Calm, Clear & Reasonable
Today I am simply offering a couple of easy things you can do to help yourself recenter. Simple yet powerful. May they serve you well.
Quick Tool to Calm Yourself
Get a pen and a piece of paper. You will draw 3 triangles - as you do the first line, breath in. The second line, hold your breath. Third line, exhale more slowing than you inhaled. Pause for a second or two (holding the out breath) and repeat twice more. Line 1 - inhale. Line 2 - hold breath. Line 3 - exhale slowly. Once you've completed 3 triangles, let your pen scribble and more around the page until you feel complete. Do you better?
Here are two Jin Shin Jyutsu exercises for you to try (Japanese form similar to acupressure). Very often simple exercises are really effective. Such is the case with this self help hold to relieve emotional upset.
Restore Calm Anytime Anywhere
Practice this whenever you feel emotionally upset or stressed and need to calm down:
Cross your arms and hold your upper arms. That’s it!
Just wrap the right hand/fingers over the left upper arm, and wrap the left hand/fingers over the right upper arm.
Sitting comfortably and if you can, close your eyes. Hold your upper arms. Wait until you feel the tension melting away and you get a feeling of relief. Practice this until you feel a sense of calm. Usually, five to ten minutes should do the trick.
All you need is a bit of privacy and a few minutes to restore peace and perspective…Try it out.
Becoming Clear & Reasonable
The second technique helps you reconnect with your calm reasoning processes. The blood flow returns to your brain increasing your ability to move from reactivity to clear thinking and reasoning and it also re-centers you emotionally. No blood in brain, no ability to think.
Hold the main Neurovascular (NV) reflex points during stress or crisis to keep from over-reacting and to help you return to calm and clarity. As you can see in the picture (at the bottom of the page), the two points are directly above your eyebrows in the middle of your forehead.
1. Hold the main frontal NV points while noticing the thoughts and feelings that are arising during the stress or crisis. This instructs your primitive brain that you are not in danger and to not usher blood away from the forebrain.
2. Breathe! Typically when stress hits, we hold our breath. So not only has the blood drained out of your head, but your body is now lacking oxygen! While holding the NV points, take a nice deep breath in to the count of 4 and then exhale to the count of 4. Continue in this deep rhythmic breathing to oxygenate your body and relax the systems.
You're holding your points and breathing - blood and oxygen is returning - great! That's it!
3. Now as a bonus, here is one more step you can take. While holding your NV points and breathing, become curious - have you created a story around this stress? What is really true (the events that happened) and what is your interpretation of the situation (your story)? Step back out of the story and let go of relating to it like it is absolutely true. And ask yourself - is this really true? Is it really true that 'they' want to take advantage of you, or 'they' don't care about you or whatever it is that seems to be true in this moment. Perhaps it's an old story that is just repeating itself in this moment. Let go of the story and just look at the facts. And based on the facts, what needs to happen now?
Like anything, the more you practice the better you get and the easier it becomes to maintain a clearer flow of nourishing energy for your energetic, subtle and physical systems to operate at peak conditions.
Pause for a moment. What are you noticing when you use these techniques? How do you feel? A bit calmer, perhaps stronger, a bit more connected? Maybe more peaceful and compassionate?
Ahhhhh.....nice!
