Back in February I held a free Weekend Wellness Virtual Event talking about simple tricks we can use in our everyday life to boost our mental wellbeing. As April is Stress Awareness Week and we’re all feeling strange mixes of emotions as Lockdown 3.0 lifts I thought I’d share with you the tips I have in this post so that you can refer back to it anytime you like.
Breathing, the most important thing we can focus on at all times. It’s said in some yoga philosophy say we have a set number of breaths to last us our lifetime, so when we’re stressed and our breaths come in short, sharp and fast we go through extra breaths which is then doing to reduce our lifetime..I’m not sure how true this is but based on this theory and using breathing techniques to slow down the breath could quite possibly extend your life..
In the current way that we live in the Western World we spend a very high amount of time in the ‘Fight or Flight’ mode which was really only ever designed to help us survive in life threatening situations (think cave men confronted with dinosaurs). But due to the ever present stresses of traffic, families, work and even the notifications on your phone* all constantly pushing us into this Sympathetic Nervous System or Fight or Flight Mode its down to us to work hard on switching from this to the Parasympathetic Nervous System or Rest and Digest mode, as often as we can!
And if nothing else, these breathing techniques will calm your mind in that very moment. Below is an info sheet I created on one of my favourite Pranayama (Breathing Techniques) which is suitable for beginners too;
Mindfulness – quite simply meaning to be present on the very task at hand, feeling it for all it is and experiencing it fully.
Remember that Mindfulness is a journey we take not a destination, we can experience mindfulness but it cannot be ticked off our to do list after. It is something we can incorporate into our every day lives quite simply.