Creating a Calming Routine That Works for You
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Life moves fast, throwing a constant stream of stressors our way. Work deadlines, family obligations, health challenges, financial pressures and more amp up the nervous system, often keeping us in fight-or-flight mode for too long. This floods the body with cortisol and other hormones that, over time, compromise immune function, vascular health, sleep quality and emotional wellbeing.
Intentionally cultivating daily routines that calm and soothe the body-mind allows us to regularly counter all this stimulation and distress. The following are some tips to help you design a personalized set of practices that relax your nervous system, invite rest and restoration, and promote a greater sense of inner peace.
Assess Your Current Lifestyle
Begin by analyzing your typical daily schedule, habits, and stress triggers. When during the day do you feel most relaxed? When is stress most intensely felt? Were there past times when you recall having a calmer existence?
Identify activities currently in your routine that correlate with feeling revved up or worn out. Likewise, pinpoint things that seem soothing or stabilizing. These awareness exercises reveal opportunities to prune adrenaline-spiking habits and nurture more chill alternatives. Start envisioning what types of changes might allow you to gain consistency in relaxation while minimizing stress build up.
Adopt Stress-Busting Activities
Certain activities have well-established effects of calming nerves and anxiety when done regularly. Fold these into the pockets of your daily workflow as mental retreats. Be sure to continue each long enough that you feel downshifting occur. Over time, the nervous system learns to toggle more quickly into these now familiar off ramps from the busy highway of life.
- Breathwork: Conscious breathing elicits relaxation rapidly while connecting mind to body. Deep inhales followed by longer exhales signal safety to your physiology, dialing down hypervigilant “fight or flight”. Try box breathing: Inhale for a count of 4, hold for 4, exhale for 4, hold empty for 4. Repeat until calm. Or simply put attention on feeling inhales and exhales without controlling them.
- Sound Baths: The experts at Maloca Sound say that lying still while listening to gongs, Tibetan singing bowls, chimes, and the soothing vibrations of a sound bath, allows your cells to entrain to healing sonic frequencies as they vibrate through you, inducing deep calm and whole-body harmony. Your mind takes an auditory spa bath, releasing chatter and tension. After 30-60 minutes of this immersive sonic experience, you emerge renewed.
- Guided Meditation: Various apps guide you through short mindfulness practices to relax and recenter amidst daily tasks. Even 5-10 minutes can reboot mood and performance if done with intention. Over time, meditation lengthens attention span, emotional resilience and that “calm core” to handle stress.
- Unplug and Commune with Nature: Screens and excess stimuli fatigue the nervous system by constantly provoking fight-or-flight reactions, even if subtle. Yet nature invokes the opposite response called “rest and digest”. Forest bathing, sitting by water, stargazing, hiking and other green time lets our physiology chill entirely.
Optimize Your Environment
Look around your home and workspace. Decluttering, organizing and removing abrasive sensory elements helps both mind and body calm down. So does incorporating more plants. Verify lighting is not too bright, harsh or blue-toned (which signals daytime to the brain). Check that background noise remains low or soothing: go for chill music or nature sounds versus jarring TV. Use scent as a balm with lavender, candles or incense should they appeal.
Conclusion
Creating a personalized calming routine counters stress and promotes inner peace. Identify stressors and soothing activities, adopt practices like breathwork, sound baths, meditation, and nature exposure. Optimize your environment for relaxation. A consistent calming routine helps manage stress and cultivates balance.
