Cut through the Noise: How Mindfulness Can Reduce Stress & Overwhelm as an Expat in Milan.
- milanwomennetwork
- Apr 18
- 8 min read
As championed by our resident expert, Claudia, it’s not needing ‘to be fixed’ that draws us to mindfulness. Instead, it’s about the desire to become more resilient. And we can do this by tapping into our already-there inner resources to elevate our experience living in a foreign country - and successfully handle the ups and downs that come with it.
Backed by scientific research, its impact on our brains and daily life is undoubtedly more than we imagine.If you’re looking to not let overwhelm and stress dictate the quality of your lived experience in Italy…here’s her take on the Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction Protocol (MBSR), with simple approaches to adopt as your own.
Written by: Claudia Vettore (of The Mindful Cloud)
You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather. (Pema Chodron)
It all started with me living and working in Luxembourg as an expat, with a good job and a complicated relationship. Fast-forward ten years, and this quote has become a guiding mantra in my everyday life – professional and private alike.
In between, I stumbled into Mindfulness, became an MBSR instructor (more on this later), turned my tango dancing into an additional tool to use in class, together with poetry-therapy and drawing.
Geographically speaking, I moved back to Italy - first to Sicily and last year to Milan, as I felt this was the place where I could meet “my” people – which is also how I found the MWN!
I am truly grateful to those challenging moments that pushed me to take care of myself, allowed me to gradually rediscover my natural resources, helped me to stay present with a non-judgmental attitude and with the so-called ‘beginner’s mind’ – and, most importantly, enabled me to share Mindfulness and all my other tools!
But…
WHO IS IT FOR?
A survey carried out by Alan and Harris Interactive shows that, in 2022, 1 in 2 employees experienced mental health issues, and according to WHO, by 2030 depression will be the #1 cause of death-inducing illnesses.
And yet…there is no need to be ‘sick’ in order to practice, as tapping into our innate personal resources is something that is beneficial to all of us, and that contributes to our well-being.
As Jon Kabat-Zinn (the father of MBSR) stated, none of us is ‘broken’ and needs to be ‘fixed’, and there is more ‘right’ than ‘wrong’ in each of us.
Mindfulness is nowadays available to many people and in very diverse settings: although it has been found to be useful to mix participants with different backgrounds, it is also meaningful to cater for special needs relevant to specific groups - at school (see the trailer of a touching documentary in the references), at work, at yoga centres, within the police department and inside the army, in hospitals and so on.
This could very well apply to the specific challenges you face as female expats, e.g. difficulty in networking, loneliness, language/culture obstacles, worries about your children, anxiety about bureaucracy (especially in Italy!), security, etc.
A group seminar/course could support the self-exploration of the feelings you’re experiencing, help you differentiate perception from reality, and realise that many other women/people share exactly the same vulnerabilities.
On the one hand, you can normalise whatever you feel, while on the other, you can work on making sure it does not control the quality of your experience abroad and on becoming more empowered and able to make more fact-based decisions to live as best as you can. Does that sound helpful?
SO… WHAT IS MBSR?
The Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) Protocol is a programme based on several decades of clinical experience, designed to assist people with pain and a range of stressful conditions.
Developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in the late 1970s by Jon Kabat-Zinn, MBSR uses a combination of Mindfulness meditation, body awareness and yoga to help people become more mindful.In recent years, it has been the subject of controlled clinical research, suggesting it has beneficial effects, including stress reduction, relaxation, and improvements to quality of life.
The Protocol consists of 8 weekly 2-hour Classes plus a Full Day Class on a weekend day.
To this day, although I have enriched my teaching with additional input - from tango, poetry, movement and drawing – the MBSR curriculum has remained the basis on which I develop any course or intervention, whether with adults, children, in corporate or more meditative environments.
If you want to know more about it, you will of course find a lot of info online, but you can also attend for free the ‘Orientation’ class before the start of any protocol cycle – get in touch if you’d like to be notified of any upcoming programmes!
WHAT DO I NEED IN ORDER TO PRACTICE?
There is no special gear needed to practice. It is advisable to dress comfortably, allowing us to sit for a while or to do gentle movements. Depending on flexibility or preferences, we may sit on a normal chair or on the floor – on a mat, a meditation stool or a cushion.
But for some Mindfulness exercises even a bus seat is good enough – it is really not about the props! We all have what is needed, inside of us and… free!
On the other hand, our attitude is paramount: we try to keep a ‘beginner’s mind’, i.e. a curious and yet kind and non-judgemental attitude, open to whatever arises – even when we would like things to be different.
Life thus becomes our playground, where we’re less afraid of performance or outcomes, thanks to our superpower - Mindfulness.
ARE THERE ANY RISKS RELATED TO PRACTICING MINDFULNESS?
One of Mindfulness’ founding principles is self-care: the idea is not to try and push our limits too far, but rather to explore them gently.
Yet, this voyage inside our mind and body patterns may be quite upsetting at times, especially at the beginning.
Like with all other training-related activities, it requires patience, discipline and kindness, in order to put up with possible moments of frustration, lack of motivation, or even distress at seeing more clearly deep inside of our mind.
IS THERE ANY RESEARCH SUPPORTING MBSR’S BENEFITS?
When JKZ started his programme, back in the late ’70s, he did not expect it to be so successful, and it was mainly participants’ reactions and feedback that worked as evidence of its efficacy (there’s a very interesting video with ‘vintage’ footage from those times, I’m providing the link below if you’re curious to watch it).
Nowadays we are blessed with countless – and increasingly deeper and more detailed – research carried out at scientific level, based on relatively recent discoveries made through neuroimaging, such as neuroplasticity.
Although there is still much to be examined, Mindfulness’ impact on the brain and its reactions is now unquestionable and described in many studies.
FORMAL & INFORMAL PRACTICE
It’s now time to give it a try!
We call formal practice any meditation, mostly guided, carried out by finding a quiet place and some me-time to train our ability to be ‘fully here’. This can focus on the breath, the body, the feet if we’re walking, sounds, smells, but also thoughts and emotions.
If you’d like to give it a try, here is a video of a guided meditation I offered during a programme on self-worth, focused on welcoming all emotions (without our usual being overwhelmed by them!):
Informal practice is Mindfulness in everyday life, it’s how we bring this approach ‘from the mat’ to our lived experience.
Here is, for example, a simple and fun practice you can do with your child(ren) – but you’re welcome to do it alone! It’s taken from ‘Mindful Eating’ by Jan Bays, an insightful book to renew our sense of pleasure, appreciation, and satisfaction with eating.
THE TONGUE EXERCISE: For this exercise you’re going to need a snack, maybe your favourite one. You’re going to look at all the things the tongue does and all the experiences the tongue has as you eat – as if you had been assigned to write a biology paper. Ready?
Does the tongue have any reaction to the sight of this food?
Next, pick up a bite of food on a fork or spoon and slowly put it in your mouth and observe carefully: what is the tongue doing?
For example, how does the tongue get the food off the fork or spoon and into your mouth?
Once the food is in your mouth, how is the tongue involved in chewing? How does the tongue move around in the mouth?
Try chewing without moving the tongue, hold the tongue still and see what happens. Is it working?
Next, as you get ready to swallow, watch how the tongue decides when to swallow. And what is the tongue doing during swallowing?
You can repeat this with more bites or even when you take a drink.Mindful attention can open up an entire world of activities related to a part of our body that we ignore almost entirely.
I hope you now have a better idea of this SuperPower we are all born with, and how we tend to lose or rather hide away while growing up.
Formal practice is a lab for us to see and understand all our internal processes, undisturbed and unable to resort to distraction – but ultimately, it is informal practice (‘Mindfulness in action’) that we care about, and life is indeed the best playground for us to do that!
So if, as an expat, at times you feel a bit lonely and isolated, or worried about not being able to deal with all these new things in your life – close your eyes for a few minutes and ‘unroll the red carpet’ to any emerging feelings, give them a place to go and sit and relax, without allowing them to overwhelm you or make you freeze or withdraw from this wonderful new opportunity to meet the world around you.
Gently push yourself out of your comfort zone, knowing that nothing really bad can happen, that you carry your safe place inside you, wherever you go and whatever guest knocks on your door.
And aware that there are many more people out there feeling exactly like you, that could become great new friends to share your time and energy with, if you allow yourself to playfully explore what’s around you!
Of course this is all much more effective when it’s practiced over time and within a group. I would love for you to let me know how the practices felt and if you have any questions or doubts about Mindfulness and potential applications to your own life experience – inside-out!
About MeTHE MINDFUL CLOUD
is my brand – you can find more info on what I do, the additional courses I offer, integrating Mindfulness, Sophrology, Yoga, Dance Therapy, Poetry Therapy etc. – including in Corporate environment (these are incredibly insightful practices for teams working together as well as for leaders):
- on my website (EN & IT available)
- on Linkedin (as well as the Business page of Centro Mindfulness Milano – Area Corporate, which I developed together with 2 colleagues:)
- on my profile on the Self-Worth Academy portal: I am also the main Italian translator of Europe’s #1 Meditation app (but other languages are also available)
REFERENCES
A 20-minute video by the Center for Mindfulness founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn at Umass, with an interesting overview of the path covered so far and some vintage footage of the first courses held in hospital corridors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZCOqsSGu4w
May I be Happy – Mindfulness at School: trailer of this very interesting documentary: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/mayibehappy
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