Are you feeling confused and anxious? Is your mind racing in dozens of different directions? Here are a few swift methods to help bring you some comfort, focus and ground.
Centre yourself. Are you feeling separated and uneasy? When you’re anxious and lose your focus, your body and mind are separated. While your physical appearance is in the present, your brain may be racing in many different paths. To calm your head, discover and unite with your inner core. To do this, picture a line of energy and light coming down from the sky above you, entering the top of your head, going down through your body, and leaving through your feet. Align your thoughts and your body with this energy. Spend a few minutes breathing into your centre/core and experience the peace you find there.
Ground yourself. You can feel separate and out of balance when you are directionless in the present moment. Grounding exercises are intended to snap you back to reality and the present – the place of your optimal functioning. Practice these exercises and discover what works best for you.
- Ground yourself by taking a long breath and then rationally cataloging the things you notice around you, down to the smallest detail.
- Use your hearing senses to ground yourself by seeing all the sounds in your surroundings, including the pitch and growth of all the sounds and the sheets of sounds.
- Strong scents can help you reconnect to the present moment. A smell of an overpowering peppermint smell works wonders for many people.
- A physical exercise to ground yourself is to press with the heel of one foot onto the big toe of your opposite foot – press just hard enough to see it but not too severe to cause pain.
Deep breathing. If you are feeling anxious, diaphragmatic breathing brings more oxygen into your body, helping you relax your muscles, release tension, and feel more alarm and happy. To practice deep breathing, take a long breath in through your mouth like casually sipping a straw. Hold the inhaled air for a few moments, then smoothly exhale – like you blow out a candle until every little bit of breath is exhaled. Your next breath will naturally be a deep breath, enhancing your body’s ability to oxygenate your systems and cell. Do a few more of these exercises and observe how you feel. This is an easy exercise that you can do whenever you feel anxious. For maximum stress reduction benefits, make deep breathing a routine practice.
We’re usually empty, exhausted and disappointed when we’re in the grip of feeling scattered and stressed. Use these simple grounding and focus-centric exercises to bring your mind and body into order. Increase your sense of well-being and satisfaction today.
