Reduce Stress and Anxiety: Expert Tips from Silvio Raij on Managing Mental Noise and Finding Peace

2024-04-20 20:55:00
In recent years, consultations for “mental noise”, stress and anxiety have multiplied, according to Silvio Raij (Illustrative Image Infobae)

Let’s take the test. How many times do you go to bed tired and the noise in your mind won’t let you sleep? If the answer surprises you because there are many times the thoughts don’t leave your head, it’s time to act. How can you manage emphasizeit anxiety and everyday concerns; and what to do with the constant emotional ups and downs are some of the questions that Silvio Raij, the renowned master of the art of meditation and mindfulness, tried to solve.

“The recommendation in the face of a moment of stress is to get out of the ruminating mind and return to breathe. There is your present, there is your peace. That’s the first thing you have to do, says Raij in dialogue with Infobae. And this statement does not come alone: ​​the soft tone of his voice and his hand gestures always indicate a path: from the head to the heart.

Raij, before he was an instructor in the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, certified by the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts and Brown University and an expert in meditation, was a person “bitter with life, stressed”, as defined.

He was 33 years old, he taught at the university, but the stress affected him to the point where he felt that nothing made sense. Everything changed when he started meditating, went to India, became a vegetarian, became a professional in various fields related to wellness and wrote a number of books.

Silvio Raij emphasizes the importance of meditation to “cleanse” the mind and return to the center

Now, focusing on mindfulness, he clearly sees what is the main cause of the increase in anxiety and stress in today’s society: fatigue. “When you’re tired, you get irritated, you get upset and it leads to a search to fill your inner voids with something outside, generating anxiety,” he points out.

“I have a lot of noise in my mind. My thoughts don’t stop. “I don’t know what to do”, are the main reasons for consultation in recent years, according to Raij. And to stop these statements, which can be heard daily, he gave a first key: “It’s about purification, that’s why meditation is so important: it helps you clear your thoughts, calm your mind and strengthen your intellect.”

The fact is that, in the words of the wellness expert, “it is necessary to reconnect”, and to achieve this he gave inspiring lessons.

The “STOP” method is a technique used in mindfulness to reduce stress (Illustrative image Infobae)

As Raij tells Infobae, it is an effective mindfulness technique for acting in stressful situations and dealing with anxiety. It consists of 4 steps and comes from the English acronym. Here are a number of important recommendations to put into practice:

Stop: Take a moment to stop what you are doing and imagine a situation: standing in front of a boss who speaks badly to us or we are going into a meeting to ask that boss something difficult. “The first thing you have to do is stop,” he says.

Take a breath: Pause and breathe deeply, focusing your attention on your breath. “After stopping, breathing is key,” notes Raij. “Stress arises in the mind, and when you stop and breathe, you return to the feeling,” he explains, suggesting surrendering the stressed mind to a still body: “From reason to intuition.”

Observe (observe): It is important to recognize what is happening inside you. Observe thoughts, feelings and physical sensations without judging them. How do you feel? What’s going on inside you? How fast is your heart? How are your jaws, clenched or not? “Accepting that you are in a stressful moment is enough for the stress level to begin to decrease,” he maintains.

Continue: continue with the activity or choose a new action based on a new, more conscious and calm perspective.

The expert says that “stress reduction has to do with increasing one’s own power and being able to see all things as an opportunity, as a way to learn” and adds that “it is an exercise in your gaze, not in the problem”.

Taking breaks every two or three hours and asking ourselves important questions is crucial to lowering stress levels, according to Raij (Illustrative Image Infobae)

Raij addresses what many researchers claim: it is important to take breaks during the day. For example, sitting for long hours in front of a computer generates mental fatigue that conspires against the need to complete a task on time or fulfill various work obligations. Therefore, it is necessary to take breaks.

A group of experts from the Department of Psychology at the Western University of Timișoara, in Romania, led by Patricia Albulescu, conducted a meta-analysis of 22 studies involving a total of 2,000 people and published their results in the journal PLoS ONE. “Micro-breaks may be a panacea for promoting well-being during the working day,” said the authors of the research.

As Raij explains to Infobae, they have to be done every two or three hours. And what do we do? According to the expert’s instructions, you need to take a couple of breaths, a little deeper through the nose. It leads from the mind to the body and causes the mind to descend to connect with physical sensations, with the present.

He is the director of the Santi school in Montevideo (Uruguay), dedicated to teaching mindfulness and yoga, who is the author of books such as Mindfulness. Restore your inner peace and 7 inspirational lessons, suggest asking yourself questions like: How am I feeling? What I need? Where do I go? What do I want? In other words, it is important to ask ourselves essential questions that restore my consciousness again. What am I doing? What I need? Where do I go? And it returns consciousness so we can get on with the day.

Moving towards your own center, to silence and tranquility are the keys to reducing stress (Illustrative image Infobae)

―How to reduce the sources of stress and anxiety when we live in a fast-paced world, we have many jobs, worries and little free time?

– A teacher once taught me that life is like a big hurricane. And we are constantly spinning in that storm, where there are winds that are concerns or situations that need to be resolved. There is your family, your work, your friends, your partner, your children and you go round and round. But if you stop spinning and head toward the center of that storm, there is stillness and calm. If you remain in that stillness, if you pause and be still for a while, you can attend to everything that is spinning, but you attend to it from the center. You are in your essential zone, in your power zone.

—So, how do we stop spinning and go to our power zone, to our center?

“What you have to do is go back to the center and from that place take care of something and go back to the center. For example, I take care of my children, I return to the center, I take care of my work, I return to the center. What is exhausting is going to work, children, school, going back to work at the same time. We must learn to pause, to go inward, as the turtle does. It gets stored inside the shell and then comes out to express itself and then goes back into the shell. This is called taking breaks during the day to come back to your center.

“We must learn to pause, return to the center,” says Raij (Illustrative image Infobae)

“What are the strategies we can implement to put aside intrusive thoughts?

– It is a preparation, like any other discipline. Your head and thoughts work with everything you register as experiences during the day. If during the day you register negative experiences such as fighting, criticizing, blaming, you generate raw content from which your negative thoughts arise. So if you generate negative experiences, your thoughts will take from that source. What you think during the day is the key. What you repeat or say mentally ends up influencing and constructing a reality. It’s about starting to think a little more positively. It starts with recognizing that what you are thinking is not useful to you or others. It’s a daily job.

“Worries about money, wars, diseases and everything that worries us are at the center of our conversations, how can we escape?

– It’s about understanding that just as you think, you feel. I am aware of the war, but I wonder what my part is. What can I do from my seat? Yes, I understand that I cannot go and stop the war. What is the best thing I can do? Maybe what I can do is create hope in people. Or generate a thought that something is being learned. It’s no use complaining, blaming or getting angry because I can’t control the war. I have to choose what to do. You can be the generator of some hope in a group of people who are completely taken over by the feeling of war or who are negative.

For Raij, meditation is essential to strengthen the bond with oneself and with others (Illustrative image Infobae)

– How much does new technology, screens and social networks affect the increase in stress and anxiety?

-A lot. Especially on social networks, you need to be aware of the comparison with others. My self-confidence and my own power drop and I start to become depressed and frustrated. So I have to be very careful to ask myself and know what my role is, what I do well, what my value is and not put it outside, not even on the networks. My worth has to do with me. It’s a bit of a workout.

– Why is it important to meditate?

“With meditation, all your bonds will improve and they are the reason you live. All your relationships with other people will change and will be a completely different experience. When you are with other people you will feel proud and worthy , but the bond that will change the most will be the bond with you, because you will be there without having to do anything, and you will feel good. And even if you sit in silence at home, you will feel proud, you will feel you happy. And that to me is the key to meditation.

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