In moments of intense emotion, whether it be overwhelming stress or a paralysing anxiety attack, there are 3 simple but very powerful steps you can take to calm your mind and regain your inner balance:
1. Abdominal Breathing Our physiology influences our psychology. That means we can use our physical state to guide our mental state. The most powerful way to do this is via our breathing, but there is a right way to breathe in order to calm our mental & emotional states.
This is Abdominal breathing, where your stomach rises and falls instead of your chest, whilst breathing in and out through your nose. This technique ensures slow and gentle breathing to calm your heart rate and help bring your awareness back to your immediate reality.
2. Emotion Check-In Once you've regained enough inner balance, the next priority is to focus on the cause of your intense emotions. This is simpler than people realise. All that's required is to outline each specific emotion you're feeling.
By simply acknowledging the emotions your mind and body are experiencing, your mind will begin to disassociate from them, thereby making it possible to process them rather than be dictated by them.
3. Releasing Emotions Using Abdominal Breathing combined with visualisation, each low emotion that your mind and body are currently experiencing can be released. This involves focusing on each emotion, understanding the cause of it, and choosing to let go; allowing your shoulders to drop and breathing out, visualising the emotion leaving your body.
Once all low emotions are released, a mirrored technique is then used for high emotions, such as love and happiness. No matter how faint these emotions are, focus on each and embrace them as you breathe in. This cultivates not only a calm mindset, but a positive one too.
Get Started: Help Me Calm Down™ is a tool designed to guide you through each step with ease in difficult moments, using visuals and audio to further encourage a calm mental and emotional state.
Be sure to share it with your loved ones. Simply being aware of this tool can help them in times of crisis. Many don't ask for help due to worry of being a burden, but everyone deserves help in their toughest moments.