Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma by Elizabeth A. Stanley

Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma by Elizabeth A. Stanley

Managing stress and recovering from past traumas are some of the many challenges facing humanity in the modern era. Widen the Window addresses both those problems.

Elizabeth Stanley explains how individuals handle stress and trauma varies widely from person to person. It is first affected by your biology, then your unique childhood experiences making everyone’s responses different. What is incredibly stressful to one person may to a cakewalk to the next, and vise versa.

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She describes the ability to manage responses to stress as a window. Through a variety of mindfulness techniques, healthy eating, maintaining a large social network, and getting plenty of rest, Stanley guides the reader through ways to “widen the window” or increase your ability to manage stress.

I am always on the lookout for ideas on how to appropriately manage stress. If I manage my stress responses when they’re small, it prevents something more serious from building up and coming out in other, perhaps more dysfunctional, ways.

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I could see this book being useful to every reader who picks it up. Everybody has something they’re dealing with – from current work to family to friends issues or traumatic past experiences that push themselves into the present. We’re all in this together, even if your mind is telling you otherwise.

How to Relax by Thich Nhat Hanh

How to Relax by Thich Nhat Hanh

There are very few spiritual leaders who can communicate with the simplicity and succinctness of Thich Nhat Hanh.

As wise as the Dalai Lama is, I’ve only been able to really understand one of the books he’s written and I think that was because he had a co-author. It seems like he contemplates this stuff so much, you know, like it’s his job, that when he’s just trying to talk to a regular person about it, there’s a gap that can’t be crossed.

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That isn’t a problem in Thich’s Mindfulness Series.

Thich encourages the reader to find the quiet within. He says: “We already have calmness in us; we just need to know how to make it manifest.” pg 14, ebook.

How do we do this? Through focus, breathing, mindfulness, and relaxation.

One of Thich’s methods for connecting with inner peace that really resonated with me was that we should take “lazy days”: “A lazy day is a day for us to be without any scheduled activities. We just let the day unfold naturally, timelessly. … When we have unscheduled time, we tend to get bored, seek entertainment, or cast about for something to do. A lazy day is a chance to train ourselves not to be afraid of doing nothing. You might think that not doing anything is a waste of time. But that’s not true.” pg 32, ebook.

Not to brag, but I rather excel at “lazy days”.

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Anyone out there have a partner who snores? I do. Thich invites us to incorporate the snores into our relaxation practice.

“Sometimes you have to share a room with someone who snores. You may get irritated. But with mindfulness you can bring about compassion. You can lean on the sound of snoring in order to go to sleep. Listen and say that this brings you home to the here and now.” pg 42, ebook.

I think this could be a difficult exercise, but I’m willing to give it a try. 🙂

Ever tell yourself that relaxation/meditation is too hard? Thich addresses that concern too: “When you sit and watch television, you don’t make any effort. That’s why you can sit there for a long time. When you sit in meditation, if you struggle, you won’t be able to sit for very long. Please imitate the way you sit in your living room. Effortlessness is the key to success. pg 76 ebook.

If you can watch tv, you can meditate. It’s silly but it reminds me of that line from Dodgeball: “if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball”.

Highly recommended for anyone looking to introduce more relaxation into their lives and isn’t that everybody?

Some read alikes: Relax RX: A Self-Hypnosis Program for Health and Well-Being by Steven Gurgevich (very relaxing, all you have to do is listen), Guided Mindfulness Meditation by Jon Kabat-Zinn (simple and relaxing), or 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works by Dan Harris (a regular guy teaches himself to meditate- a light hearted memoir).

Thanks for reading!