Wellness Minutes
Designed by an Indian Clinical-Community Psychologist in the US, this podcast is designed by -and- for people who know stress, burnout and overwhelm but also long for sustainable ways to cope and be well.
Short episodes, full of guided practices and short descriptions of why these wellness strategies work.
This podcast is designed to get you thinking about ways to make wellness strategies a part of your everyday life. Each episode is an invitation to pause and take a deep breath.
Wellness Minutes
The One-Minute Rebellion Against Constant Stress
Take a deep breath. Now another. What did you just activate? Your parasympathetic nervous system—the forgotten half of your body's stress-response equation.
Most of us have mastered the art of stress. Our sympathetic nervous system—responsible for fight-or-flight responses—operates like a well-oiled machine. Meanwhile, our parasympathetic system—the crucial mechanism for rest and recovery—sits gathering dust on the shelf. This imbalance leaves us perpetually stressed, constantly doing, and rarely truly resting until we're completely exhausted.
The Wellness Minutes podcast offers a refreshingly simple antidote: just one minute of intentional breathing. Through a guided four-count breathing exercise, you'll experience firsthand how quickly your body can shift from stress to calm. This practice activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which functions like protective hands covering your ears against the loud noises of life's constant demands.
While we can't control all the stressors life throws our way, we can strengthen our response to them. Regular breathing practice buffers against stress, creating resilience where there was once only reactivity. This episode is your invitation to dust off that parasympathetic response and begin strengthening it—no special equipment or hours of practice required.
Take just one minute today to breathe deeply. Your nervous system will thank you. Subscribe to Wellness Minutes for more simple, powerful practices to find balance in a chaotic world.
We'd love to hear from you, send us a text!
Opening Music by Jeremiah Alves from Pixabay
Closing Music by Aleksandr Karabanov from Pixabay
Thank you for listening,
much metta,
Dr G
Welcome to the Wellness Minutes. This is a podcast that just invites you to take a deep breath and pause. No matter where you are, what you're doing, there's always a minute to take a deep breath. So now that you're here, why don't you go ahead and take a deep breath?
Speaker 2:Just count 1, 2, 3, 4. Pause Breathe out 1, 2, 3, 4.
Speaker 1:Do that two more times.
Speaker 2:I'll wait 1, 2, 3, four pause, breathe out one, two, three, four.
Speaker 1:And the last time one, two, three, four.
Speaker 2:Pause. Breathe out one, two, three, four.
Speaker 1:So let me tell you one interesting thing about the breath, the breath of life. No matter where you are, you're likely to be breathing or trying to breathe, and the amazing thing about the breath is it's the simplest way to activate the parasympathetic nervous system. Very broadly, our nervous system is divided into two parts the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is constantly scanning for what's going on in the world, and it's helping you adapt to it. It's helping you react to it by doing what you need to do in order to survive. So the sympathetic nervous system is pretty important, but so is the parasympathetic nervous system. It's the part of the nervous system that actually gets you to rest and digest after the stress has passed. That actually gets you to rest and digest after the stress has passed. We need both. We can't keep running all the time. We also need to sleep, so the sympathetic nervous system does its job, and the parasympathetic does its job of getting you to rest. The crazy thing about human life, though, is we have so much stress, so much going on all the time, though is we have so much stress so much going on all the time that we end up getting many more signals to keep stressing out, to keep working, to keep doing. We don't get enough reminders to rest. Sometimes you need to be really, really tired before you realize, gosh, I think I need to rest. Tired before you realize, gosh, I think I need to rest. So our sympathetic nervous system is like a well-oiled machine, whereas the parasympathetic ends up being this rusty machine you don't use too often. It's lying on top of the shelf, probably needs dusting. So that's where Wellness Minutes comes in. It's a little podcast to encourage you to take that machine down, dust it, oil it, use it more often, just so that it becomes as strong as the sympathetic nervous system. Just so that it becomes as strong as the sympathetic nervous system. We sometimes have no control over the stresses that life throws at us, but we do have some control over how we respond to those stresses and how we maybe even buffer against those stresses. Just like your hands that you place over your ears, and how we maybe even buffer against those stressors, just like your hands that you place over your ears to cushion them against loud sounds the same way the parasympathetic nervous system can be strengthened to become that hand you place over your ears to protect them against loud sounds. So that's why Breathe, and this podcast is going to provide you many other ways to strengthen your parasympathetic nervous system.
Speaker 1:Breathing is the most basic one. Nervous system Breathing is the most basic one. Breathing, taking a minute to actually breathe deeply and focus just on your breath. Your thoughts might wander, something might be calling you, but I invite you to say, hey, just a minute and take a deep breath. Count, so that you are reminded to breathe slowly and it also gives your mind something to do so. On that note, I let you go now and I hope you'll remember to take a deep breath.