Exercises To Calm Your Anxious Thoughts
Anxious thoughts have the capacity to relegate us, unable to think clearly, so at times it is important to have some strategies to help calm the mind so that in essence we can think clearly.
Some quick options for calming your anxious thoughts are:
☼ 10 Deep belly breaths - this is where you go from shallow chest breathing to deep belly breaths where you stomach pushes out. To do this place your right hand on your stomach and you left hand on your chest region over your heart space. From here focus your breath to push the right hand out. Do this slowly, one way to add to this exercise is to do it to a count of 4. Count to 4 when you breathe in, hold for 4 and let go for 4 and then hold for 4 again and begin the cycle again (this is often called box breathing). This exercise will quickly take you out of a fight and flight response into rest and relaxation so that you are better able to think clearly.
☼ Journaling prompts that may help when you have an anxious mind are:
What do I need to know about this situation?
What about this situation is creating anxious thoughts?
Is this mine or someone else’s? That is, is it really my response or am I responding from conditioned thoughts that I have about the situation and therefore not really mine. *Something to ponder anyway, since most of us have influences we don’t always take a conscious note in times of increased anxiety.
☼ Pulling an oracle card can sometimes brings us clarity around the issue that is creating anxiety. Remember that when pulling an oracle or tarot card to ask for guidance for your highest good. Once you have pulled the card you can then sit with your interpretation or the guidebooks to see what resonates with your situation and then contemplate any changes that you are being asked to make around these anxious producing thoughts.
☼ Playing some soothing music has been shown to calm anxious thoughts – make sure that you like the music and spend some time in meditation listening to it – classical music is one of the best options in this situation, but ultimately anything that is soothing to your soul will help.
Having strategies that help in times of stress are important, and finding ones that are quick and easy to implement can help us in the moment when we feel like we don’t have a lot of time to get us out of our anxious mind and can pretty much be done anywhere. So the next time that you are experiencing some anxious thoughts that you can’t seem to let go of, try one of the above techniques and see what changes you notice in your body response and mental mind space.