Ways to Relax and Calm the Mind

There are many different ways we can relax and calm our mind. Life is all about enjoyment and it doesn’t have to be a race. A slow walk is so much easier than a sprint for the ‘finish’ line. Taking time out to look after ourselves, is ‘self-care’ and ‘self-love’. By doing things to care for ourselves, we are then able to look after those around us when they need us.

Find calm in the moment

Okay so we don’t have to get a canoe to find calm but a picture tells a thousand words. A simpler, more accessible way to find calm is through some sort of breathing work. Meditation is one of these ways to find some sort of peace and quiet in the moment.

Meditation is often given a bad rap because people think it’s complicated or something. The hardest part about it is finding the time and the second hardest part would be to be alone with ourselves which can be confronting.

Finding calm in the moment, can come in all sorts of forms. It could mean taking a few breaths. It could mean relaxing on our own somewhere and enjoying the moment. It could mean doing a body scan. It doesn’t matter what type of meditation we do, but it does matter. It helps calm the mind from all the ‘chatter’ or ‘self-talk’ going on, and helps us to better get to know ourselves at the same time.

Once we start a meditation practice of any sort, doing it regularly, helps maintain some sort of balance. This helps make our brain feel more ‘coherent’ and less ‘chaotic’. It can be wild in there sometimes 😉

Slow down to relax & find calm

Going at the pace of a snail might be a slight exaggeration but you get my drift. It’s drummed into us from an early age that we must work hard, fast and that being busy is just the norm. I think people are slowly coming to the realisation that the so-called ‘busy’ aspect of life, just isn’t that worth it now. A simpler, slower-paced life is more manageable and more enjoyable.

A good way to relax by slowing down is to start to ‘under commit’ to things. We don’t have to go to EVERY outing, get EVERTYHING done in one day, be EVERYONE’s friend etc… While it’s good to have a productive life, burnout isn’t much fun! Nor is prolonged stress!

To relax a bit more, try slowing down the pace of life. Appreciating the smaller things in life. Re-evaluating the more important things in life. Being mindful about what we do and how we spend our time can help us develop strategies to find calm.

Here are some simple ways that can help us be mindful in tough times.

Stretching for a calmer mind

Certain forms of stretching can help us to relax. They can relieve tension in our muscles helping our body to feel more at ease in the current moment. Stretching also allows for us to examine where in the body our muscles might be tense.

Try these stretches to feel a little more relaxed. They may also help when done before trying to sleep.

Try tea to unwind the mind

Personally, I’m not a fan of tea and never have been. But after spending a shi* tonne of time creating the following infographic, I might just give tea a try!

Here’s a bunch of different types of tea that may help relieve stress and anxiety:

breathing is an underrated, yet necessary function to calm the mind & body

We obviously need to breathe to live but how many of us are really conscious of HOW we breathe? The way we breathe can signal to our body if we are in a fight or flight situation. Shallow breathing from the chest can make our body feel that it is under stress and that it’s time to move – quickly. Deep breathing from our stomach (diaphragm) lets our body know that everything is ok.

There’s a tonne of apps that help with slowing the breathing down including Insight Timer, Calm and Smiling Mind. Learning to come back to our breath in times of stress can help calm the mind because it brings us back to the present moment. Because we can create all kinds of stressful situations in our head out of nothing, it makes sense to use the breath to SNAP us back to reality – AKA the present.

calming music to soothe the mind & soul

Chucking on Death Metal when feeling stressed would likely make the majority of us feel more heightened (unless of course, it works for you). Music definitely is a personal choice and we just have to sample different things until we find something that suits us, and our emotional state at the time. Music can dramatically change our emotional being and is a great strategy to quickly change how we feel.

Making different play lists based on different situations, is a good way to change how we feel in an instant. Going from crazy to calm IS possible.

My top types of calming music for quieting a cray cray mind are:

The Piano Guys: Best Of (but I find all their stuff great)

Stanton Lanier (again, I find it all good)

Chilled Classical Covers

Binaural Beats – I find this super good for anxiety especially when wearing headphones.

REMEMBER – music is a personal choice and what might calm me, might send shivers up you. Do YOU!

calm the mind through one of the disciplines of yoga

For a related post on the benefits of yoga, click the yoga image below.

Yoga is mostly about connecting the mind and body. In today’s society, we have become somewhat disconnected from our body. Yoga helps to reestablish this connection.

There are many different types of yoga available. Yoga quietens the mind because we focus on the postures or poses or whatever you want to call them. Yoga is particularly good for those of us with monkey brains e.g. a brain that wants to focus on anything and everything. It’s hard to focus on two things at once especially if we’re trying to get into a ‘shape’.

Yoga brings us into the present moment using our breath and provides the opportunity to focus on the NOW. Not yesterday, not next week, and not next year – only the now! All I can recommend is just trying it without judgement and giving it a go. We don’t need fancy yoga clothing to do it and if we can’t get to a studio, there’s plenty of online yoga videos to try out. Booking into a class and going every day has helped ground me – physically and mentally.

Bottom line

We are all different so what works for me might not work for you. Getting to know yourself and what you like/don’t like is key. Trying stuff without judgement until something works is also key plus not giving up. Everything is possible when we find strategies that suit our own situation or environment.

Keep going!

Additional ways to relax and improve mood

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