Category: Meditation

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How to Stay Calm during the Holidays

The Holidays can often be a stressful time so here the three most important tips that help you stay calm and get you trough the season.

Already feeling the stress and overwhelm build up? Listen to this short video and get your key take-a-ways.

Video not working – Watch it on Vimeo? Click here!

Rather read a transcript of the video? Transcript of the video is at the bottom of this page.

Here is a short summary of the video content

  1. Breathe deeply

    Deep belly breaths are my go-to method – ALWAYS. When you breathe deeply you collect yourself and connect to your body. That helps you move from the busy mind into the body, bringing an instant calm. With every inhale you breathe in a little bit of calm and with every exhale you let go of some of the stress and overwhelm. Take three deep breaths and then check-in with your body and mind and notice what is there. JUST BREATHE AND BE.

  2. Be mindful

From the deep breaths we move into mindfulness. This way we can dig a little deeper on what is going on in our mind and body. It’s important to name the thoughts and feelings from a viewer’s perspective and just notice what is there. The key in mindfulness is doing this without judgement and that is always the tricky part because we are so used to being hard on ourselves. So just name what is there and say to yourself that this is normal. I’m feeling stressed. Yes that is normal during the Holiday season. I’m feeling overwhelmed. Yes that’s normal too.

  1. Connect to your body

Connecting to your body is a way to activate that soothing part of yourself. You’re already doing this with deep breathing. Try giving yourself a hug and rub the upper arms. Try swaying from one side to the other. This always brings calm and relaxations to the body and helps you move the focus away from your busy mind.

 So these are my most important tips to stay calm over the Holidays. Maybe you need to use these often and maybe you don’t. Maybe you would like to put a reminder on your phone so you remember those easy to use tips and tricks.

I think that’s the hardest part – to remember to use them – as well as remembering how powerful these simple tips are and how they can help you find your inner peace and calm when you need it.

Enjoy the Holidays!

Love,
Ragna

P.s. If you want more easy to use tips and tricks that work like a charm, check out my resource page. Open in a separate internet browser if you are reading this from your facebook page.

Transcript of the video

Already feeling the stress of the holidays. I’ve got just the thing for you.

First of all, just breathe. Take a deep breath in,
Be. Hold it a tiny bit, and then just let it all out. Ah,
And again, take a deep breath in, feel your belly,
feel your chest, and then let go. Ah,
yes, you might want to keep breathing like this and feel the stress go
this way. You can collect yourself, connect with yourself,
and, and maybe not be as stressed. So tip,
this was my number one tip, and this is always my number one tip.
And that’s deep breathing.

Number two, be mindful,
mindful of what you are thinking because we are so caught up with,
um, uh,
all the things that we have put on our plates because usually we,
we have a lot of things on our plate during the season.
And so being mindful really means just take,
take a deep breath and then notice your thoughts and say, Hey,
what’s going on in my, in my head? Um,
what can I look at it from like a viewer’s perspective
and say, oh, yes, I’m feeling overwhelmed. Yes, I’m feeling stressed. Yes,
I’m feeling anxious. I feel like this is too much. Just name those feelings.

And the tricky part is to do it without judgment. It’s like,
um, so that’s the tricky part in mindfulness has to,
has to do with the non-judgment part.

So when you just name the feelings and see how you’re,
you’re doing and the thoughts, you say, oh yes, there’s this thought. Yes,
that’s normal. Yes. Then, then this, this thought and this feeling is there.
Yeah, that’s normal. I can see, I can see it. So that’s a good point.

And the third thing is to just connect to your body.
You do it already when you are, um, taking deep breaths,
you are connecting to your body and put, uh,
you can activate more soothing part of yourself.

If you just give yourself like a little hug, maybe you rub your upper arms,
what you’re doing, and if you sway like this,
it really brings you calm. And,
and that’s really important because when we have the calm,
we can choose our attention. We can choose what we focus on. We can,
we can,
we can have more choice and not feel so stressed and overwhelmed.

So those are my top three tips.

Deep breathing,

Being mindful without judgment and naming the feelings
and the thoughts that we are having and noticing them,

and then connecting to our bodies
And maybe give ourselves a hug and swing our body.

It’s even better when you do, like,
when you stand upright and you just connect that way.

Enjoy.

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Why self-compassion helps?

Self-compassion is often misunderstood for sympathy, kindness, empathy. Those qualities can be a part of compassion or self-compassion, but it might not necessarily be part of it.

It also seems that we are a little bit afraid that if we show ourselves self-compassion everything else will fall apart. But self-compassion is not about self-pity. It’s more about looking within and being curious about why you feel this way and helping you to create a relationship with yourself that is helpful for your health and well-being.

This video explains how and why self-compassion helps put our perfectionist and our inner critic a little bit to the side.

Video not working – Watch it on Vimeo? Click here!

Rather read a transcript of the video? Transcript of the video is at the bottom of this page.

Here is a short summary of the video content

  1. Self compassion is often a misunderstood concept.
    Self-compassion is not the same as sympathy, kindness, empathy but those concepts can be a part of it. It’s also not the same as self-pity because when using self-compassion you are not the victim (as we sometimes think when we are in self-pity mode) but the compassionate friend to yourself.
  2. Self-compassion is helpful to counteract the inner perfectionist and the inner critic.

It is very helpful to not always being in inner conflict with yourself and that’s where self-compassion is the most helpful. The inner critic always tearing you down for everything you think and do. Or feeling small and not taking action because you feel that everything has to be perfect. Those parts are here for a reason – to keep us safe but they can overreact. This is where self-compassion helps us move forward despite the inner struggles. 

  1. Self-compassion is something we can train and work with.

This is a progress and something we need to practice. But it’s something we can practice so we can accept ourselves and see our accomplishments as something good that we have done.

  1. Self-compassion helps us create better self-care for ourselves

With self-compassion we can investigate what works for us and what does not. It can help nouch us in the right direction little by little. We can find out what works for us without just copying what other people are doing. 

  1. Where can self-compassion help you?

Ask yourself in what areas in life can self-compassion help me the most. Where can I be more accepting. How can I show myself more compassion. Investigate what’s there, what’s going on without judgement and having a whip on your back all the time. 

For me self-compassion was the missing piece for self-care and made me more capable to create a self-care plan that works just for me. It also took a lot of stress away because now I’m not always letting my inner critic and my perfectionist run the show. Self-compassion allowed me to find and accept the self-care that was most helpful for me, not anyone else. Me. 

Now I hope you can find out where you can apply self-compassion so it works for you. YOU. 

Love,
Ragna

P.s. I talk about things that are close to my Icelandic heart in this video so sometimes it was hard to find the right words in English. So the perfectionist in me wanted to delete the video. I decided to go ahead anyway. I’m practicing self-compassion and you can too. 

Transcript of the video

Hey, it’s Ragna here, and I wanted to talk to you today about self-compassion. Self-compassion is often misunderstood for sympathy, kindness, empathy. Those qualities can be a part of compassion or self-compassion, but it might not necessarily be part of it. 

I, for myself as a recovering perfectionist, and I think self-compassion is the thing that has helped me the most to counteract and work maybe with my inner critic. Instead, sometimes some days it’s harder than others, some days it’s easier. And the inner critic is sometimes not as busy tearing me down. And sometimes it’s quite busy, tearing everything I do and say and don’t do tearing it down. 

So we all have that part of ourselves that is very critical, and it’s there for a reason, it’s there to protect us, and it thinks that is being helpful, but it might not always be helpful, and it might help just make us feel small and insignificant and that we are not enough and we don’t have a place and don’t have a voice. 

So, it’s important to have something to counteract against it. And self-compassion is one of the tools that we have, and we can train and work with. And for me, this is the thing that has helped me the most. It’s something that has helped me take better care of myself because we often need, and it has, yeah, how often do what we feel that we need to do and without maybe taking the time to think if it right for us. 

So self-compassion has helped me, yeah, work with myself instead of always pushing myself and, you know, having the whip on my shoulder and making things much harder than they have to be. 

Instead of somehow with self-compassion, it helps me build resilience and helps me feeling more positive towards myself. And I feel that, I’m not impossible person to begin with. And I am allowed to see my accomplishments as something that I have done. And they are benefits for me, instead of saying, well you know, it’s useless, it’s not helping you at all. 

So, I know it’s sometimes hard to find this part, this compassionate part of ourselves that can show us, be there for us and be resilient with us and help us take better care of ourselves and see, connect us with other parts of ourselves. 

And it can also help us with soothing system, and, so again, activate that. So our threat system and our drive system are not as big. So our inner critic is not taking as active role, but it’s a journey. It’s not something that you just decide one day that you’re going to do forever. It’s something that we have to work on, and we have to be aware of. 

And, but it’s doable, and it’s helps with acceptance of who we are and just gives us time and space to be ourselves more than just trying to fit into a box and be just that, don’t go out of the box because it might be dangerous. 

So yeah, I think it helps. 

So think about how self-compassion can help you because it’s not the same as self pity. Self pity makes you feel like you’re only one with this problem, and you’re… But we are, you know, humans, we are often have the same inner struggles, and it’s better to have the resilience and the compassion to deal with it rather than this self-critical pity. 

So see if it’s something that can help you notice, maybe your thoughts around it because we often mix compassion with other terms like kindness and empathy and sympathy. 

It can be, you know, all those things with the compassion but sometimes it’s not that because for me, at least if I just share one thing about myself is it has helped me with self care much more because it comes from self love and not like this, this thing that I have to do it, like I have to eat better because you know, I’m a nutritionist, I cannot eat unhealthy. 

It comes from like, I want to take better care of myself. I want to have… it comes from a different place. And it helped me move further instead of just having the constant whip and that, you know keeping me, like in my place, don’t do it! Don’t do it! 

You know, it helps and just have a think. Where in, when, what areas of your life care could self-compassion help you? Because it’s not just, you know, removing yourself from the situation, it’s looking towards it, seeing what’s there and being curious and, you know, maybe investigate it a little bit. 

What’s going on? 

What’s there? 

So have a look in your own life. 

See you later. 

Bye.

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Why should I meditate? The top three reasons.

We know that meditation has many benefits but sometimes we don’t know why it is good for us 🙂

Sometimes we might need something a little more personal to make meditation a regular part of our lives. Something that connects us to the new habit so we keep going, also when we are not feeling “it”.

This was at least the case for me. For years I kept trying to make meditation a regular practice. Sometimes meditation was in and sometimes it was out. It was like this for a long long time.

It was not until I got very clear on why I was doing it that I managed to make it a regular part of my life. 

Here I want to share with you my top three reasons for meditation in the hope that you will find your reasons in there.

When our reasons are clear it’s makes it easier to go over hindrances that always come up when we are getting in a new habit that supports our health and well-being.

Here is the video were I share my top three reasons.

Meditation and the reasons why it’s good for you

Video not working – Watch it on Vimeo? Click here!
Rather read a transcript of the video? Transcript of the video is at the bottom of this page.

Here is are my three reasons – in a short summary.

  1. Calm my mind.
    Meditation helps to calm my mind and clear my head. When we slow down our breath, our thoughts slow down with it. When the thoughts go slower through my racing mind, I can notice them and maybe clear them. It improves focus and concentration, cultivates compassion for myself and others and therefore makes my less judgmental and less reactive. All hugely beneficial.
  2. Calm my body.
    Meditation helps me to slow down my breathing which can slow down my heart rate and blood pressure. That somehow helps me to release some of the stress that lives in my body. I can breath in calm and breath out stress and tension. On a cellular level it regulates our stress hormones (increases dopamine and melatonin, modulates serotonin and decreases cortisol and norepinephrine). I didn’t manage to get the biology of stress into the video even with my Bachelor degree in biology. I should be sprinkling my biology knowledge everywhere 😉
  3. Reminds me that I’m more than my thoughts, my emotions, my actions and what I do in life.
    When we are in meditative state we can notice our thought processes which lead to emotions and feeling and which then can lead to actions (or no action). If we can notice our thoughts/thoughts patterns and emotions/feelings that follow in meditation, that means there is something more. Someone that is noticing that process. That is the true inner self, inner consciousness, metacognition (whatever you would like to call it) that is not affected by all the others (thoughts, emotions, actions). That knowing brings me calm, just knowing there is more to me.
    There is also a gap between all those the inner self, the thoughts, emotions/feeling and action/not action. Meditation cultivates those gaps and helps me to be less reacting, sometimes at least 🙂

    Those are me top three reasons for meditating regularly.

Find your own personal reasons to keep you connected to your meditation practice and make it easier to keep going when going gets tough. 

My hope for you that once you found your reasons, getting settled in a meditation practice will be a breeze 🙂

Love from Iceland,
Ragna

Transcript of the video

Hi. It’s Ragna and today I want to talk to you about meditation. We know that meditation has many benefits, but we might need something more personal to keep up a practice or set up a meditation practice.

At least that was the case with me. Until I got very clear on my why it was hard for me to maintain a regular practice so I want to go over my top three reasons so you can find yours in there.

So, my number one reason is just to calm my mind. It helps me to calm my mind and somehow to clear my head and that’s important in the time and age that we live in when we have so many different things coming at us up all the time. So, it helps us calm down and clear our head, and when we are meditating, we slow down our breath, and when we slow down our breath.

We also slow down the thoughts, so the thoughts don’t go as fast so we can notice them, and maybe clear them, and not react to them.

So, that’s my first reason, and it also helps us to be more focused, and improves our memory, or at least I hope so. And it can also help us cultivate a little bit more self-compassion, and also compassion for others. So, it makes us a little bit less judgmental which I think is helpful in today’s world.

And number two is just to calm my body. As I said before when we meditate our breathing slows down, and that slows down our body, slows down the heart rate as well as the blood pressure, and it somehow helps me, at least, let go of some of the stress that lives in my body, so I can somehow breathe in calm and let go of stress when I breathe out.

And it really helps so I can just let go of the stress and not keep it in my body.

And then the third and the most important reason, for me at least, is that it helps me remember that there is more to myself than thoughts and emotions and actions and what we do.

So, when we are in the meditation state, we are following our thoughts or noticing our thoughts, and that means there is someone to notice the thoughts.

So that means there is something more than just the thoughts, the emotions, and what I do. There is some inner core. Some inner self, inner consciousness, that is following the thoughts. So, if we can follow our thought processes that means there is more of me, or my inner self is watching, and that for me, is important.

And also, to cultivate the gap between myself and the thoughts, and then the emotion, and from that we take action, or we don’t take action.

So, it can make me a little bit less reactive, at times, and I think that helps with emotional regulation. And that is actually shown in research, that it helps with that. So, we can better regulate our emotions, and that’s important to have.

And it helps me bring more calm into my life, and just to remember that I am more than my thoughts and emotions, that calms me down.

And so now it’s time for you to find your reasons and see if it cannot help you set up a regular practice.

Love,
Ragna

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Let go of stress NOW!

We often think we need so much time to let go of stress when the truth is we have this awesome tool available and ready for us whenever we need it. The only problem is remembering it and then actually doing it.

When things are easy to do like this we often think it doesn’t account for anything and skip it just because it’s so easy to do.

But we are mistaken.

It does account for something.

It’s important to have everyday measures to let go of stress as we go through our day.

So take the time.
Watch this video now.
Enjoy!

Rather watch the video on vimeo? Click here!

Taking short breaks to do a short meditation or just take a moment to take few deep breaths can help us to let go of stress. When we are stressed our breathing is faster so taking the time to slow down our breath is an excellent way let go of stress.

Taking few deep breaths slows down our body and our mind. It helps us reconnect to ourselves. It moves the focus away from head and into the body. The fast thoughts in our head that are often the cause of our stress so when we move the focus to the body and the breath it helps to calm us down. When we deepen our breath it actually slows down our body, and when we slow down our body our razing thoughts do the same.

We know when we are stressed our breath is shorter and shallower so when we deepen the breath and make it longer our body and mind believes that we are not as stressed as we were just minutes before.

It’s a great way to calm our whole being and our whole system.

So take the time to notice your breath and deepen and elongate it so you can let go off stress now. The video guides you how to do that so you can reconnect to your breath, and yourself. Then you can find your inner peace, calm and quiet within.

Love from Iceland, Ragna.

P.s. If you need to let go of more stress, check out my favorite thing to recharge and rejuvenate, yoga nidra – a sleep-based meditation and deep relaxation. Use this link in membervault to learn more: https://ragnagudjons.vipmembervault.com/products/courses/view/1043010

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Activate your soothing system and meet your Best Future Self.

I´m excited to announce my new Calm and Sleep program.

This amazing program is put together so you can activate your soothing system. That means you get out of overwhelm and stressed state into state of calm and inner peace so you can meet your Best Future Self.

It’s important that we move away from constant stress because stress affects our whole being, directly and indirectly. Stress hormones flood our body and that might be for a short time but this is not healthy for long periods of time. It affects our cells and affects how we eat, sleep, if we exercise and how we rest and last but not least it affects our relationships.

Calm and Sleep Program

Constant stress also affects our state of mind and our very being. My Calm and Sleep Program is designed to activate your soothing system so you can relax, recharge, reconnect to yourself and nature and just be – Just BE.

Imagine how your life would change if you got good quality sleep during the night. What would change in your life? I’m betting a few things.

Go from overwhelm and stress to calm and quality sleep.

Meet your Best Future Self in eight weeks <3

Calm and Sleep Program
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Summer Solstice ONLINE Retreat

I´m so excited about this ONLINE Retreat taking place during Summer Solstice in Iceland. Travelling is very difficult at the moment so an online retreat is perfect. You stay in the comfort of you own home and I will go between places so you can enjoy the scenery and recharge, reflect, relax and reconnect to yourself.

Sign up is free and all the information are here: https://www.ragnagudjons.com/summer-solstice-online-retreat

I´m looking forward in “seeing” you there 🙂

Love from Iceland,
Ragna

Meditation in nature. Ragna
Meditation in nature 🙂
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Follow me on social media

I only have blogs in Icelandic at the moment so if you can read Icelandic head over to my old Icelandic site rgudjons.com.

Follow my on social media to get updates.

Here’s a link to my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/RagnaGudjons/

And my Instagram is here: https://www.instagram.com/ragnagudjons/

Here is a video from my Facebook page about activating our soothing system. Check it out.

I would love to connect to you over social media.

Love,
Ragna