Good morning, folks! I am Jin with Morning Mindfulness Podcast. I hope you are doing great in your corner of the World! Let’s start a new day with a breath and a smile!

One of the main questions I’ve been getting over the years, is “Why meditation does not help to relieve stress?”

My Thoughts about Meditation and Mindfulness For Stress Relief

I’ve done several long teaching episodes about dealing with stress. You can listen to them on my web site.

One of the main issues I see today is that we live in a fast pace “microwave” society. We want everything yesterday. Many people look at meditation as a headache pill: take it now and it starts working five minutes ago.

Guys, meditation is a tool. It requires time to learn it. Just like any skill, the longer you do it, the better you may do in stressful situation. That’s why there’s even a bumper sticker: “New driver at the wheel”. It means the person knows how to drive, but may not do well under pressure.

One more analogy: if your house is on fire, you need a fire extinguisher, not a fireproof building material. What it means, when you sit and meditate, you are fireproofing your emotions, you are building your house. But if the house is still weak, or the fire is too strong, you need a fire extinguisher.

This is one thing I teach in my class: how to deal with unbalanced stress when it happens. I call it emergency tools. We’ll talk about it later.

Thanks for tuning in! You can subscribe to my podcast on my site HPLN.org.
Now let’s breathe and smile. Repeat one more time. I’ll talk to you next time.

PEACE!
Jin

Listen to other Morning Mindfulness Podcast episodes here