Tag: breath

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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.

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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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Getting back to good quality sleep

So ironic. In the Summer of 2018 I taught two courses on better sleep named appropriately: Less Stress – Better Sleep. One in Icelandic, one in English. 

Ironically after I taught those classes my sleep got worse. Not better, worse. Not because I was not using my own tips and tricks for a good quality sleep. 

No – It was because of pain in my hips. Nothing serious but something pulling enough on the sides of my hips to wake me up in the middle of the night, sometimes multiple times. Messing with my sleep cycles, messing with my deep sleep, my rejuvenating sleep. 

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Trying to find sleep

I used all my sleep hygiene tricks. I went to see several specialists. I saw a doctor that prescribed pain killers for me but those didn’t last the night (and my body was not a fan). I saw my physical therapist who I deeply cherish and is the best in the world in my own opinion (and my dear friend). I felt better for a few days. Well, you know physical therapy, I felt worse at first and then better later but sadly it only lasted for a couple of days after each session. It seemed that as soon as I started moving my body like a normal person and not like a turtle, the pain came back.  I saw a chiropractor – Same story. Wonderful at her job. Felt better for a few days, then back to what it was before.

Was good quality sleep not within my reach anymore?

I gave up multiple times. And tried to face the fact I was just this old and this was just my life now. I would not sleep through the night again and this pain in my hips had come to stay. I would not be able to hike, ski, swim or even take a walk around the neighborhood, not without consequences. Moving my body, such as working in my garden, usually resulted in payback later. I had to rest for a few days and my sleep got even worse afterwards. Not a great motivation for movement at all. 

So this was my new normal. I tried to meet it with self-compassion and calm. But it was sometimes really hard because I felt I was failing on so many levels. I had a hard time focusing on tasks. I got irritable at things that normally wouldn’t bother me. Things that usually brought me joy didn’t anymore. Cooking was a drag. Watering my plants too. I felt like an old diesel engine. It took me ages to get going but once I started I was good.

When we are not sleeping well everything gets out of place. Our lives seem boring. Stress becomes a living companion. The effects on our mind and body get really clear.

Hopeful journey?

Even with all this I knew somehow, at the back of my head, that there was hope. I knew there was. Somewhere.

I had before the pandemic signed up for a Yoga Therapy training that kept getting postponed. I thought maybe that might be the thing to help me. That would be amazing if it did, even just a little. I almost didn’t dare to dream that it would. 

I finally got to the first part of the Yoga Therapy training. It was out in the countryside at a lovely eco village. I think I won the contest – “brings most stuff”, because I brought so many things that were to aid my sleep 🙂 I even took a memory foam mattress topper with me so I could at least sleep a little. I later found it helpful to bring with me to the house where Yoga Therapy training happened during the day, since we spent most of the day on the floor, sitting, listening to lectures, practicing with each other and so on. Just imagine me carrying my bed with me back and forth – It was almost like that 😉 

* Quick note on Yoga Therapy.

The easiest way to describe a Yoga Therapy session would be to say it’s a mix of a yoga class and a massage. It falls short on the therapy part of it though. It can help you release tension in your body that is ready to be released through the assisted yoga poses, could be another way to describe it. You have all the benefits of yoga and massage and then some in Yoga Therapy. 

Transformational Yoga Therapy session

Towards the end of the third day (yes the third day), it was my turn to be a recipient of a Yoga Therapy session with a sequence for the hips. I was both anxious and excited. Hopefully it would help a bit and I would learn something about what this was about, the pain in my hips. 

The session started with me informing my “giver” that I had really sensitive hips, I needed a lot of tender care with the poses and I would not be going as deep as some of the others. This check-in with the recipient (me in this case) is of course a part of every session but I needed to make extra sure my giver understood me completely. 

As she gently guided me into the poses and reminded me to breathe, I felt good. She was attentive to me and where my edge was. The edge is really important in Yoga Therapy because that is how far we go into poses and that’s where the release can happen. The edge is the place before pain. You might feel a stretch but there is no pain involved. 

The flow of the session was good and I felt safe to experience whatever came my way. During the last pose I felt suddenly fearful that my giver would overstep my edge as she moved my leg 1 centimeter to cross my center. This was the start of waves of release that kept coming. It was just amazing how the waves kept coming. Soon my giver didn’t need to hold my pose and the tension left on it’s own. 

After the session I felt amazingly light and calm. I was on a pink cloud. I wondered if this grand release would show up in my life somehow or if this was just one of those experiences where you feel amazing like after a yoga class, good night’s sleep, great walk, meditation and so on, that slowly wears off and you go back to feeling normal. 

Adjusting my experience

I went to bed still feeling the lightness and wonders of the session. When I woke up the next morning I realized that I had not been woken up by a pain in my hips. My roommate had gotten up around 4 but the pain in my hip was not to wake me. I wondered if this was a fluke. I went hopeful to sleep the next night. Again the same thing. 

I went into overthinking mode. I thought maybe because I’m moving my body and giving Yoga Therapy sessions  and also receiving them during the Yoga Therapy training, I was sleeping better. Or the wonderful time off from my daily life was responsible for this new found sleep. Or that I don’t have to stand in the kitchen cooking everyday. There were a whole group of people doing that for me, and the rest of the group 🙂

Basically I thought once I was home, the pain would return. I was not hopeful really. 

Back at home – Back to sleep

But that did not happen. At first I slept a lot. My body was really ready to rest and sleep. After a few years of not having good sleep. If I was woken up it was my children needing help or a cuddle in the middle of the night. Or a storm. Or something else, not the pain in my hips. 

It is and was amazing to experience the difference between going to bed at 11pm or 1am. Before it didn’t matter because I was always tired. I felt no difference. Now I do. 

After a couple of months with Christmas and the New Year Celebrations I noticed that I could wake up more easily. I was more alert. I was more focused. My brain fog had lifted. I was able to move my body and not feel so tired that I had to rest for days. I felt alive. I felt happy. I felt joy in my everyday life again. Things that I used to enjoy, I started enjoying again. Like cooking and gardening. And teaching and planning ahead. Seeing one-on-one clients. Being outside. Playing with my youngest in the snow. Spending time with my loved ones. Everything was more joyous.

I had space in my brain for all of it. Wonderful feeling. I felt and feel like a new person. Someone that can easily take a deep breath and enjoy every moment if she remembers to do so ( because sleeping does not fix everything. But almost everything :))

And I’m so grateful for Yoga Therapy and all the wonderful tools I have in my toolbox for less stress, better sleep, well-being, feeling joy, peace and calm.

How would your life change if you were able to breathe calmly and get good quality sleep? 

Video – Coming back to sleep

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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!

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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