Easing the Mind, Healing the Body.
9 powerful techniques for managing stress & easing anxiety
Stress gets a bad rap.
The word makes my whole body tense but the reality is, stress is a natural and normal part of life.
Our bodies are inherently equipped to handle stress, designed to navigate through it with resilience. Unfortunately, the ability to cope with stress is something we frequently need to rediscover and teach our bodies anew, reinforcing our natural capacity to manage and overcome it.
This blog post explores 9 powerful techniques for managing stress stress and easing anxiety through building mind-body awareness. Through practices ranging from conscious breathing and mindful movement to sensory grounding, these practices will help you tap into your innate capacity for resilience and inner calm.
By developing a deeper attunement to your physical and emotional states, you can transform stress from an enemy into an opportunity for growth and self-awareness.
The Three R’s of Rest
At the heart of this we will explore the three R's—Recognise, Respond, and Rebalance. This framework empowers us to identify stress signals, thoughtfully address them, and restore equilibrium, which in turn, can transform our relationship with stress.
Understanding Stress
The Role of Mind-Body Awareness in Our Experience
Stress is the ‘high-alert’ energy that moves through your body when you sense danger or excitement. It gets you out of bed in the morning and helps you meet your deadline at work. It can feel hectic, irrational, and overwhelming.
Stress is often experienced as a rush.
You’ll experience stress differently too; as anticipation or motivation when you’re going on holiday, or an incredible opportunity has just landed in your lap! It’s still a bit jittery but this is the healthy kind of stress, the beneficial kind, and it’s called eustress.
Eustress is the one that helps us build resilience and confidence and teaches us to embrace our wobbles, it’s the one we play with most when we workout or come to our yoga mat.
It is so important to explore the different kinds of stress and how it is our bodies' natural way to support us through different challenges in life.
But it's not just stress feelings that we experience in our bodies... is it?
Managing Different Types of Stress
Stress energy has a few emotional sidekicks known as anxiety, fear, overwhelm, frustration and self-doubt. You might be familiar with a few of those 😉
Anxiety is a state of being not simply a state of mind, it’s a whole body experience. When we appreciate the mind-body connection we understand the emotional layers of anxiety and multiple stress signals felt within the body.
Our physical symptoms are more tangible, you can describe them more easily as they are happening in your body. Tightness in your chest, numbness in your arms or legs, brain fog, a racing heart and shortness of breath, to name a few.
Emotions can be harder to name but it’s good to acknowledge how you are feeling. Emotions are energy-in-motion (derived from the latin word 'emovere' meaning to move, move out or move through).
When stress energy arises it can be confusing to know what to do with it, or where it needs to go.
Understanding the Nature of Anxiety
Let’s start with understanding the nature of anxiety. This is often experienced as:
Fear based
Often irrational
Fight, flight or freeze
Rapid urgency to it
Scattered
Intense
Out of control
Anxiety is ultimately the separation from your present self. Whether it’s an experience in your physical environment or a ‘what-if’ scenario in your mind, the overwhelming feeling is that you are unsettled and unsafe.
It’s important to know is your mind will perceive an imaginary, “what-if” scenario the same way it perceives physical danger in your external environment, so your body will react to that danger whether it is happening now or as a projection of a future experience in your mind.
Stress is an everyday process your body is designed to flow in and out of, but that doesn’t mean it’s any more pleasant when it shows up!
Stress gets to be useful when it's not experienced for too long for too often.
Identifying Your Body’s Stress Signals
The First Step in Mind-Body Awareness
Learning to recognise your body’s unique stress signals allows you to consciously (and compassionately) respond to what you’re feeling. This helps to give you the knowledge and awareness of what resources to call on to re-balance.
Getting to know how stress and anxiety manifest in your body means you’ll notice a shift in your mood sooner. When those familiar sensations arise again (as they unfortunately will) you can remind yourself they won’t last forever.
Making friends with your stress isn't about living life in stress mode and loving it, HELL NO! There is no glamour to be found in burnout my friends and ‘busy’ doesn’t need to be worn like a badge of honour.
Permission slip: If you want a duvet day take it. Don’t wait until your body gets fed up of sending signals you ignore, and becoming so worn out it burns out!
Managing Stress Through Awareness
Getting to know your body’s signals better
What words come up when you think about stress?⠀⠀⠀
Physical words like ‘tension’ or ‘tightness’ perhaps. Maybe emotional or behavioural words such as ‘distracted’, ‘impatient’, ‘confused’.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
What positive words can you find that would counterbalance or harmonise with your stress words?
If you experience ‘tension' or ‘tightness’ perhaps words like, ‘openness', ‘spaciousness’ or ‘freedom’ come to mind. Alternatively, ’clarity’ might come up if you feel ‘confused’ and struggle to ‘focus’ when stressed…
How can you bring these positive words into play in daily life to support you?
Could you breathe more slowly to create a sense of ‘space’ in your body?
Could you step outside to get some physical ‘space’?⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Notice little shifts and patterns
By paying attention, you’ll get a sense of how stress shows up in your body in both positive and challenging situations. This means you’ll recognise the shift in your mood, breathing, behaviour; the unique signals telling you the scales have begun to tip.
Compassionate Awareness
The Key to Managing Stress with Mind-Body Awareness
Checking-in on yourself regularly, and being aware of your stress signals will help you understand how to support yourself in times of stress.
What are you feeling?
Where are you feeling it?
What can you change right now about how you are feeling?
This level of self-awareness will allow you to respond to what you’re experiencing in a calm way.
The Three R's of Stress Management
Recognise, Respond and Rebalance
Bringing yourself back to a grounded head space where you can think straight and not feel overwhelmed is the ultimate goal. Having an awareness of what your body is feeling will help you understand what you need when you need it.
Learning tools and techniques to support will help you feel calmer and more connected to your body and the present moment. They can also transform a surge of negative stress energy in your body into something more beneficial!
Stress gets to be used in a positive way when you learn to recognise, respond and rebalance when your scales tip too far.
9 ways to manage stress through mind body awareness
1. “To chill out, breathe it out”
Extending, or lengthening the exhale is like putting the brakes on. It taps straight into the parasympathetic branch of your nervous system calming you, helping you think more clearly and reconnecting you to your body. Remember, when you can’t control your thoughts focus on controlling your breathing.
Your breath is the fastest and simplest way to reconnect and rebalance, it’s also a free resource!
2. Self-holding/hugging
This is a soothing somatic technique I use in my sessions and in daily life when things feel tough. Place your hands on your thighs or on your belly and chest. Making contact with your body through touch can be soothing and supportive, and helps to focus your attention.
You can find a self-hold practice on my website here.
3. Get grounded
This mindful technique helps you to reconnect to your body and the present moment. You can do this sitting in a chair or standing barefoot on the ground. Start by becoming aware of your body against the support beneath you. Notice any points of contact or textures. Use your sense of touch, wiggling your toes, or rubbing palms and fingertips together.
Focus on your body in contact with the support beneath you, and any sounds, smells or textures in the space around you there.
4. Movement is medicine
Think about how you would comfort baby when they are crying. Soothing sways, gentle rocking motions and soft sighs and hums are deeply grounding practices we can explore with ourselves to calm and regulate our nervous system. Sometimes the simplest of things are the most powerful.
Step outside notice the sky, sense the ground and focus on deepening your breath.
5. Scent to soothe
Using scent is one of my favourite ways to create a sanctuary of calm in my home. I often place essential oils on my pulse points to ground or uplift me. Do you have any familiar or comforting scents you could use? One of my favourites is Wild Orange which is super grounding and extremely supportive for anxiety. It has uplifting qualities too, helping to improve your mood and focus.
Do you have any familiar or comforting scents you could use? Scent is a double-whammy because it encourages you to breathe more deeply too!
6. Visualise it
Visualisation is a beautiful creative practice that uses your imagination and helps got activate and fine-tune your intuition. The idea is to create a safe and happy place in your mind, imagined or a place you have visited before, or a mishmash of the two. You might like to imagine yourself in a beautiful place in nature. Guided visualisations can be extra supportive as they often focus on conscious breathing.
7. Body-mindful movement
This is the style of movement I teach and share in my sessions. It is blend of somatic and restorative yoga, and vinyasa flow. By moving through slow mindful movements you become more aware of how you feel as you move.
Helping reconnect to your body, regulate your nervous system, improve your sleep, emotional resilience, strength, confidence and flexibility.
8. Take note
Writing down your thoughts is a practical and empowering way to acknowledge how you are feeling and giving space to those feelings. It’s why journaling can be such a supportive practice and compassionate act of self-care.
Putting pen to paper allows the physical release of your thoughts into words.
It can help you see things differently, giving you perspective, and bring yourself back into a more grounded headspace.
9. Opening up
I appreciate this might not be the easiest one. However, opening up beyond the pages of your journal with a supportive friend or loved one can lighten the load a little. Voicing things can help to unclutter your thoughts and talking things through can give us new ideas to explore.
Who do you know and trust to have a compassionate conversation with? I am an advocate for seeking professional support where it's needed. Especially when you are looking for support with complicated emotions and need a qualified human to hold space for you.
Reacquainting with our natural capacities for coping & thriving amidst stress
As we wrap up, I hope you've found these practical techniques that resonate with your journey towards a more balanced and fulfilling life. Our bodies possess an innate resilience against stress, crafted by nature to navigate the ebbs and flows of life's challenges. Yet, this remarkable ability often requires a conscious reawakening—a deliberate effort to reacquaint ourselves with our natural capacities for coping and thriving amidst adversity.
Remember, when stress looms large, anchor yourself in the three R's: Recognise, Respond, and Rebalance. These principles serve as your compass, guiding you back to equilibrium and empowering you to face life's storms with grace and fortitude.
Self-Care Simplified: A Practical Guide
My no-fuss handbook is designed to weave self-care seamlessly into the fabric of your everyday life. Within its pages, you'll find my seven steps to stress-free self-care—a blend of practical advice and mindful practices to cultivate your personalised approach to managing stress through mind-body awareness.
Big Love,
Becki x