I’ve recently been asked this question by a friend who was going through a rough spot and found herself unable to relax, sleep, chill-out. I thought I’d share my quick thoughts here. There is so much research around the way the body adapts to chronic stress in a way that leads to physiologic anxiety and your body actually needs to get retrained.
Invest thirty minutes each day.
My first thought was, get five minutes of “meditation” three times a day. I put meditation in quotes because I mean whatever mindfulness practice works for you that is neurologically soothing. Some people love the Headspace app. Some people love a moving meditation (Qi Gong, mindful walking, Feldenkrais). Some people can just close their eyes and visit a favorite spot in their mind, gently coming back when their thoughts wander. Whatever it is that works for you, give yourself these three moments of peaceful soothing each day.
Second thought, fresh air and sunlight for at least ten minutes. Whether that’s a city courtyard or country road, get outside for a stroll and breathe that nature feeling. It’s powerful stuff. I’m not going to put a ton of references, but PubMed is easy to search.
Finally, do a brain dump of all the things you find soothing and spend at least five minutes on one of them each day.
There you have it. Thirty minutes each day invested on retraining your nervous system that is out of practice in soothing. If you spend 16 hours every day practicing neurological-high-rev and zero soothing, it’s no surprise that that’s what your system learns and it gets bad at doing the soothing path.
Then, all those to-do items? They can be approached from your wise frontal cortex, not your freaked out amygdala... the human brain is awesome!
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| Photo of a favorite place to breathe that "nature feeling" a few years ago |
