Checking in with your mind and body
What’s happening in your body and mind today?
Sometimes, our feelings sneak up on us, and our body can experience emotions before our conscious mind is aware of them. While you’re checking in with yourself, ask these questions:
Are you sleeping as well as you'd like?
Are you having trouble concentrating?
Do you feel any symptoms of stress or anxiety?
Are current events triggering difficult memories or intrusive thoughts?
Do you find yourself ruminating on negative scenarios even when you would rather be thinking about other things?
Answering these questions for yourself will help you to understand and name emotions like anger, grief, stress, or anxiety. Becoming aware of these feelings is the first step in changing them.
Instead of pushing down or ignoring negative feelings, which can lead to more negative thoughts and feelings, you can process and resolve them so they don’t continue to build up.
Let’s take some time this week to relax a little. Taking as little as five minutes a day can shift your focus away from negative thoughts and feelings, lower your blood pressure, and help restore your sense of calm and wellbeing.
These simple tools can help you to begin creating the habit of being relaxed.
Breathing. Deep belly breathing activates the parasympathetic branch of your nervous system and slows down your reactivity. Breathing slowly and deeply through the abdomen is a simple and powerful way to de-escalate anxiety and stress in a matter of seconds, and helps you install calm as your real baseline normal.
Get the easy to use Guide to Abdominal Breathing in the links below.
Hand on the heart. Neural cells around the heart activate when we are experiencing even small amounts of stress. Placing your hand over your heart calms those neurons down again. Place your hand on your chest with a small amount of pressure, and when you sense your mind beginning to calm, begin to focus on positive thoughts, feelings, images of safety and trust, ease, and goodness.
Clear your Mind. Our subconscious mind responds the same to what we imagine and what we experience physically. Taking just a couple minutes each day to imagine yourself in a safe, comfortable place can have profound effects.
Sit back for just a moment and take a deep breath. Let your eyes close and imagine a time when you felt the most relaxed. Maybe it was a vacation, or just relaxing on a beautiful day. Imagine that moment as if you are there again now, with all that you can see, all that you can hear, and how it feels being there. After a few moments you’ll feel like you’re ready to open your eyes, feeling much better.
The Role of Hypnosis
Hypnosis is a specific set of techniques that help people clear away unwanted thoughts, feelings, and behaviors so that you can use your skills, abilities, and resources more effectively to take back control those parts of your life that felt like they were out of control before. Hypnosis breaks down the barriers that held you locked in unwanted behaviors and thought patterns, and empowers you to create new healthier behaviors in their place.
The steps below will guide you through a very basic self hypnosis experience. Remember that you don’t have to create pictures in your mind in order to be successful. Some people see things very clearly in their minds. Other people just get a vague idea of the thing they’re thinking of. As long as you can get a sense of what you want to achieve, you can successfully use hypnosis.
Find a comfortable place you can safely sit with your eyes closed for about 5 minutes. Turn off your phone and minimize other distractions and take a few deep breaths. Let your eyes close or let your vision go soft and blurry. Imagine a place where you felt truly relaxed. Imagine that you are in that moment from your past again right now. Just sit quietly and let your mind wander while you imagine being there. Make it as real as possible by imagining that you can see the things around you through your own eyes, hear the sounds of that place in your own ears, and focus on how it feels being there. Just be there in your mind for a while.
While you’re there, focus on those feelings of calm and comfort. Notice where they are strongest in your body. Imagine that they have a color, a temperature, a texture or shape, so that you can make them even more real. Notice how you can now begin to allow this feeling to spread to other parts of your body.
Now imagine that you can carry this feeling of peace and calm with you wherever you go, so that you can bring it to the surface any time, Like carrying a small token in your pocket that brings up the wonderful feelings of the things it reminds you of.
Practice this at least once a day for a week and you’ll begin seeing positive changes in the way you think and feel almost immediately.
For some people, and for some issues, seeing a professional hypnotist is the best option for resolving and eliminating those unwanted feelings.