Try this Breathing Exercise to find Calm when you feel Overwhelmed
Feeling overwhelmed, anxious and like your brain is going in circles?
Take a pause. Don’t underestimate the power of taking a few minutes of stillness in your day on your mental well-being.
Try this “Box Breathing” exercise:
Take a minute and find a quiet place or put on a set of noise-cancelling headphones.
Take a deep breath in for a count of 4. Then hold for a count of 4 and exhale for a count of 4 and hold for another 4.
Start with just a few breaths, around 5-10 to begin.
You may find it hard to use your breath in this way if you are someone who tends to take shallow breaths. But this is okay.
Finding a space of calm and perceived safety and focusing on our breath with no distractions can help our nervous system relax and regulate itself.
If we are rushing around all the time, being busy we get stuck in “fight or flight mode”. Our brain is supposed to use this state to get out of danger, but with our modern lifestyle, many stimuli can be seen as a threat.
This can leave your muscles feeling tense, your brain tends to overthink and you do not recover or sleep as well.
Practising finding stillness can have a very powerful effect on our ability to come back into a “rest and digest” state. In this state we can recover, digest food, heal our bodies and we have a more relaxed mindset to the world around us.
Give this a go today, and remember if you think you don’t have time, you need this even more!
#bepowherful