In Search Of Calm ​​​​​​​

No matter how much mindfulness we practise, staying calm can be easier said than done. We share expert advice on how to deal with stress, embrace challenge, and boost your inner peace so you can handle whatever (pretty much) life throws at you

Writer Anita Chaudhuri talks to a performance coach, a mindfulness teacher and a neuroscientist and finds real calm is a practice, rather than a state of being.

This time last year, I completed the eight-week mindfulness training, as pioneered by American microbiologist and all-round super-guru Jon Kabat-Zinn. By the end of the course, I was positively zen-like. I couldn’t wait to get out there and live life as the non-excitable new me. I didn’t quite go out and buy myself a shiny new halo, but that’s only because I was too busy boasting about my transformation to anyone who could be bothered to listen. Fast-forward to the present. Did I manage to experience a whole year in that blissed-out, unruffled state? Er, not exactly. And that’s actually a good thing, say the experts. It seems a little bit of stress and adrenaline, now and then, can help us to become more resilient, better able to cope with the unexpected and more willing to take risks.

The one thing I discovered on my mindfulness journey is even the best strategies in the world can’t completely inoculate us from those gut-churning moments when crisis hits. If you arrive home to find your house has been burgled, or you’re handed your notice at work, or a child gets ill, no meditation technique exists to make the pain magically disappear. But the good news is that, with practice, you can learn to deal with difficult situations more effectively when they arise.

Jeremy Stockwell is a performance coach who’s worked with people from a variety of backgrounds, from politicians to pop stars.

“I think you can learn how to be calm in any situation, even a crisis,” he says. Jeremy observes that, in a crisis, our natural response is to resist or deny what’s happening. The urge is to escape and make the source of the upset disappear as quickly as possible.