Germán Jurado, 'coach' specialist in stress: "15 minutes a day of meditation is already useful"

Is it possible to defeat stress? Complicated, but possible if you learn to train your mind, defends the coach Germán Jurado, author of the book Living without stress (Vergara publishing house). For this, resources are needed to understand how the mind works and turn it into a powerful tool that allows us to reconnect the body with the present.

An accredited instructor of MSBR (Mindfulness for Stress Reduction), Jurado attends Vivo by video call, sitting on a cushion in a meditation position, and speaks passionately about this path to learn to be present, something key in mindfulness meditation. A Zen student at the Kwan Um School, Germán Jurado expresses in a practical way his method to alleviate one of the great current psychological plagues.

Is it inevitable to live without stress?

Stress is coexistent, it is part of our nature and a part of this stress has to do with life changes, big or small. But if we have a new awareness, a broader perspective, a different perception of events, this can help us better manage those moments of stress, with tools and resources. There are strategies that are conscious, adaptive and others that are unaware, non-adaptive, and when there is that imbalance it feels like a kind of discomfort, restlessness, we can only try to recover that balance. But when there is no awareness, these mechanisms do not help to solve the origin of stress, but rather they transfer our discomfort.

As which?

For example, if I’m a little restless or nervous about something, maybe I’ll go out and have a couple of beers and feel a little relief. Or I eat something and it gives me peace of mind, because food changes us quickly on a chemical level. I can try other non-conscious strategies, such as sex to cover a deficiency, gambling, drugs, etc. They are non-conscious strategies that do not solve the origin of the discomfort but simply move it and if that habit becomes a bad relationship with myself generates more suffering.

And the conscious ones?

We can regulate conscious strategies through meditation, yoga-type exercises, through a walk, conscious stretching, sports, reconnecting with nature, a good conversation with a friend, All these strategies are conscious and go to the origin of our discomfort, they help us to recover that balance. And then there is also a part of how we are experiencing these supposed threats. In the end, when we interpret that a situation is threatening, stress appears. In the MBSR course we talked about a tool called Stephen R. Covey’s circle of control, how to identify where these threats are, whether they are in the control circle of what depends on us, or in the circle of worry about those things we cannot change. If it is in our area of ​​control, we can see what the tasks, actions, and resources are to change that situation, and if we cannot do anything because it does not depend on us, we can always change how we experience these situations, for example, working on acceptance to manage those moments better.

We live in a society with a lot of stress. Because?

Stress is something that coexists with humans and depends on many factors. We all experience stress to a greater or lesser extent at some point. And since it is multifactorial, it also has to do with how we use and understand how our mind works, and with lifestyle in an age when we want and need so many things. We live as if life were a sprint and it is this way of living that leads to stress. And last but not least, the concept or idea that we have of what life is, that things are solid and do not change, and it is the opposite. Everything that has a name and form appears and disappears, and clinging to what we have identified as making us happy makes us suffer if we lose it. Not accepting these changes also makes us live with stress.

You say that stress is caused by our mind. Can we counter that?

Unlike the physical body, which has a form, the mind does not, but it can travel wherever it wants. With it we can create, through thoughts, our heavens or our hells. The mind creates everything. And the sooner we learn to understand how it works, the sooner we can better manage this suffering and live more fully. In the line of time, emotions and sensations happen in our body in the present, that’s why when we talk about ‘mindfulness’, in stress reduction courses or in MBSR, we talk about the importance of returning to the body, because when we we connect with him is in the present, we are not thinking about anything else. Projecting into the future and into the past is something very useful, but when we do it too much, it generates internal imbalances that manifest externally. Hence the importance of understanding how the mind works. When we sit down to meditate, what we do is try to bring our attention to the body, to the connection with the breath or with the sensations of the body at the moment, to the emotions, because that helps us withdraw our attention from thoughts and bring it back. to the body, to connect with the present moment, that is to say that we are not thinking about things and therefore we are not feeding that stress and wear.

In your book, you start from the basis that mindfulness and meditation are a way to get rid of stress. But doesn’t that take a lot of time?

We can delve into what is long and what is short. This the mind is very interested in. Precisely one of its functions is to compare, analyze, know if it is a long or short process. Mindfulness is a process in which the important thing is not to arrive but to be in that process. Jon Kabat-Zinn is one of the fathers of mindfulness and my book Living Without Stress is based on his MBSR program that he created in 1979, where he collects the nine mindfulness attitudes and one of them is patience. When we deploy this wisdom, we understand that the important thing is not to reach the result, but to see what person I am going to become while I am on this journey. So let’s not be in a hurry to reach that desired state, important things need time and not rush.

Do we need to meditate every day to avoid stress?

Many things that we repeat every day allow us to enjoy its benefits. Like, for example, brushing our teeth. Practicing meditation every day helps us in some way to be less reactive to what happens to us, to take better care of ourselves. We are more aware, we listen to the body’s messages, we are more present, we can be more effective, do what we are doing better and of course it also helps us to be more connected with our relationships, to develop empathy. We can notice all these benefits as we practice meditation, but to touch its essence in greater depth it is very important that we have a day-to-day practice so that we not only see the most visible benefits, but also go deeper into the heart of the practice, which has to do with transforming ourselves in a profound way.

How much time do we need to meditate?

In order to connect with the benefits of the practice, it is important that it be around 30 minutes. Five minutes can help us relax, but we are not going to get in touch with the wisdom of the practice of meditation, we need to have more time and have a record to gradually expand our awareness. In the end, meditation is very subtle but little by little it transforms us in a very profound way from within and eliminates those barriers that we have created around the heart.

And if we are beginners? Should we still practice 30 minutes?

It is said that the only bad meditation is the one that is not done. Everything will contribute, be it 5, 10, 15 minutes. At the beginning you can start with 15 minutes, in fact in the stress reduction courses we start with meditations of this time and little by little we expand. Mindfulness or meditation is not something that one can experience on a theoretical level, reading a book or listening to someone. It is not only maintaining the position sitting on the meditation cushion, but also how we maintain our mind from moment to moment, that presence or attention, and how I use it when I am in relationship with others. So when a person starts with 15 minutes it can be a very good practice, the important thing is that they try to do it every day. It is much better to practice 15 minutes every day than to do an hour one day.

We are always told that for those moments of stress you have to breathe deeply: does it work?

You can try it. We’re just going to do ten conscious breaths. We are going to breathe slowly and when we reach ten we open our eyes. You have to get in a comfortable position, back straight, hands relaxed, inhale and exhale from one to ten. It is very interesting because it allows you to see how you are breathing and a way of breathing is a way of living. We have this gift that is breathing and we can regulate ourselves through it. It is not an outward connection to where the whole world is, it is an inward connection with oneself.

Can we apply this breath in a moment of stress?

We refer to this strategy in mindfulness and in the MBSR course as informal practices and we can do it at any time, for example: at work, if we have received an email and suddenly we have noticed how this news has generated stress, we can stop for a moment, and observing the position of the body, we close our eyes and do 20 conscious breaths, from zero to ten and from ten to zero. This tool can help regulate us and we can include it within formal meditation or do it in isolation within our day to day. Breathing brings us balance and attention in the present moment, when we connect with the breath, the sensations of the body stop spinning things and those moments of wear and tear cease and we recover our balance.

Can we help someone we see stressed?

It is a very interesting question. We can offer ourselves but in the end the decision to want to make a change will depend on you, you cannot help anyone who does not want to be helped, who considers that it is not their time, but we can ask, offer. The teachers show us the doors but it is one who has to go through those doors. Although when we focus on ourselves it has an effect on others, we generate influence.

One of the great excuses is: “I have never meditated.”

Like many things that we start to do in life, we have to try it, try it. One of the nine mindfulness attitudes is right effort, no effort. What does this mean? Shunryu Suzuki explained it in his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, he said not to add anything to what you are doing. When we sit down to meditate we ask a lot of things to practice, to bring us peace of mind, to relieve stress, to be well, with complete clarity, etc. But what happens when what we are looking for does not appear? We get discouraged, it doesn’t work, this doesn’t work for me. In these sit-ins there is a natural tendency to want to achieve something, but it is very important to let go of expectations by simply sitting down and doing the best you can at the time.