my name is lindsay jost and i am one of
the practicing clinicians at the maxwell
clinic and i
would like to as well open up a really
big warm welcome to everybody who is
taking a little time out of your
evenings to spend it with me
and any of us uh here at the maxwell
clinic as we do these educational
webinars it is a joy and a delight to
have the honor to get to share in time
and space with you
and especially as time as one of our
most valuable assets and resources so we
thank you i thank you and i can’t wait
to spend the next 30 minutes with you
so welcome again to everybody in our
maxwell clinic family and community and
beyond if you’re watching this
um good evening good morning good
afternoon any time point that you’re
able to
sneak away and
listen to an exciting talk we’re going
to talk about all things stress
which in this day and age is a hot topic
as you all are very aware
so before we dive in and get started i’m
going to do a little housekeeping thing
because we’re going to share some slides
and talk about what our next 30 minutes
is going to look like together
so what i’m going to talk to you about
this evening is
the miracle of stress now miracle you
might say to yourself that’s a little
different i know don’t worry we’re gonna
get into it seems a little
unconventional it is because we’re gonna
take everything that you think you know
about stress
confirm that you do probably know some
things about stress and then change and
flip the script a little bit and
hopefully give you some things to take
away that you can use in your everyday
life to start to have a different
experience of how it feels for you
so a couple of the housekeeping things i
kind of mentioned
i’ll be the host this evening and i have
you guys on mute but if you have a
question please type your question in
the q a box below and at the end before
we wrap up i’ll try to make sure i
answer all the questions that you have
available
in the event that the internet goes down
because the world stops when the
internet goes down these days well we’ll
switch to a hot spot so stay on for five
or ten minutes give me some time to hop
off get my internet connection changed
over and then come back and dive right
back in
so our journey together what we’re going
to uh go through this evening is the
great reframe as i have decided to coin
it
what that means is we’re going to talk
about what we know
about stress what may surprise you about
stress a little concept i like to call
living in the bowl fan
and some action tips for you to take
away as i mentioned and go out about
into your day
so let’s go ahead and dive in
the great reframe
so
everybody’s emails are all full today
with these huge clickbait things of you
know reduce your stress or how stress is
harming you or the more stress you have
the faster you’re gonna die and all
these alert alarms stress stress
negative everywhere it’s plastered in
our social media it’s plastered in our
emails these are things you know i’m not
going to cause you more stress by
bringing up the word which i think it’s
really funny because if you say it you
kind of immediately feel this sort of
self judgment and
how am i handling that and how do i feel
interesting to start observing so the no
negative things these are things that
are really out in the open we know it
causes fatigue we know stress causes
insomnia we know anxiety and depression
and headaches and muscle pain
over and under eating weight gain weight
loss
chronic disease high blood pressure
cardiovascular issues low libido and sex
drive sex drive nobody wants that
shorter life span okay all right we’ve
got all that down that is almost common
knowledge at this point
and it’s everywhere in our media and
it’s
really a common conversation that we
have and there are good parts to the
negativity of stress it’s really good to
highlight those things i don’t want to
make that seem trite and that that’s not
important it’s really good for us to
know how it can negatively impact our
body so we can have that awareness but
that’s not what we’re talking about
tonight what we’re talking about tonight
are the things that you may not quite
think about when you think about stress
and perhaps some of the things that
stress is actually doing to work for you
and not against you
so
some underemphasized positive aspects of
stress
again you might say to yourself lindsay
how is this possible
i know it’s
it is i promise you so let’s talk about
how stress helps us
so stress as a natural body response is
what gets us motivated it gets us to
wake up in the morning to get up and go
to be productive and engaged in the
world in the community
whenever you wake up in during the day
i’m gonna go ahead and venture to
believe that a part of that motivation
to do so is by some expectation for your
next event whether that’s getting to the
job that you’re employed at that is
providing for your family and yourself
and home and shelter whether that is
caring for your beautiful children and
making sure that they’re well and safe
and off into the world there is some
level of
participation that needs to get you to
go out and engage in your life so stress
in that way is a potent motivator but it
doesn’t always have to be in the extreme
form that we think of it where it’s
chronic and overactive but just as a
general motivation to get up and going
stress is our friend there it’s great
it is a driver of innovation and
evolution because it is the
mother father sister brother
of creativity and creative solutions
sometimes when we’re under stress that’s
the time that we have divine insight
where we go that light bulb goes off and
we think to ourselves oh i never thought
about that maybe uh because this
inefficient system was working this way
we can do it this way and actually
create really big change for the better
a lot of our most prized
innovations and possessions and things
we use every day were created and burst
out of
the foundation in bed that we are
calling stress so in that way it pushes
societies forward
stress motivates us to care for others
and our families and communities by
seeing other human need and being driven
to care for humans in need
we often are then
motivated to
go above and beyond what we normally
would there is always that age-old joke
you know of
um
if
you’re ill on the side of the street but
you see a child getting run over by a
car you know a mother can go and lift
the body of the car up to get her child
out
again
not talking about those necessarily
those kinds of extremes but just
recognizing how it is actually woven
into our everyday in a way that’s
generated tribe and community and really
close-knit connection
stress is our emotion of protection
we’ve heard about fight or flight okay
so a stressor happens and i’m either got
my gloves up or i’m running away because
my primal nature is saying fully i can’t
handle it so
staying in that state for a really long
period of time yeah that leads to
chronic disease and that’s not what we
that’s not necessarily our goal but
having that emotion of protection and
thinking it whenever it comes up in our
bodies and our systems and going oh
i’m trying to protect myself what’s
going on here that’s actually a good
thing we are physiologically built to
survive and thrive and so sometimes if
we
acknowledge that that’s coming up for
ourselves we can actually take it shift
it acknowledge it there’s a lot we can
learn from that we’re going to talk
about that don’t worry
it is our body’s honing and signaling
tool for communication
so
there’s two camps to that
emotionally
stress there’s a there’s a stress
emotion so energy in motion
that signals to us oh i’m feeling
overwhelmed or i’m feeling
you know anxiety or
just tears
emotion is coming forward that is your
body’s way of communicating that hey
i have some emotion here listen to me
i’ve got something that i’m trying to
tell you
there’s the
physical experience of stress as a
communication tool
that can come in the form of an elevated
heart rate sweaty palms all of a sudden
you’re like getting a little nervous
again that is your body’s way of talking
to you we in our current understanding
experience use our mouths to make sounds
that we have determined
different sounds have different meaning
humans are the meaning makers
and here’s the beautiful thing about
that
we can make different meanings
out of whatever we want we’re that
powerful so if we made if i make a noise
that says you know lindsay that’s my
name and it has a certain amount of
meaning and identity to it stress same
thing any sort of emotion that comes
forward
same thing
our bodies
don’t always have the cognitive ability
to to inadvertently say a word so that
you can signal and know really blanket
and clear hey i need you to pay
attention to me i’ve got some stuff
going on and we need to talk about it it
doesn’t happen that way so stress is one
of the ways that we communicate with
ourselves
as far as our body signaling to us that
we need to
take a little moment or
this is great and exciting let’s keep
charging forward because again when
stress comes it doesn’t always mean it’s
bad sometimes that can mean that hey
i’m motivated i want to keep running and
keep going
there’s that both and that i’ll get to
here in a minute
interesting thing about stress too
a moderate amount of stress can actually
signal
some chemicals in your body that are
called interleukins they can boost a
short-term immune response that actually
is really protective
most of the time what you hear about is
the long-term effects of that over time
so chronic stress yeah chronic stress
decreases your immune system but really
short-term bursts of an alert
boost it for a second so there’s that
protective mechanism we were talking
about that’s actually really helpful
and stress improves focus in the short
term and productivity
everybody knows when that deadline is
coming or has had this experience in
life it’s like uh
for instance i have a webinar about
stress i better i better put all the
content together so i can make sure that
it is rich robust and useful engaging
and something that people can walk away
with and say that was worth my time
there’s a little bit element of stress
there is it necessarily a bad thing that
motivated me to create this content for
you this evening so that we can share in
this time together not at all so
it’s all about how you’re perceiving it
brief stressful events
can actually cause the stem cells in
your brain to proliferate into new
proliferate into new nerve cells
again brief stressful events not long
term so we’re focusing on the gift of
that first moment and taking advantage
of it so
those are kind of the general list of
just some just some stretching the
surface ways that stress actually
positively impacts your ability to
function in the world the way that you
go about your day and how it is
interwoven in everything you do
really really interesting stuff whenever
we start to think about it a little bit
differently
so
we know the negative effects we’ve
talked about how chronic stress can
negatively impact us
we now know how we can reframe it or at
least we can start to see all right okay
stress is in my everyday i got it okay
so
what’s the goal
well
the goal is to be
able to have a life where you have
both and so max and well
yes this is a nod to the name of our
clinic
a lot of people will ask who’s dr
maxwell and dr hazy will always say it’s
you the patient so
the story is how he named maxwell clinic
was it was named after the concepts of
yoga the inhale and the exhale so the
goal is to enjoy a life where you’re
able to inhale and max so stress
and you’re able to exhale and well whoo
relax
so you’ve got your sympathetic drive of
go go go and then you’ve got your
parasympathetic of rest and digest
so here at the maxwell clinic that’s
part of what we’re trying to help
accomplish is to find that sweet spot
where we don’t say hey
let’s read let’s let’s just always be in
this enlightened state and never have
stressors because that’s just not gonna
happen unfortunately or fortunately
because again sometimes stress can be
fun
so i think it’s really important to
redefine your expectations of life
when you have that sort of
we’ve gotten into this place where
enlightenment is the goal and
enlightenment is beautiful it’s the
lightning of burton burdens it’s
releasing things that are heavy that’s
great but not all of us in the current
society structure can sit and meditate
for 20 hours a day it’s just not
realistic
it’s beautiful practice and there are
times and seasons to do that but how do
we equip you with the tools to be able
to function in the world as it is today
and also be able to enjoy your life
better and go from the ebbs and flow the
maxing and the welling the inhaling and
the exhaling so that you have the
maximum quality of life possible
enlightenment can be a little bit of a
negative feedback loop because whenever
or at least the pressure to do so
because if you think to yourself oh
i’m feeling stressed i should be above
this i should be past this already why
is this why am i getting bogged down
again because i have all these tasks
this person at work was said this again
and it really you know the shoulds the
shaming the blaming of all of these
things
i i need to be more advanced i’ve done
all this counseling and all this work
this is still coming back
well
stress is gonna come back it’s gonna
come in and go out emotions are meant to
be waves that come through and
teach us something when they’re here and
then they go ahead and leave as well the
more we resist something there’s always
that agile principle where we resist it
persists and it’s just gonna stick
around so
releasing that pressure of thinking i
should be somewhere else than i am so
begin where you are
if you have a period of time you observe
and you say man i’m really maxing i’m
really stressed then how do you bring
that well in there and how do you have a
little bit more grace and ease with just
observing the flow
daring to engage in the world
differently which is a really big deal
so what this last year in 2020 has given
us opportunity for a lot of people is a
little bit more
internal dialogue let’s just say and we
have a lot of conversations with
ourselves don’t we i will raise my hand
and say at least i know i do i spend a
whole lot of time up there
and a lot of conversations and a lot of
decisions and emotional reactions that
can occur just be just in our minds
so
because of all this extra introspection
we have this opportunity to
take that and start to really observe
and how are we as we’re now kind of
starting to maybe engage in the world
how are we going to within the current
constructs of having to participate in
our jobs and our families and all of our
roles and structures
do it in a way where we have a little
bit more ease so do you laugh often
how much are you laughing are you having
fun are you playing you know is play and
fun only for the young and what is the
belief around that because we really
encourage kids to be kids but we don’t
model that behavior for them and i’m not
saying go play on a jungle gym all day
because
you know if you are a tax accountant and
it’s tax day that’d probably be really
challenging to justify i understand that
but at the same time how are we
what kind of conversation and belief
subset do we have about the things we’re
doing in our everyday lives as you’re
sending that email are you realizing
that you’re impacting another human life
no matter what role you’re playing in
the community and society at large are
you having some fun with that is there
room for creativity
these are really interesting questions
to start to observe especially as you’re
in that
you know push and pull and written
routine
how happy are you
are you being silly and joking with your
co-workers and friends and family
members or is it just kind of you know
tunnel vision and check the next thing
off the box
we have really big impact and all the
energy that we bring into what we do
ripples out to everybody that we are in
contact with
every single person
we are that powerful and it’s really
important to remember
so
living in the bull sand the max and the
well viewing stress as an opportunity it
is our greatest teacher and the best
thing is is that it’s our greatest
teacher and with it within it’s always
with us it is a never-ending gift for
curiosity and growth because growth
because what i promise you is it’s not
going anywhere
there is not a magic anti-stress pill
okay
there are some pharmaceutical drugs that
might help mitigate some of your
responses but they tend to be blunting
and
our goal long term is not to have people
rely on those types of interventions so
that they can really feel all their
emotions because feeling your emotions
is one of the also the greatest gifts
so having that growth mindset change and
flow is our guide moments of contrast
and frustration are an opportunity for
resilience and expansion
always giving yourself that spark of
curiosity to just question and and open
open up a dialogue internally about how
things might be able to
better
deepen and shift your relationship with
life long term
a lot
while at the same time not spending too
much time in overanalyzation it’s a
really fine line however these are the
kind of just soft places to land that
are really helpful for you whenever
you’re starting to evaluate how do i
view stress when i think about it does
it make me stressed am i occupying my
days running away from that emotion
am i or am i occupying my days actively
engaging you know am i how am i running
away from the experience of life how am
i not fully showing up
really interesting when you start to
just open and honestly ask those
questions that makes you
or not makes you but gives you the
opportunities to start deeping into
relationship with yourself and your body
listening to yourself more because
the thing is is that the greatest tool
for deep healing that we have at our
clinic and beyond
is you it is your body it is the signals
that it’s giving you it is the
its innate ability to heal and thrive
and function in a miraculous way
that is beyond what any science and
conventional studies could possibly
quantify those are the miracles and it
comes in these types of questions it
comes in this sort of
ease
about expanding into a life that could
have a little bit more play and fun and
realize
you know how is that intimate
relationship with myself and all the
messages my body is telling me the most
sacred and powerful tool that i have
do i believe i’m going to be well do i
believe that i can shift my experience
with the way i view world and the
stressors that come in
how can stress be a word that when i
hear it i think
yes
that’s fun
i am engaged and excited to see
how where this is gonna take me
whether it’s going to be a journey
that’s going to spiral me into another
level of freedom
or it’s going to take me down a road
that shows me something i wasn’t aware
about myself or others
or allows me to deepen into relationship
with those that i’m closest to
stress is telling us a lot
always asking that question what is it
showing me
really interesting
especially when we start to view it as a
really really positive thing
so
transformation and action steps
that you can take with you from all the
things we just talked about and all the
ways in which the miracle of stress is
creating you your life everybody’s
around you and how it is the creative
juice
of the world and as it functions so the
first action step is to listen i have
seven for you the first one is listen
that’s it really simple
listen and listen deeply listen to what
what stressors are coming up for you
listen to how you respond to different
things to those voices and questions in
your head
just listen
then action step number two
is to listen with curiosity and play
because
as you’ll notice when you start to
deepen into this work when you just
listen sometimes there’s some filters
there there’s some filters there with
some judgments that’s human
it is very natural to do
so the next step is to listen with
curiosity and play
ha that’s really interesting that that
made me feel that way
hello old friend
i remember this emotion and i know
that
this continues to come up for me that’s
really interesting okay how do i play
with doing something different and if i
and if the thought of that
makes me feel really nervous and anxious
and uncertain then why
what then so if i do this what am i most
afraid of and you’ll find sometimes that
it might be
it might surprise you the answers that
come forward
uh we’ll we’ll leave that open in it
because it i just i think it’ll you’ll
be really interested to hear
uh where that where that leads
number three
asks so we’re listening
we’re listening with curiosity at play
we’re gonna ask loving questions so
after we listen then we say to ourselves
oh
well why do i feel that way
and two in a way were you really caring
for yourself
a lot of times we are given messages and
shown examples of how to really lovingly
care for others and not necessarily how
to do that for ourselves so this is the
opportunity to do that
number four laugh at yourself
don’t take yourself so seriously
everybody is so serious these days and
especially when it comes to our own
emotions
there is nothing better that can move
and transmute and transform energy and
any stuckness and intensity like
laughter so do it more often and anytime
you can even if it’s just at yourself
you know we we are sometimes uh really
funny
number five be open to new possibilities
so you’ve listened you’ve listened with
curiosity and play you’ve laughed at
yourself now you gotta be open because
if you’re not open to what else could
come through then you might miss out on
a really insightful spark of
divine knowledge and a little pull or
intuition
that you’ve never had before that could
lead you down an entirely different path
number six invite wisdom
so you’re open to new possibilities
i’m here i’m ready i’m open let’s see
what happens and then invite in that
wisdom that might come forward say okay
and i and i welcome what’s going to come
and and bounce this off of other people
wisdom is the creativity in our modern
modern world you know we are so
connected via technology as we’re having
in this moment
there’s not as much opportunity for
physical contact and where you can
really kind of read other people in real
time in their body language and get all
the non-verbal sensations that occur in
the human experience that are just
beautiful
so
that sort of
seeking wisdom and asking deep people
questions and what do you think and how
do you feel and you know i had this
stressor come up and kind of listen to
it and then i asked a few more questions
and here’s what i got from that and
man i really laughed at myself because i
really that was really intense and i
took that to a whole different level and
now i’m open you know have you had an
experience with that and what is your
wisdom and see how that can create
a leveling and really connecting with
people in a whole different way than
maybe you’ve ever experienced before i
personally recommend doing it with
people um you know grocery store check
out individuals or um
if you’re pumping your gas
the more that we can invite these types
of conversations in our
day-to-day lives the the more love and
compassion that will ripple out and it’s
really really profound step number seven
is to take inspired action
so after you’ve invited in that wisdom
and you’re open all those possibilities
take action on what comes through
sometimes there is this misconception
that if i
i’m going to manifest a
million dollars by sitting in my home
and believing that i’m manifesting a
million dollars
hey if that works
kudos i am not taking that away at all
however sometimes to get to that we have
to take action we have to move and
motivate forward and all of the
ideas and the oh i don’t know why i feel
pulled to call that person or
write this down or create this thing
leads us into the next direction to
actually vision and innovate and move
forward to obtain the dreams and grow
towards what we want to be in life so
you have to take action on the things
that come forward for you and not
necessarily be passive in life and part
of that is to change our relationships
with the things that we find to be the
most debilitating be it stress or
otherwise
so
in conclusion as you guys probably
assumed i would get here because the
moral of the story is that stress is
your friend
it really is it is your friend it is
your teacher
it is a transient emotion it is with you
all the time and however you decide to
perceive it
and
empower yourself and how you shift your
relationship with it could change not
only your world but the world of anybody
else you get to be in contact with so
i will open it up for any questions and
answers
if anybody has any
i’ll give it just a minute or two
i don’t see any so
with that i hope that you all took and
gleaned a little something and maybe at
least something to think about as you go
off into your evenings and the rest of
your days whatever time you’re listening
to this
on behalf of myself and everybody at the
maxwell clinic thank you again for your
participation your heart
your wisdom your presence
your um inspiration to us all and for
being a part of this community it is an
honor and a privilege to serve each and
every one of you and i look forward to
hopefully being able to engage with you
around the clinic
thank you so much bye everybody
