Areas › Your body
Your body
You cannot think your way out of a body that is braced. This area starts there: the breath, the ground under you, moving, eating, resting, and the small physical things that change how the rest of the day lands.
Narrowed down
9 practicesTheme · Your nervous system
How long you have · A minute
When · Under stress
Before picking a calming technique, work out which way you are off. Revved up and shut down need opposite things.
Wound up: slow the out breath, lower the lights, less input. Shut down: more input, movement, sound, a change of room. The common mistake is running…
Calm can feel unsafe if you have not had much of it. Take it in small amounts and let it be strange at first.
Grounding exercises sometimes leave people more agitated rather than less, and then they decide they are doing it wrong. Often the truth is that…
When you are far from settled, aim for the next step rather than for calm. Rattled is a real improvement on numb.
There is a rough order to these states: shut down at the bottom, revved up in the middle, settled and connected at the top. Coming back tends to…
Breathing that has gone almost invisible happens in both kinds of stillness, so it will not tell you which one you are looking at. Muscle tone will.
Look at the jaw, the hands, the shoulders, the way the body is being held in the chair. Tight and set is one thing. Slack and heavy is another. You…
Try locking your ankle and holding everything rigid while you balance. You will fall over. The wobble was doing the work.
People who are frightened of losing control often try to hold themselves regulated: clamped, monitoring, allowing no drift. It is exhausting and it…
Breath reaches the settling machinery faster than reasoning does, because it works on a part of the brainstem that does not wait for your opinion.
That is why arguing yourself out of a panic rarely works while six slow breaths often do something. It also explains why breath practice can feel…
Hum a note you like for a few breaths, and try covering your ears with your palms so the sound fills your head.
The vibration carries through your throat and your inner ear, and humming lengthens the out breath for you without any counting. Choose your own note…
Breathe in, then push the air out gently against a closed throat, or against lightly pinched nostrils, for a couple of seconds.
The change of pressure in your chest is what does the work, and two or three rounds are enough to notice something. Keep it gentle. Straining is…
Cold water on your face, particularly at the hairline and around the lips, sets off a reflex that slows the heart. It is one of the few things fast enough to interrupt real panic.
A splash at the sink, a few minutes outside in cold air, or a bowl of cold water if you have one to hand. There is a quieter version for when you…