Simple practices to help create a stable foundation and mental clarity.
These are simple, useful, effective ways to begin to care for the body you’ve been gifted in ways you might not have thought of.
(and not a replacement for medical advice, but may help you become wiser regarding the medical advice you receive)
This isn’t necessarily the whole of your healing journey, but it’s an important start. Be kind to yourself – always. Have some fun. Allow delight if you find it in here somewhere.
I’m curious that if you choose a few and do them every day (they don’t take long and are non-intrusive), that you might begin to sense a small change. A small bit of relief or ease that you didn’t notice before.
Here goes –
- Remove non-essential notifications from your phone
- Reduce phone scrolling
- Soften you belly
- (holding your belly for prolonged periods creates an anxiety response)
- Create a longer span of time before you look at your phone in the morning
- Choose carefully what to look at. WIll it upset you and do you really need to know it?
- Be your own advocate – you are not obligated to answer every text as soon as it comes in
- Reduce droning noise in the background like a TV that is always on
- Slow your breathing and reduce breathing volume (this can take some time)
- Sometimes intense exercise is actually too much . . too stimulating to our nervous system and it maintains the anxiety cycle in our bodies. When you begin to pay attention to the effects of exercise, you may occasionally make different choices, depending on “where you’re at.”
I wrote the next ones for kids, but you’d be suprised how a few minutes spent playing “I Spy” with yourself will take you out of an unpleasant thought spiral. It’s amazing, really.
- Play “I Spy” (pick out five red things in your surroundings, all the circles . .etc)
- Go from chair to floor and back up. (this is very fun and all adults should do it)
- Play games with kids so they know the difference between Up/Down, Right/Left, Front/Back (This is huge)
- Look at a map next time you are going somewhere. Helps with “grounding and locating” in your body and is very important in nervous system regulation.
- Bare feet (grounding and orienting)when you can
- Walk on natural surfaces. Shoes ok.
- Use the bathroom when you need to. You begin to grow the skill of following your natural impulse (which we’ve done a good job of burying in our industrialized society)
- Move and jump if you have pent up stress. Humans don’t always need to “Calm Down.”
- Simply notice your breath without creating a demand is regulating in itself.
- Dance
Healthy, active posture and movement (cont’d) –
- Slowly sway front to back, keep repeating, making it smaller until you end up back in the middle
- Slowly sway side to side, keep repeating, making it smaller until you end up back in the middle
Other helpful and important practices –
- Low Hum (stimulate vagus nerve resilience)
- Go outside at least once/day, take off glasses and look off into the distance for a few minutes.
- Making up and down sounds with your voice (stimulates vagus nerve)
- Listen to music with a lot of up and down vocals
- Growl (release physical response to anger or frustration)
- Take fewer pictures/videos
- Learn skills with hands (have you met the Homunculus? This creature demonstrates how much brain space your hands take up. When we just point at screens all day, we are leaving a lot of brain capacity on the table).
I’d love to hear from you if you had a curious journey with any of these practices. Drop me a comment!
Love, Linda
