Podcast Episode 64: Managing stress - physical and mental

Okay, hello again. This is Jonathan. I'm a mature student on a Masters in Nursing programme in the East of England. I did an earlier podcast, in fact just a few moments ago, on my reflections on, I suppose, the current training routes into nursing, particularly for mature students and my reflections on those and also a bit about my background. And I thought I would do a second, shorter recording on a completely different subject, really, which is, but it is, I think it's related to how, you know, how you manage situations of stress, one of which, you know, would certainly be the experience of being a mature nursing student. So I've not long come back from a visit to a small community farm for which my wife and I are trustees, which we've helped set up with a group of friends and other people locally, where we have some livestock. We have four really gorgeous, very friendly sheep and two really beautiful South African boa goats. No, I didn't just come here to boast about how beautiful and cute our animals are, though they certainly are. I wanted to really try and put this in the context of, you know, my current experiences as a mature student. We hear a lot of talk in the media, and it's quite fashionable now to talk about mindfulness, the kind of sense of being in the moment. And I don't want to get too mystical about that or too much into the sort of philosophy behind mindfulness, but I would think, describe it really as becoming very absorbed in a pleasing and stimulating activity activity for a period of time, which wholly absorbs your attention and allows you to put other things temporarily out of your conscious. And I'm sure I needn't say that life as a mature student, particularly in the NHS as it is now, is quite a challenging one and frequently I feel overwhelmed by my circumstances and we all in life have periods where we feel very stressed, very caught up in life and it feels like we're on a train that we can't stop and it's very important therefore that we develop strategies for, Or I suppose looking after ourselves and caring for yourself. Interestingly, the Nursing Midwifery Council actually has self-care as one of its standards and would say that nurses have responsibility to attend to their own physical and emotional care. And this is common of other professions as well. My wife is a qualified counselor and the standards that she must work to also specify and that she has a duty to attend to her own health and well-being. The logic being of course if we can't look after ourselves then we're going to struggle to look after the people that we work with and whom we care for in our professional lives. So how does this tie up to animals generally and are there more dividends to to mindful activities like visiting a care farm and spending time petting your very cute sheep and goats? Well, first of all, as I've said, you have a period where you can totally absorb yourself in an activity which is pleasing and which requires you to think of no more than the moment. And anyone, and I'm sure many of you listening have pets will know that the animals can be a great comfort and much can be learned from them. They live very much in the moment. They're very spontaneous. They don't worry necessarily about tomorrow or yesterday. They don't ruminate and think about what they should or shouldn't be doing or jobs they have to do. And I think by spending time with them it is as though they can begin to communicate some of those those qualities to you. But of course it can be any activity. It could be, I don't know, making a matchstick model. It could be cleaning the house. It could be a number of activities, engaging with a television program, you know, or a film, which you which you're very fond of spending time with friends or family many other things so i think having this resource in life having somewhere you can escape to whatever that is is a really important survival strategy and one i think that we you know it's beneficial for all of us to cultivate um because all of us have stress of some kind in in life So that's one aspect, I think, of my particular outlet, which is spending time on our farm with our animals. But I think there's another dividend as well, and that relates to our physical and not just mental, as I've seen, but as I've said, but physical health as well. We have a lot of a lot of discussion, I think, in in the media and in the kind of Western context about exercise versus activity or movement. And I think sometimes we tend to conflate the two subjects and think that if we're not exercising then somehow nothing is actually good enough and it's perhaps useful to think about a definition here. I would describe exercise as a recreational activity that provides pleasure and working out in the gym will give a lot of people pleasure. And I would differentiate that from activity or movement as a function of daily life. And it's that where I really want to focus. I think it's important to recognize that we are animals that have evolved to be active. We are required to move to attend really to the fact of our existence and our daily life. And that this provides positive opportunities for movement versus exercise. I personally would run a mile rather than work out in a gym, but I do recognise the importance of remaining mobile and moving and of course attending to farm animals who need feeding and care, walking down the muddy path to the farm, feeding the animal straw and so forth all involve activity and purposeful activity and movement and that could equally translate to cleaning one's house, walking to the shop to buy a newspaper, it might be standing up from your computer for 10 minutes if you've been working at it for a long time and stretching your legs moving around. All of these activities and here I hope to tie this discussion back to the work of the Leg Club will serve to help your body to protect itself from developing conditions which can lead to problems with your lower limbs. Every time you bend or stretch to stroke your pet dog for example you're working your calf muscles and you're helping your body to push that blood back up into circulation. So there's a dividend there. And again, I think it's important to recognise that you don't have to be engaging in exercise to be engaging in useful and physically beneficial movement and activity. And I think that's essentially the essence of my message in this particular podcast, that, you know, value the activities you do do and maximise them wherever you can. And this can only contribute both to your mental good health, but also enable your body to look after itself and and to stay healthy as well. So I hope that's been of some use again, just perspectives as an adult learner. but I have spent quite a lot of time attending to leg care in certainly my second placement. So I hope some of these insights are reasonably well-founded on personal experience. So again, I hope you found this of some interest and obviously if you have any comments or observations, please do share, but thanks again, bye.