Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, I'm going to talk about a simple way to tame your triggers. So we all have these moments where we can get triggered, right? Maybe it's in the midst of a heated conversation or when someone does something or says something insensitive and we feel that urge to react. But when we do become reactive or lash out, we often end up saying, or doing things we really regret later. So how can we take our triggers? How can we learn to pause and find calm and collect ourselves so that we can respond with wisdom instead of reacting? One way is through the practice of self soothing.

Self-soothing is really a way to take care of ourselves when we're feeling really overwhelmed or distressed or reactive. So why don't we just give this a try right now and I'll guide you through a practice of self soothing. So to begin with, you might like to close your eyes and just take a deep, slow breath in. And then on the exhale, beginning to tune into whether there's any tension or tightness in the body and see if you can soften it a little. Just noticing if there's any tension in the jaw, any tension in the shoulders, or in the fists.

And just with every exhale now, seeing if you can soften the tension a little. Just keeping on focusing on your breathing and giving yourself a little bit of compassion in this time. Softening and settling. And when you're ready, you can open the eyes. So this is one way of self-soothing.

Just taking a little mindful break, and letting go of tension, deep breathing. Other ways of self-soothing might include just going outside for a short walk if you have time, listening to some music, laying down, taking a bath. Just doing something to regulate your nervous system and soothe yourself and bring back some mindful awareness. So during this time of self-soothing, you don't need to figure out what triggered you, that can come later. The focus in your time of self-soothing is just to settle and calm your nervous system.

Now it's been proven that physically, it takes about 20 minutes for your body to regulate after you get triggered. So if you are in the middle of a heated conversation with someone and the other person demands that you talk about things now, I give you full permission to say to them, actually you need 20 minutes. And it will be worth the wait because after that, you'll be able to have a much more fruitful and productive and kind and wise conversation. So today's invitation. The next time you get triggered or you start to feel really overwhelmed or reactive in a conversation with someone, ask for some time out so that you can go and self-sooth.

In this way, you bring more awareness, more kindness, and more wisdom into your life right when you need it the most. So as always, thank you for your practice and your presence here with us. And now let's settle in for today's meditation.