Have you noticed that your shoulders are sometimes all the way up to your ears or that your jaws are clenched together? Stress can manifest itself in our body in many ways but it’s not always easy to notice that. But when you do notice it, you have the perfect opportunity to relax your shoulders and take a deep breath, slowing down both your mind and your body at the same time.
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Rather read a transcript of the video? Transcript of the video is at the bottom of this page.
Here are the tips from the video
1. Lower your shoulders.
When you notice that your shoulders are up to you ears: Lower your shoulders and roll them a little bit back. This way you can give your lungs more space to breathe. Which brings us to the next tip.
2. Breathe deeply.
This tip sounds so easy that we often dismiss it for that reason. But I’m telling you it works 😉
Be gentle when you are taking deep breaths. There might be constrictions in you chest when you are stresses but with each breath you can breathe a little bit deeper. Put your hand on you chest so you can feel if your breath is short or long or shallow or deep. Then put your other hand on your tummy so you can feel how it expands as you breath in (this tip is easier to understand with the video, I promise :)).
To breathe in first expand your tummy, then your chest and at last your shoulders move a little bit backwards. When you breathe out, relax your shoulders first, then your chest goes down and at last your tummy.
Be gentle and tender if you have restrictions in you chest area. Expand your breath little by little.
3. Breathe slower and deeper so we can notice our thoughts.
Next tip is to breathe more slowly and deeper. Now you know how 🙂 By slowing down our breath, we slow down our mind. Then we have the change of noticing our thoughts. The thoughts that go around and around and keep us stressed. And when we do have this self-awareness we can write down our thoughts, making our thoughts separate from our head. This helps a lot.
4. Move the attention from your thoughts to your body.
This can be done in many different ways. One way is to trace a pencil along the side of your hand (shown in the video), tracing along each finger. Be mindful when you do this. Be in the present and try to do that without judgement. It’s not always easy but that’s OK too.
5. Activate the Soothing system.
The Soothing system is one of three systems that regulate our emotions. The other are the Threat system (the fight, flight or freeze response) that is activated during the stress of our lives (and we all know so well), and then the motivation system (Drive system) that motivates us to have a house over our head and being fed and stuff like that.
The soothing system is often ignored, so I recommend giving yourself a hug, just embrace yourself. That gives you a feeling of belonging and feeling that you are okay and you’re going to be okay. It’s okay, at least for this very moment, it’s okay. That helps too.
So in summary those are the quick, most helpful tips that you can easily access wherever you are.
I recommend taking at least three deep breaths and if you feel this restriction in your chest, just be gentle and tender with yourself until you get a little bit more familiar with taking deep breaths.
One more tip 🙂
6. Be mindful of your thoughts
It’s often very hard to notice our thoughts because they go so fast but if you go with the tips that I have gone over already, you can do that more easily.
The most difficult trick is not to judge your thoughts, just to notice the thoughts, just like they are clouds in a blue sky. Just notice the cloud come and you see it, there it is and then it moves away. This is a practice that takes practice 🙂
But it’s something that gets easier with time.
Those are my 5 plus tips that I recommend to feel more calm. I hope some of those tips will benefit you. Share what helped you the most.
Love from Iceland,
Ragna
Transcript
Hey, it’s Ragna here and I wanted to give you a few tips on how you can calm yourself down when you’re feeling stressed and anxious.
We know that we often get this tightness in our body and our shoulders go up to our ears, so my first tip is just to lower the shoulders and get the, maybe have them also go down and a little bit back and that gives your lungs some space to breathe a little bit more.
And the second tip is just to take a deep breath and we often dismiss those easy tip because we think they don’t work for us, but I’m telling you, they work and when you deep breathe or take a deep breath, there might be some restrictions in your chest because you’re so used to shallow breaths. And that’s just when you are stressing, you can go a little bit further each time you take a breath, so it sometimes helps to put your hands on your chest and maybe you can feel if your breath is short or long or if it’s deep or shallow.
So, if you can feel that you are breathing only with moving your chest, you can also put your hand on your stomach and you first expand the stomach and then you expand the chest as you breathe in and you can put your shoulders a little bit back. And then your shoulders go a little bit down, your chest goes down and your tummy goes inwards, so you can push out the air that’s left. And then you let your breath in, through the tummy, expand the chest, you might feel some restrictions in your chest, that’s okay, shoulders go a little back here, still breathing in, right? And then again, you let go of the breath. So try this.
I know there’s restriction in the chest can be a little bit painful, don’t overdo it, just do it, be gentle with yourself, do tiny little bit at a time and see how it works for you and where it takes you. But when we take a deep breath, it also means we breathe a little bit slower, so we lengthen our breath and we deepen it. So it’s good that you can do that.
So that brings us to the next tip, which is just to breath slower and deeper and that can actually slower your thoughts because we know it’s usually our thoughts that keeps us stressed. So if you don’t know it, I’m telling you. It can be silly, our thoughts. And when we breathe a little bit slower, it can slow our thoughts down so we can notice, what it is that is stressing us out and maybe we can then more write it out and have it like a separate thing, out of our head and I think that’s really important because when it’s in our head, it’s going around and around and around, but when we write it down, it’s out of our head and it’s separate from us. And that helps a lot.
So the next thing is to take the attention away from the thoughts in your head and to the body. And that can be done in many, many different ways. Most people have maybe a pencil or something on the desk, on your desk, so you can maybe trace along your hand, so the side of your hand, along every single finger and be present when you do that and try to do it without judgment, just try to be mindful. It can be easy and it can be hard and both are okay, it’s okay. It’s not always easy to change the focus.
Another good tip is to activate the soothing system. I’m not going to go in too deeply into the soothing system, but it’s said that we have three ways to regulate our emotions and one of the things that we have is the soothing system, the other one are the threat system, the fight or flight response that we know so well when we’re stressed and then the third system is motivation system, just to keep us fed and have a house over a house and stuff like that.
But the soothing system is often ignored, so I’ll recommend giving yourself a hug, just embrace yourself, it’s okay. And when you do that, it gives you a feeling of belonging and feeling that you are okay and you’re going to be okay. It’s okay, at least for this very moment, it’s okay. So, that helps too.
What else? Yeah, I think those are the quick, most helpful tips that you can easily access wherever you are. I recommend taking at least three deep breaths and if you feel this restriction in your chest, just be gentle and tender with yourself until you get a little bit more familiar with taking deep breaths and I think that’s helpful.
And then one more tip is, in other words be mindful of your thoughts and it’s often very hard to notice our thoughts because they go so fast but if you go with the tips that I have gone over, you can do that more easily.
And the trick that’s the most difficult one is not to judge your thoughts, just to notice the thoughts, just like they are clouds in a blue sky, just notice the cloud come and you see it, there it is and then it moves away and this is a practice that takes practice. But it’s something that gets easier with time.
So I recommend that and you will find more tips on that elsewhere on my site . So, I will see you later. I hope some of those tips will benefit you and share what helped you the most. I’ll see you later, bye.