As I wrote just now on my politics blog, many people I know are strung out and exhausted right now. For people in “helping” professions and parents especially, stress has been nearly constant for the past year-and-a-half since the pandemic began.
As I’ve learned through living with ulcerative colitis, long-term stress takes a toll on our bodies. It’s important to find ways to calm our nervous systems throughout the day, even in the midst of demanding jobs and tasks. Whether or not you’re already dealing with your own illness, if you have space for it, now might be a great time to incorporate mindfulness into your life. Here’s a post where I describe my favorite mindfulness practices.
But sometimes it’s hard to fit those longer practices in. And even if we take time to relax in the evenings and on weekends, we might still be spending our workdays in a frenzied whirlwind. That’s still not good for us.
Over the years, I’ve collected various simple and quick calming techniques as well as the longer ones I described in that other post. These can be done at in-between moments, on any job. They help me quiet my stress and reconnect with my heart, helping me feel more grounded and human again—even on busy days. I’m sharing them here in case they’ll help you too.
If the pandemic has you struggling with insomnia, all of these practices are also great for sleep.
1. Practicing self-compassion.
Perhaps more than anything else, we all need self-compassion right now. And for those who are bumping up against compassion fatigue, this is a helpful remedy. Kindness to others has to begin with kindness toward ourselves.
Place the palm of your hand over your heart, connecting with the loving energy that’s centered there. If you can, close your eyes. Take several deep, slow breaths. Each time you breathe out, silently say loving phrases to yourself, such as the following:
May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I be at peace. May I feel loved.
You can add in whatever you know you need to hear. I am doing a great job. I am doing my best. I am worthy of love. I deserve a big hug.
Just sitting quietly for a few moments and sending yourself love, you’ll feel your pulse begin to slow and your face start to relax.
2. Deep belly breathing.
Breathing from the belly is the best, most straightforward way to calm the nervous system. We breathe this way when we’re sleeping, so the body associates belly breathing with safety, rest, and relaxation. When we’re revved up, we breathe from the chest.
If you don’t know how to belly breathe, here’s a simple way to learn. Place one hand on your belly and the other on your chest. When you breathe in, relax your belly and let the air fill it, so that your belly hand rises. Try to breathe so that only that hand moves and the chest hand doesn’t move—let the air travel all the way down, past the chest and into the belly.
You can practice belly breathing anytime throughout the day. At first, it will help to place a hand on your belly to remind yourself to relax properly. But once you’ve got the hang of it, you can do it on your own, just reminding yourself to breathe deeply and slowly, and paying attention to relaxing your belly as you breathe.
3. Three mindful breaths.
Breathing mindfully means clearing the mind of all thoughts except awareness of the breath. It takes practice to do this for long periods, as in meditation. But I’ve found that even when I’m out of practice, I can often do it for just three breaths—and that’s long enough to bring some calm to my mind.
Breathing in deeply and slowly, pay attention to the feeling of the breath entering the body, then the feeling of it leaving the body. To help you focus, it might help to think some simple words: I am breathing in and I am breathing out, or simply, Breathe in and Breathe out. Clear your mind of all other thoughts. See if you can do this for three breaths in a row.
If thoughts do creep in, that’s okay; just return to focusing on the breath. Even if it’s hard to focus the whole time, the effort of trying to focus for a few breaths will help the mind feel calmer.
4. Grounding through looking around.
Grounding practices put us in touch with our physical bodies. When we’re frazzled, we ignore sensations like fatigue and hunger, as well as positive sensations like pleasure. Becoming “embodied” helps us feel calm and present—and it helps us make better decisions about self-care.
One grounding practice is to spend a few moments taking in our visual setting. This can be done surreptitiously if others are around, or with more movement if you’re alone.
Here’s the full practice. Place one hand on your heart to connect with its loving energy, and the other hand on your belly to connect with the breath. Turning to look over your right shoulder, spend a few moments taking in whatever you see. What are the colors and textures of the wall or the objects around you? Notice small details. Now slowly turn to face forward and do the same, perhaps also looking up at the ceiling and down at the floor. Finally, turn to the left and look over that shoulder, again spending a few moments taking in the details while breathing slowly and deeply.
If you’re around others, this practice can be modified: just spend a few moments breathing deeply and taking in the visuals of your surroundings.
With each new angle or look, you’ll notice colors and textures you hadn’t paid attention to before. This will help your body to feel fully in place, grounded in your surroundings and the here and now.
5. Grounding in four senses.
Another grounding practice uses four of the senses.
First, connect with the eyes. Pick a color—yellow, green, purple—and look around the room to find several things that are that color. You’ll look at the room differently and notice things you’d overlooked before.
Next, connect with the ears. Close your eyes if possible, and take in the sounds you hear. Some may be loud and obvious, but are there other, background sounds you hadn’t noticed before, like the hum of an HVAC system or the whirring of a computer? Are there sounds filtering in from outside?
Now, connect with touch. Find an interesting or pleasing texture: a smooth wooden desk, a soft pant leg. Place your fingers on it gently, and notice how it feels.
Finally, if possible, connect with smell. If you have something nearby that smells good, like a flower, an oil, or a book, inhale it. (If there’s a scent you love that’s easy to bring with you to work, it might be worth packing it. I love lemon essential oil; others love lavender.) If there’s no special, pleasurable scent nearby, simply inhale through your nose and notice what you smell, if anything.
These grounding practices can take us out of our thoughts and help us feel calm.
6. Naming gratitude.
When we’re spread thin, it’s harder to have the mental discipline to stay positive. We can easily spiral into negativity and fear. This practice counters that—by taking time to consciously feel grateful, we foster calm and compassion.
It’s as simple as counting your blessings. I like to start with the basics. I’m grateful for my health. I’m grateful to have a roof over my head. I’m grateful for the sunshine. I’m grateful for the rain. I’m grateful to have food to eat.
As I name these simple blessings off, I find that more of them start coming to mind. They can be big or small. I’m grateful for that pretty poster. I’m grateful for the guy who smiled at me through his face mask. I’m grateful for the joke I heard earlier. I’m grateful for my cat. I’m grateful for this soft chair.
(If you’re a person of faith, this can also turn into a meaningful prayer practice.)
It can help to write gratitudes down—daily or weekly gratitude journals help with sleep, lower stress, and even bolster generosity.
7. Chi gung with breaths.
Here’s the one practice you can’t do surreptitiously—but if you have some space to be unselfconscious during the workday, it’s fantastic.
Chi gung (qigong) is related to tai chi. Both practices originated in ancient China, and both are designed to connect the breath, body, and chi, or energy. Chi gung is simpler to learn, because it uses repetitive motions that are easy to remember. These can be deeply calming.
Here’s a great video of one simple breath movement.
When I had a nine-to-five job at a nonprofit watershed council, I started doing a modified version of this throughout the day. I had only one officemate, and she was totally supportive. Once an hour or so, I would stand up from my desk and take three deep breaths, stretching my arms up with each one. On the third breath, I would fold forward, letting my arms and head fall toward the floor. It only took a minute or two, and it felt amazing to breathe and stretch.
I felt sure that these little breaks made me more productive, and they also helped me stay healthy.
8. Bonus practice: Escape into fiction! 🙂
All of the above practices will help calm the nervous system, getting us out of fight-or-flight mode and into a calmer, more embodied state. This last one won’t exactly make us feel present or embodied—but I still highly recommend it, because sometimes, nothing helps the mind and body relax more than escaping into a great story!
In particular, I recommend seeking stories that will entertain, but won’t get the blood pumping or require much left-brained thinking. Light, uplifting fiction or memoir are best. Sports can be fun too, if they’re not too stressful to follow. History, politics, and dark, dystopian tales aren’t usually as helpful.
For example, here are just a few of the stories that have gotten me, Ron, or both of us through the pandemic so far:
Books
- The Harry Potter series (reading or audio).
- Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels.
- Louise Penny’s Three Pines mystery series.
- James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small and its sequels.
Film and TV
- Star Trek shows—The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager.
- 80s movies! These are light, nostalgic, fun, and easy.
- PBS shows: All Creatures Great and Small, Downton Abbey, Atlantic Crossing.
Eventually, the pandemic will end and life will return to some semblance of normal. In the meantime, this is a marathon, not a sprint. I hope that if you’re struggling to find calm in a busy schedule, you’ve found something in this post that will help.
