As you can see from the photo above, as well as the thumbnail on this video, things got a little mellow during Tuesday’s Live Chat with psychologist and mindfulness expert Sara Rabinovitch, and that was a good thing.

Besides her practice, Rabinovitch operates Pacific MNDFL, short for Pacific Center for Mindfulness & Psychotherapy, a research-supported mindfulness practice for enhancing health and wellbeing. Still, she admits there was a time when the thought of sitting, meditating and considering her breath, kind of made her angry.

“My initial reactions were something like, ‘Sit still and do nothing? Be kind to myself? You’ve got to be kidding me.’”

A driven athlete, she played basketball at NYU, Rabinovitch had always been taught the way to happiness was just to “Work harder, Sara!” It’s a familiar sentiment for many of us and one that tends to grind people down, especially at a time like this when one is either prohibited from taking action or has set up some formidable expectations for themselves.

Rabinovitch talked about those expectations and the stress it creates and showed us ways to lessen its effects by being more mindful of our bodies and breath. Anyone can do it, said Rabinovitch who works with athletes at Long Beach State and also had suggestions about how parents can use mindfulness exercises to center and calm kids stuck at home.

She walked us through a few exercises of our own, showing us you don’t have to be at home or sitting down to do them. In fact, during one of them, we were in line getting a beer.