these patients of just observing, just becoming aware of how that experience is unfolding. And the third one, third attitude is also related or linked to this one, which this is curiosity, or some people call this "beginner's mind. And so this means we observe our experience with curiosity and with patience. As we said before, we observe the qualities of the experience that we're having, for example, just very simple things, how it feels in the body. Where exactly in the body can you feel it? What is the dimension of that sensation? Is it only in your toe, or is it the entire foot? Or how strong it is, how intense it is, how dynamic it is, and so on and so forth. So just a scientist just starting and observing with curiosity what is going on. The fourth attitude is trust. We trust that we can provide a space for our own experience. We trust that we can do this, we can observe it, we can be patient, we can observe this with curiosity. We just trust that we are doing something that will help us and that will bring well-being for us. Then the next attitude is non-striving. Some people call this non-attachment, and this means that we keep the intention of doing all of this, but we don't attach too much to the final outcome. If we strive too much to change our internal experience, then that means that we are resisting to it. So it's the same thing If we want to practice this because we want to make this go away, then we end up resisting to our experiences. And so the point is that we practice all these, but we understand that this is a gradual process and then it takes time and energy and effort and we are on this journey, but we're also patient. We don't attach too much to the final outcome. We are working in a process.
Polina:
22:59
I guess for graduate students this might be challenging, or this could apply for the entire PhD actually.
Luis Castillo:
23:06
Exactly, yes, exactly. It's nice that you mentioned this also, because the next one it's also a very important one and sometimes tricky, the next one is acceptance. Many people say, well, this is a passive action. How can I accept everything? I'm not willing to accept everything, and that's true, but the point about this attitude is that we accept the internal experience but not necessarily the external experience. So in that way, we are not passive. If there is something that we need to change in the outside, then we act on it, but we act from a state of awareness and acceptance of the internal state and not out of a state of anger, fear, resistance, et cetera. Then the next attitude is letting go and letting be. These are two different things. Letting go: we let go all the non-favorable thoughts that we don't need, you know, all those negative thoughts, limiting thoughts. We just let them go. We become aware that these are just thoughts arising in the brain and we just let them go. There is a phrase that I also really like that it says that the brain secrets thoughts just as the mouth secrets saliva. You know that sometimes the thoughts just emerge, but we don't need to follow them or to believe all of them, we can become aware of them and then see what we can do with them. And then the other part is letting be. We let be all the emotions that are present in the body. We don't repress and we don't inhibit the emotions. We acknowledge them and then we give them space in our bodies, in our minds, but we don't necessarily act from them. Anger is there, I am aware of it, I label anger, I know how anger fills in my body, but I don't need to behave in an angry way. And then, finally, the last attitude is kindness and compassion. We need to be kind and we need to have compassion towards ourselves and also to the people around us. We need to understand this is a process. Sometimes we will be able to have more favorable relationship with the internal experience of stress, but other times it will be more difficult. So, we need to understand that. We need to be kind towards ourselves, we need to be compassionate. That's okay if sometimes we cannot manage, that's okay. We are kind and compassionate with ourselves as well. These are the eight attitudes. We'll just repeat them non-judgment, patience, curiosity, trust, non-striving acceptance, letting go, letting be, and kindness and compassion.
Polina:
26:09
Let me recap. These are the three steps that we could follow to stop the perpetual activation of the stress response. We need to develop attention and awareness to identify our internal experience, and then we need to practice favorable attitudes to transform our relationship with our internal experience. So, now the question is how can we train all these skills? How can we strengthen our attention and awareness? How can we practice the eight attitudes that you just described?
Luis Castillo:
26:43
This is where the practice of self-contemplation and mindfulness meditation play a very important role. When we sit to meditate, we focus our attention in what we call the triangle of awareness, what we mentioned before, as well body sensations, emotions and thoughts. And anyone who tries this practice very quickly realizes that our minds are normally wandering away. The mind is always jumping around to the past, to the future, thinking what I will have for dinner, where I will go for holidays next summer, worrying about the next presentation, or so on and so forth. So when we sit to practice, always our intention is to train our minds so we can develop sustained and focused attention, and to do this we use the body sensations as an anchor of our practice. That means we pay attention to the sensations in the body, any sensation in any part of the body, and every time the attention wanders away, we just we don't get frustrated or angry, we just bring it back to the sensations in the body. And again and again, the mind wanders away and we bring it back, wanders away, we bring it back. Every time we do this, it's like we're flexing the muscle of mindfulness. It's the muscle of attention. We're becoming stronger in paying attention. Now, the other key point is to practice the attitudes that we mentioned before. So when you sit and practice, you will realize that many experiences start to emerge. You know, as soon as you sit and practice, emotions arise, thoughts arise. Pain, discomfort, boredom, sleepiness, anger, regret many things, many experiences start to arise. One of the most important intentions in our mindfulness meditation practice is to transform these automatic reactions that we have towards these experiences. Instead of reacting with attachment or with resistance and aversion to the experience, then we practice the eight attitudes that we mentioned before, and when we do this with all the experiences that start emerging, then with time and practice, we will become better at it. You know, it will become more natural to respond with these eight attitudes to the internal experience. And so, just to add a little bit more about this practice, we use the sitting meditation as the practice field. That's where we are practicing all these skills. We develop our attention, awareness and attitudes and make them stronger when we are sitting in silence in a favorable atmosphere. And this is very important, because practicing this in daily life is more challenging. Imagine you're having an argument with your boss and anger arises in your body and in your mind very strongly, and so in that moment it is very difficult that you will tell your boss oh wait, give me just one minute, I will start observing my internal experience and then you can see. Oh yeah, so I see there is tension in my heart and there's heartbeat accelerated. And just give me one minute, I'm observing my body, sensations and so. So of course, this won't happen, right? The intention is to become better at these skills. You know, when we are sitting, meditating, we become familiar with our experiences and how we respond to them, and then it will become more and more natural to respond properly also in our daily lives, not only when we're sitting, but also in our daily lives. You know, it is in our biology of the brain. We just need to practice.
Polina:
30:53
It seems like there are very specific steps that we can follow during a meditation session that allow us to develop the skills that we need to cope better with stress. We actually now have an opportunity to get a glimpse of how we can do it. After the interview, Luis will guide a short practice for our listeners. But first, Luis, how can people learn more about what you do and how they can contact you?
Luis Castillo:
31:18
Yeah, thank you. So you can always find information on the website, it is www. innerminder. org and there you can find all the information. We give trainings, we offer workshops and trainings of eight weeks normally, and you can find all the information on the website. You can also find my contact details there. You can write me if you have questions or if you just want to learn a little bit more, if you need resources or anything. Please feel free to write an email and I will be happy to answer it.
Polina:
32:00
We will put the link in the description and the transcript of the episode. Luis, thank you very much for joining us today for the interview.
Luis Castillo:
32:07
Thank you, Polina. What's great being here. We begin by finding a comfortable position, just paying attention to the feet on the floor, the weight of the body on the chair while you are sitting, the spine rising tall, the head balancing on the neck, just bringing awareness to the space in which we are, the sounds inside and outside the room, and, slowly and gently, let's bring the attention to the sensations in the body that arise with the breath. Where in my body can I feel my breath more easily today? Perhaps at the entrance of the nostrils or inside the nostrils? Or perhaps the sensation of expansion, contraction, contraction, expansion of the abdomen, the chest. Just focus and sustain attention to the sensations of the breath and, if the mind wanders away, just becoming aware and bringing back the mind to the sensations of the breath in the body, breathing in and breathing out, and, with this focused awareness, slowly and gently expanding the field of awareness to the entire body, from the tip of the toes to the top of the head, from the top of the head to the tip of the toes, observing any sensation that is present in the body. It can be any sensation tingling sensation, pulsating sensation, throbbing sensation, cold sensation, warm sensation, any sensation. We are becoming familiar with these sensations in the body, in the feet, the legs, the pelvic area, the lower back, observing the whole torso area. Can I feel my heart beating? Can I feel my lungs expanding and contracting, using the arms and the hands and the neck and the head, releasing any unnecessary tension from the muscles around the eyes, the jaw, the mouth and from the top of the head to the tip of the toes, from the tip of the toes to the top of the head. Observing any experience in the entire body, any state of the mind. Perhaps there is patience or impatience, tiredness, wakefulness, sleepiness, relaxation, frustration, anything that is present. Just becoming aware there is nothing to change, nothing to fix, just giving this space for this experience to be here. This is my body, this is my experience right now, and becoming aware of the sensations of the breath in the body, breathing in and breathing out, becoming aware of the sounds around the room and, before we end this practice, becoming aware of those parts of the body that want to move or that want to stretch, before moving, before stretching. Observing this experience of wanting to move, wanting to stretch how does it feel, this wish? And slowly and gently making the conscious decision of moving or stretching any part of your body that feels like moving or stretching and slowly and gently opening your eyes, this practice is completed.
0:14
Hello and welcome to Smart and Well, a podcast supporting mental health and well-being for students and early career researchers. Today we are talking about stress and stress management. We explore what stress actually is and give some practical advice on how to deal with stressors in a healthier way. Our guest today is a certified trainer for mindfulness-based stress reduction. But before we begin the conversation with him, let's have a closer look at what stress is. First and foremost, stress is an adaptive reaction of our body. It helps us to cope with challenging situations. When we are faced with a stressful situation, for example, walking alone at night in a dark street with a person following us in some distance, our body very quickly initiates processes that help us to cope with the possible threat. Our pupils dilate to capture more information. Our attention and concentration is focused to quickly identify information that might indicate danger. This blood flow and respiration enable our body to provide more energy to our muscles to eventually fight or flight a threat. If we choose to run from this dark street to a lighter and more crowded place, we will be able to run faster than usual. Over the history of mankind, those who had a good stress response were those who were more likely to survive such threats. So, having a quickly reacting stress system is evolutionarily very adaptive. These processes I just explained happen together with the fast stress system and a very quick release of chemical substances such as adrenaline and noradrenaline, also known as epinephrine and norapinephrine by their Greek names. They help us get into the concentrated alert status. Another stress system is mediated by the stress hormone, cortisol, which peaks several minutes after a stressful situation and can work on a slower time scale. This stress system is a bit more complex, with parts of it contributing to the stress response and other parts helping our body to recover from it. So, in the first place, a stress response is good and helps us to cope with stressful situations. These situations don't even need to be as dramatic as the one I mentioned before. In fact, there are many micro-stressers in our lives. For example, have you ever experienced being able to work better when having a deadline? The stressor, in this case approaching the stress response to the deadline, can focus your concentration and help you be more productive. For some time. And that's the crucial point. If stressors get chronic and we don't really get the chance to fully recover, our stress systems get out of balance. The feedback loops between quick and slower stress systems don't work anymore, resulting in our stress systems being constantly active. Such a sustained bodily stress state can lead to all kinds of both psychological and physical symptoms, from feeling depressed or anxious to painfully tense muscles and headaches or high blood pressure, just to name some examples. So what do we do with this? It might be tempting to wish for never being stressed. However, knowing that stress responses are not bad per se, that would not be wise. Instead, our goal should be to make our stress responses more conscious and to give ourselves the chance to recover in between stressors, to allow our body to get back to baseline. Then our next seminar paper might even profit from the superpowers that our body gives us when being stressed a bit. We are happy to welcome today's guest, Luis Castillo. Luis is a stress management coach, certified teacher for mindfulness-based stress reduction and has lots of personal experience with meditation. He also did his PhD in neuroendocrinology of the stress response, that is, he researched the hormones that our bodies release when we are stressed. In his stress management courses, he has a strong emphasis on reaching postgraduate students, master students and PhD candidates. Welcome, Luis, thanks for being here.
Luis Castillo:
4:41
Thank you, Polina, I'm very happy to be here.
Polina:
4:43
So, we have seen that this stress response has evolved to help us cope with challenging situations. However, nowadays, stress is one of the main causes of health problems. Can you tell us more about why this happens? Why does stress affect our health, even when it has evolved to help us?
Luis Castillo:
5:04
Yeah, that's a very interesting question, right? So I think, to understand better this question, we first need to understand how stress manifests in our bodies and in our minds. Understanding how stress manifests can also help us to understand better the difference between the psychological and the physiological effects of stress. And so, when we think about how stress manifests in our bodies and minds, maybe we can first start with a little of an exercise, when we can use our imagination a little bit, you know, just bringing a very vivid imagination to this little exercise, and this will help us to explore our own experiences. So if you want and you can, maybe you can close your eyes, but it's not necessary, and so we will just be using the imagination. Just to imagine one day that you have a very important presentation at work, and so you have been working for several hours on this presentation, and on the day of the presentation the alarm clock didn't work, and so you woke up one hour later, then planned there is no time for breakfast, no time for shower, no time for coffee. You rush to get on time for your presentation. There is traffic, you know everything is on your way, and when you finally get there, everyone is waiting for you, looking at you, you start preparing everything that you need and you realize that the USB stick where your presentation is stored it is not there. You just left it that at home. And so just using these moments to direct the attention to the experience in your body and in your mind of that moment, just observing, bringing awareness to how would you feel in that moment, what can you feel in your body. So maybe you, Polina, maybe you can share what will be your experience in that moment.
Polina:
7:18
Oh, I guess I would feel really loads of things. This sounds like a nightmare. So I think first I would feel a sinking feeling in my stomach and my knees and then I guess some kind of like little buzz in my head and my heart would start racing and I would start feeling a bit warmer, maybe start sweating. My hands would start to sweat and my shoulder and back muscles would get tense. You can see, I have a lot of experience with stress. Yeah, I can go on, but actually loads of physical things.
Luis Castillo:
7:51
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, exactly right. I mean pressure in the chest, the breath changes, the heart beats also start to be more accelerated, and so on, and so there is a wide range of these physiological changes. You know that these physiological correlates of the stress response, and this is exactly how stress manifests in the body. And you know we all have experienced these kinds of physiological changes. But normally we don't pay too much conscious attention to this aspect of stress, right? So, we just get entangled in thoughts or emotions and we don't pay attention to how stress is manifesting in the body. Now I will ask you a very important question, and the answer to this question will help us to understand also why stress affects us so much, even when it is designed to help us. And the question is very simple, very easy. Do you like the way all this sensation feel in your body?
Polina:
9:00
Well, absolutely no.
Luis Castillo:
9:02
Exactly right. So we all know, it's kind of a rhetorical question, right? We don't like it? The answer is no, and usually, when we are not aware of this whole process, the automatic reaction of the brain is to resist the unpleasant. So we don't want the unpleasant, we want to push it away. And in this way then, if we are not aware of it, we end up wanting to push away an experience that is already there in the body, it is present in our bodies, and so, unfortunately, we cannot make it go away immediately, right? I mean, it takes some time, and so in the end, we are resisting something that we cannot make go away, and you can imagine that this drains a lot of our energy.
Polina:
9:54
So, is this the difference between physiological and psychological stress, then?
Luis Castillo:
10:01
Well, it's certainly it's one of the main differences, right? So there, of course, there are others, but yes, I mean, at least one of the differences is this one, in the body the stress manifests as sensations and generally they are unpleasant, like the ones you mentioned. Then in the mind, stress manifests as the resistance to the unpleasant sensations in the body.
Polina:
10:28
Does this mean that the resistance to our experience of physiological stress is then the main problem?
Luis Castillo:
10:35
I don't know if we can say that is the main problem, but it is certainly a very important factor that contributes to these, to the detrimental states of health that arise when we experience stress. So, as it has been mentioned before, maybe you already know that the changes in the body induced by this stress hormones are normally transient, right? So they go up and they go down. However, sometimes we keep activating this stress response, we kind of perpetuate this activation when we are resisting to the states of the body that are present, right? If you think about it, this then becomes like a snowball effect. So, first this stress response is activated, for whatever reason, the environment or whatever, this stress response is activated and then automatically there are unpleasant sensations in the body that are due to the physiological responses. And then, if we are not aware of it, then we develop this resistance to these sensations that are in the body, and then we want to push away these sensations because we don't want them, it doesn't feel nice and we want to push them away. And so then the stress response keeps being activated. It's activated again with the aim of pushing away the unpleasant experiences that are already present in the body. So then the stress response induces more and more unpleasant sensations, and then we end up, you know, in this cycle that goes on and on, leading to a prolonged exposure to stress response.
Polina:
12:15
So how can we stop this perpetual activation of the stress response? Is it possible to stop resisting the unpleasant experiences in our bodies? It sounds easy to say just stop resisting the unpleasant, but in reality it can be very difficult. I mean, how can I stop disliking the unpleasant?
Luis Castillo:
12:35
Yeah, so this is the question, right? This is an extremely important and essential question. And so, how can we develop a mind that doesn't react automatically with resistance to the unpleasant experiences in the body that are present with stress? To do this, we need to transform the relationship that we have with our own internal experiences, and I will repeat this because it's very important, we need to transform the relationship that we have with our own experience. So, first we need to develop focused and sustained attention, and then we need to develop the skill of awareness, peripheral awareness, and then we also need to develop some favorable attitudes that will help us to do this transformation. Now, the earlier we become aware of our internal state, the faster we can do something about it.
Polina:
13:41
How do we actually do that? So what does it mean to pay attention to the internal experience?
Luis Castillo:
13:48
We can say that the internal experience at any given time consists always of three main aspects. We call this the triangle of awareness. So, three main aspects. The first one is body sensations, and then emotions and then thoughts. From these three, the most fundamental one is the body sensations. There is a phrase that I really like that it says, nothing arises in the mind without a sensation in the body, and this is a huge tool that we can use. You know, we can bring awareness to the sensation in the body. All the hormones and neurotransmitters then shape the emotions and the feelings that we have, and then these feelings shape the way we think, and then, finally, the way we think shapes the way we behave. So, everything is linked. And then, of course, these links are more complex and the thoughts also affect the emotions and so on. It's a more complex process. But just for the sake of simplicity, we can say that the sensations of the body, or the physiological aspects, are the most fundamental part of our experiences, and so if we can pay attention and become aware of this process very early, then we can also do an intervention.
Polina:
15:15
We are saying that paying attention and becoming aware of our internal experience is important. Unfortunately, it seems that nowadays, paying focused and sustained attention is more and more challenging. We are distracted by so many things in our daily lives. Can we actually get better at paying attention and becoming aware of our internal experience?
Luis Castillo:
15:36
So, yes, that's true. There's a lot of distractions nowadays, but the good news is that, yes, of course, we can become better at paying focused and sustained attention. We can train our minds, and we can also become better at bringing awareness to our internal experiences without being distracted so much. We can train our minds to become better at perceiving the experiences that are happening in the internal environment, and with time and practice, then it becomes easier and easier and more natural. It's just like going to the gym. We're training the muscles of attention and awareness. There is a term known as interoception, so I will invite you to just, if you're interested, to just to google this term interoception. There is a lot of research nowadays about this and about all the links that this has with well-being, and so I will invite you just to read a little bit more about interoception. So, interoception is basically a sense that we all have, just as a hearing or sight or touch. This is a sense that allows us to feel what is happening in the body, and so, in that way, just as a musician trains the sense of hearing, for example, to identify all the little details of sounds and the pitch and everything, in the same way, we can also train our sense of interoception, just to identify all the sensations happening inside the body that are shaping our emotions and thoughts and behaviors and so on.
Polina:
17:21
So, the first step is to develop the skills of attention and awareness so we can identify our internal experience when we are stressed. But I have a question. When we pay attention to unpleasant experience in the body, sometimes they become even stronger. Like, for example, if you have any kind of pain in your body. The more attention you pay on that pain, the more you feel it. So if we develop attention and awareness to identify the unpleasant sensations that arise with stress, wouldn't these experiences become stronger and more unpleasant?
Luis Castillo:
17:57
Yeah, this is a very good question and a very good observation already. This already tells you about bringing awareness and attention to our own experiences, right? So this is already an insight. The key is how we relate to these experiences, and so it is here where the you know, the third skill that we said before, plays a very important role, and so we said that the first one was attention, the second one was awareness and the third one, the third skill we need to develop, is all about attitudes. Developing attention and awareness is essential, but it's not enough. We need to practice specific attitudes that we will then use towards our internal experience. So, we need to transform this relationship that we have with the experience, as we said before, and we achieve this transformation of the relationship through the application of these attitudes. Normally, the relationship with the unpleasant is of resistance. We want to push that away. Now, instead of doing this, we need to observe the internal experience with the more favorable attitudes. We need to create a space for our experiences to be in our bodies, in our minds, even when they are unpleasant. There are eight attitudes that can help us to create this space for our internal experiences, so maybe we can just very briefly review each of these attitides. The first one is non-judgment. This means that we observe our experience but we don't judge the experience as good or bad, or correct or incorrect, or strong or weak or whatever. We just observe it as it is. There are sensations in the body. Maybe we can label them. This is stinging sensation, pulsating sensation, cold or warm sensation, any kind of sensation. We just observe it, we label it, but we keep the intention of non-judging the sensation. Now, the second one is patience. For this one we need to develop patience towards our internal experience. We don't try to push it away or change it or fix it or anything. We just observe with patience the natural way in which the experience unfolds in the body. Maybe it starts very subtly and then it arises and it becomes stronger, but then with time it just passes away. And so we constantly develop these patients of just observing, just becoming aware of how that experience is unfolding. And the third one, third attitude is also related or linked to this one, which this is curiosity, or some people call this "beginner's mind. And so this means we observe our experience with curiosity and with patience. As we said before, we observe the qualities of the experience that we're having, for example, just very simple things, how it feels in the body. Where exactly in the body can you feel it? What is the dimension of that sensation? Is it only in your toe, or is it the entire foot? Or how strong it is, how intense it is, how dynamic it is, and so on and so forth. So just a scientist just starting and observing with curiosity what is going on. The fourth attitude is trust. We trust that we can provide a space for our own experience. We trust that we can do this, we can observe it, we can be patient, we can observe this with curiosity. We just trust that we are doing something that will help us and that will bring well-being for us. Then the next attitude is non-striving. Some people call this non-attachment, and this means that we keep the intention of doing all of this, but we don't attach too much to the final outcome. If we strive too much to change our internal experience, then that means that we are resisting to it. So it's the same thing If we want to practice this because we want to make this go away, then we end up resisting to our experiences. And so the point is that we practice all these, but we understand that this is a gradual process and then it takes time and energy and effort and we are on this journey, but we're also patient. We don't attach too much to the final outcome. We are working in a process.
Polina:
22:59
I guess for graduate students this might be challenging, or this could apply for the entire PhD actually.
Luis Castillo:
23:06
Exactly, yes, exactly. It's nice that you mentioned this also, because the next one it's also a very important one and sometimes tricky, the next one is acceptance. Many people say, well, this is a passive action. How can I accept everything? I'm not willing to accept everything, and that's true, but the point about this attitude is that we accept the internal experience but not necessarily the external experience. So in that way, we are not passive. If there is something that we need to change in the outside, then we act on it, but we act from a state of awareness and acceptance of the internal state and not out of a state of anger, fear, resistance, et cetera. Then the next attitude is letting go and letting be. These are two different things. Letting go: we let go all the non-favorable thoughts that we don't need, you know, all those negative thoughts, limiting thoughts. We just let them go. We become aware that these are just thoughts arising in the brain and we just let them go. There is a phrase that I also really like that it says that the brain secrets thoughts just as the mouth secrets saliva. You know that sometimes the thoughts just emerge, but we don't need to follow them or to believe all of them, we can become aware of them and then see what we can do with them. And then the other part is letting be. We let be all the emotions that are present in the body. We don't repress and we don't inhibit the emotions. We acknowledge them and then we give them space in our bodies, in our minds, but we don't necessarily act from them. Anger is there, I am aware of it, I label anger, I know how anger fills in my body, but I don't need to behave in an angry way. And then, finally, the last attitude is kindness and compassion. We need to be kind and we need to have compassion towards ourselves and also to the people around us. We need to understand this is a process. Sometimes we will be able to have more favorable relationship with the internal experience of stress, but other times it will be more difficult. So, we need to understand that. We need to be kind towards ourselves, we need to be compassionate. That's okay if sometimes we cannot manage, that's okay. We are kind and compassionate with ourselves as well. These are the eight attitudes. We'll just repeat them non-judgment, patience, curiosity, trust, non-striving acceptance, letting go, letting be, and kindness and compassion.
Polina:
26:09
Let me recap. These are the three steps that we could follow to stop the perpetual activation of the stress response. We need to develop attention and awareness to identify our internal experience, and then we need to practice favorable attitudes to transform our relationship with our internal experience. So, now the question is how can we train all these skills? How can we strengthen our attention and awareness? How can we practice the eight attitudes that you just described?
Luis Castillo:
26:43
This is where the practice of self-contemplation and mindfulness meditation play a very important role. When we sit to meditate, we focus our attention in what we call the triangle of awareness, what we mentioned before, as well body sensations, emotions and thoughts. And anyone who tries this practice very quickly realizes that our minds are normally wandering away. The mind is always jumping around to the past, to the future, thinking what I will have for dinner, where I will go for holidays next summer, worrying about the next presentation, or so on and so forth. So when we sit to practice, always our intention is to train our minds so we can develop sustained and focused attention, and to do this we use the body sensations as an anchor of our practice. That means we pay attention to the sensations in the body, any sensation in any part of the body, and every time the attention wanders away, we just we don't get frustrated or angry, we just bring it back to the sensations in the body. And again and again, the mind wanders away and we bring it back, wanders away, we bring it back. Every time we do this, it's like we're flexing the muscle of mindfulness. It's the muscle of attention. We're becoming stronger in paying attention. Now, the other key point is to practice the attitudes that we mentioned before. So when you sit and practice, you will realize that many experiences start to emerge. You know, as soon as you sit and practice, emotions arise, thoughts arise. Pain, discomfort, boredom, sleepiness, anger, regret many things, many experiences start to arise. One of the most important intentions in our mindfulness meditation practice is to transform these automatic reactions that we have towards these experiences. Instead of reacting with attachment or with resistance and aversion to the experience, then we practice the eight attitudes that we mentioned before, and when we do this with all the experiences that start emerging, then with time and practice, we will become better at it. You know, it will become more natural to respond with these eight attitudes to the internal experience. And so, just to add a little bit more about this practice, we use the sitting meditation as the practice field. That's where we are practicing all these skills. We develop our attention, awareness and attitudes and make them stronger when we are sitting in silence in a favorable atmosphere. And this is very important, because practicing this in daily life is more challenging. Imagine you're having an argument with your boss and anger arises in your body and in your mind very strongly, and so in that moment it is very difficult that you will tell your boss oh wait, give me just one minute, I will start observing my internal experience and then you can see. Oh yeah, so I see there is tension in my heart and there's heartbeat accelerated. And just give me one minute, I'm observing my body, sensations and so. So of course, this won't happen, right? The intention is to become better at these skills. You know, when we are sitting, meditating, we become familiar with our experiences and how we respond to them, and then it will become more and more natural to respond properly also in our daily lives, not only when we're sitting, but also in our daily lives. You know, it is in our biology of the brain. We just need to practice.
Polina:
30:53
It seems like there are very specific steps that we can follow during a meditation session that allow us to develop the skills that we need to cope better with stress. We actually now have an opportunity to get a glimpse of how we can do it. After the interview, Luis will guide a short practice for our listeners. But first, Luis, how can people learn more about what you do and how they can contact you?
Luis Castillo:
31:18
Yeah, thank you. So you can always find information on the website, it is www. innerminder. org and there you can find all the information. We give trainings, we offer workshops and trainings of eight weeks normally, and you can find all the information on the website. You can also find my contact details there. You can write me if you have questions or if you just want to learn a little bit more, if you need resources or anything. Please feel free to write an email and I will be happy to answer it.
Polina:
32:00
We will put the link in the description and the transcript of the episode. Luis, thank you very much for joining us today for the interview.
Luis Castillo:
32:07
Thank you, Polina. What's great being here. We begin by finding a comfortable position, just paying attention to the feet on the floor, the weight of the body on the chair while you are sitting, the spine rising tall, the head balancing on the neck, just bringing awareness to the space in which we are, the sounds inside and outside the room, and, slowly and gently, let's bring the attention to the sensations in the body that arise with the breath. Where in my body can I feel my breath more easily today? Perhaps at the entrance of the nostrils or inside the nostrils? Or perhaps the sensation of expansion, contraction, contraction, expansion of the abdomen, the chest. Just focus and sustain attention to the sensations of the breath and, if the mind wanders away, just becoming aware and bringing back the mind to the sensations of the breath in the body, breathing in and breathing out, and, with this focused awareness, slowly and gently expanding the field of awareness to the entire body, from the tip of the toes to the top of the head, from the top of the head to the tip of the toes, observing any sensation that is present in the body. It can be any sensation tingling sensation, pulsating sensation, throbbing sensation, cold sensation, warm sensation, any sensation. We are becoming familiar with these sensations in the body, in the feet, the legs, the pelvic area, the lower back, observing the whole torso area. Can I feel my heart beating? Can I feel my lungs expanding and contracting, using the arms and the hands and the neck and the head, releasing any unnecessary tension from the muscles around the eyes, the jaw, the mouth and from the top of the head to the tip of the toes, from the tip of the toes to the top of the head. Observing any experience in the entire body, any state of the mind. Perhaps there is patience or impatience, tiredness, wakefulness, sleepiness, relaxation, frustration, anything that is present. Just becoming aware there is nothing to change, nothing to fix, just giving this space for this experience to be here. This is my body, this is my experience right now, and becoming aware of the sensations of the breath in the body, breathing in and breathing out, becoming aware of the sounds around the room and, before we end this practice, becoming aware of those parts of the body that want to move or that want to stretch, before moving, before stretching. Observing this experience of wanting to move, wanting to stretch how does it feel, this wish? And slowly and gently making the conscious decision of moving or stretching any part of your body that feels like moving or stretching and slowly and gently opening your eyes, this practice is completed.
