If you are struggling with feelings of stress and anxiety, then this is my quickest tip for, taking yourself into a calmer state. So you might like to think of it as an emergency first aid kit. So the key is that if you’re stressed and anxious, you’re in your sympathetic nervous system, your fight and flight response.
And we want to take you into your parasympathetic nervous system, your rest and digest or safe and socialized response. Now, the quickest way to get there is through using your breath. There are two other ways, and that’s changing what your body’s doing and what your imagination is doing. So three tips, breath, body, imagination.
Okay, so hold that. Firstly, your breath. If in doubt, breathe out. That long, slow out breath, making the out breath longer than the in breath will capitalise on your ability to [00:01:00] tap directly into your sympathetic nervous system through the use of your breath. So shall we practice it? Just blow out. Don’t think about blowing in at this point.
Just make that out breath long and slow
and then breathe in through your nose.
One more.
Feel your shoulders naturally drop. Breathe in through your nose, down to your diaphragm. And another one.
That’s it. Do you feel calmer already? So you may have noticed that as you slowed your breath down, your body did naturally relax because the out breath is [00:02:00] that natural letting go breath. So let’s capitalize on the body. So tense up, okay? Hold tension. And now try and, try and feel calm. It doesn’t work. So the relaxed breath, the solution state is an open state.
Arms open and soft. So again, as you breathe out this time, really be aware of your body and just soften that. So just let’s do one. Breathe
in. Feel your body open up. Breathe out. And then return to normal breath. So if you get intense, you can tense into it. And then just let it go, but always let it go on an out breath because that’s your parasympathetic breath. So it will naturally relax you. You can change your posture as well. So if you’re, um, slumping, if you’re, um, [00:03:00] leaning over, tensing up, let’s say you’re on a phone call and you’re all tense like this, just change your posture and you will notice that open state.
So the open chest will naturally relax you. Take you into a calmer state because we’re having, this is how we directly communicate with your nervous system. Okay. So number three, your imagination. What are you imagining? If you’re stressed or anxious, the chances are you’re looking ahead to how you don’t want it to be.
Definition of anxiety, seeing what you don’t want, um, catastrophizing, making the worst case scenario. that may never ever happen. So begin to use your imagination to take yourself where you do want to go. So let’s say you’re driving and you’re imagining being late, um, and you’re getting tense and your breathing’s getting tense.
You take that long slow out breath, you relax your arms, and you imagine being late. not necessarily [00:04:00] arriving there on time, but arriving calm and confident and just maybe explaining yourself, not making up excuses that maybe weren’t true. Um, which is really useful for any situation. Let’s say you’ve got a task to do, a difficult phone call to make.
If you’re imagining the conflict, if you’re imagining the difficulty in doing it, then you’re literally setting your path out and stressing yourself out. So use your imagination and see yourself completing the task, feeling relaxed, a smile on your face, then say, well, how did I do that? Well, during the task, I was focused.
I was capable. And then, well, how do I feel now? Knowing that I’m going to be able to do that task and complete it. And same with a difficult situation. If you’re always imagining that the worst will happen, you will up that sympathetic nervous system anxiety and create yourself a [00:05:00] problem. So there you go.
There’s my three quick tips for lessening stress and anxiety, your breath, your body, your imagination. Okay.