The Alberta Teachers’ Association

Mind your stress

How you think affects how you feel

Information provided by the ATA’s Council for School Counsellors (CSC)

Mindfulness, a quality within the formal practice of meditation, invites you to notice your thinking patterns to reduce stress.

Step 1: Pay attention to your thoughts and emotions, naming them, to shift from being on automatic pilot to piloting with awareness.

Step 2: Take a deep breath—in fact, take a few deep breaths. By manipulating your breathing to a slower rhythm, you shift your reactive state. Four square or boxed breathing are the simplest ways to begin.

Helpful Resource

Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Published by Hyperion (1994, 2004).