Calming Practice 1 of 4

Your mind and your body are very interconnected.

When you breathe in deeply, you are activating your parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and digest one. Activation of this nervous system helps the body to rest and heal.

Another nervous system in the body is called the sympathetic nervous system. This one can react quickly to stressful situations with the fight, flight, or freeze reactions.

Both systems work together to keep us healthy and safe.

You can use your mind to increase your intentional use of the parasympathetic nervous system to calm you.

Taking a deep breath has your mind focus on your body for a little while.

Having your mind focus on your body can pull you slightly away from your thoughts or feelings that may have swept up all of your attention and sense of identity.

Having some space between you and your thoughts and feelings can give you some shelter from the raging storms that thoughts and feelings can sometimes be.

Your breath can help you return to a peaceful place or center from which to view and experience the thoughts-and-feelings storms through something like windows at times.

Pattern breathing involves some combination of inhaling, holding, exhaling, holding.

If you feel dizzy or short of breath doing this then change your pattern to breathe more often.

4, 2, 8, 2: One pattern that deep sea divers use to calm their bodies is to breathe in to the count of 4, hold for 2 seconds, then breathe out for the count of 8, hold for 2 seconds, and repeat. Do this for about 1 minute.

4, 4, 4, 4: This pattern is symmetrical like a box. Breathe in for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, out for 4 seconds, hold for 4 seconds, and then repeat for about 1 minute.

Body Scan Breathing involves focusing your mind on parts of your body while you breathe slowly.

Belly Breathing: Some people like to put a hand or stuffed animal on top of their belly and breathe deeply to create a rising and falling mountain. This can calm us.

Toe Breathing: Some people like to begin by pretending to breathe through their big toes, to get their focus away from their heads or aches and pains for a while. After a while, some people like to wiggle and relax their body while breathing slowly in a pattern that works up from their toes to their legs, hips, tummy, backs and shoulders, arms, hands, fingers, necks and faces, and heads.

Scan Your Senses is when you notice details about what you can see, hear, taste, smell or feel. If you put your focus on one sense at a time, then your focus is pulled away from your thoughts and feelings for a moment and you have a chance to find a place from which to experience them that is more restful or supportive.

Some people try to notice one new item in their environment that they see that they had not yet noticed. For example, that plant has flowers that appear in the shape of stars.

The time spent on your senses can help you have some space from your thoughts and feelings so when you go back to focus on them, you feel less identified with them, and can be more aware of how they feel in your body as they change and pass.

The mind and the body both need rest.

Learn your different healthy ways of resting the mind through sleep, music, talking, walking, painting, playing, breathing and much more.

Try to give your mind a rest at least once every 2 hours.

Our bodies also need to get up and move at least once every 1 hour. Or, if you are on your feet for a long time, let your body sit and rest for a healthy break.

In winter in Alaska, we need to be aware of having some restful fun while the sun is up each day. Be outside for at least 30 minutes for a daily walk or some time spent moving around like sledding, skiing, or shoveling snow.

What are your types of healthy play?

Be careful about what types of video games you are playing and for how long. Too much of one thing can hurt your health, and what you spend your time taking in is what your brain remembers and can have dreams about. There needs to be careful decision making and balance in your activities. Make sure your choices have that balance to sustain your well-being.

Keep exploring different hobby and interest areas.

Our minds and bodies feel more calm when we feel connected to other people.

Connection can come through actively listening to others, through reading or listening to books, through writing letters or a journal, through drawing or creating something, or through speaking what is on our minds to someone who knows how to listen to our talk.

Practice Active Listening by taking in what someone else is trying to communicate to you so that you can understand their point of view and how they feel.

• Listen with empathy: Listening to understand feelings is separate from listening and agreeing with someone, which you will not always be able to do. Understanding can help you gain new perspectives for finding solutions or some in-common basis for connection. People feel more comfortable when they feel heard, and they will then share more information for insight and you will feel more connected with them.

• Listen intently: You might have to translate what someone is saying to you to feel more connected and calm with them. Are they expressing feelings that they want you to understand such as fear, frustration, or anger? It may help to digest what you are hearing down to a Please or a Thank you. For example, “Please know that I am frustrated” might be the translation of yelling. Using your intuition to understand someone else’s perspective might help you to feel more calm and it could help you remember the other person is still there underneath their emotional storms.

• Speak up: When you are doing active listening, you are responding with words or sounds so the other person knows that you are listening and find what they are saying to be interesting and relevant. Such communication signals like these can give you something to focus on to create a calmer you.

• Question, be curious, and rephrase back: Check your understanding of what you are hearing by summarizing and communicating back about what was said, before jumping to what you want to say next.

• Check your body language: Face the speaker, nod, and possibly hold still.

• Accept different answers and responses: Take time to digest what you hear to find insights about what needs the other person might have expressed underneath an unexpected response.

• Tell stories: Once the person you are listening to has signalled that they are done speaking, and that they feel heard and understood by you, tell a story that relates to what the person is talking about. Your story should have a point such as sharing something in common with the speaker. The point could be a place to begin, then develop the situation or setting details, next describe the action, then what ended up happening, and ultimately bring it back to the point. Help the other person understand how your point connects to their experiences.

Listen to music or nature sounds to feel more calm. Using our sense of hearing can pull us out of being too caught up in stressful thinking or feeling.

Listen to someone read to you or access an audiobook to calm the mind and body.

Read to feel more calm and shift to different perspectives for a while, and then you might see your own situation differently because you have shifted your focus a bit.

Write and Actively Listen to yourself to create a more focused line of attention and understanding of your thoughts and feelings. Writing things out can also just be a way of expressing whatever feeling storm is in your head, to help the feeling storm be reduced right then and there. Sometimes it is easier to write something down to help you get ready to talk with a caring person about how you have been feeling. Find caring people to share your experiences with so you feel connected with others. Remember to take good care of yourself and to know that thoughts and feelings storms will pass and that you are more than those passing thoughts and feelings.

Draw, paint, or do other art to help you move into a calmer mind and body by shifting your focus to creating and organizing during a thoughts and feelings storm. Your art might help you express what you are feeling, or it may simply distract you for a while until you are in a calmer state of mind.

Talk with someone caring to feel the calm mind and body connections that are possible with calming practice. People to talk with include a family member, a friend, a teacher, a counselor or other trusted adult. Find someone that will say yes to your request for their full attention, so that you feel listened to with them nodding their head, facing you, and asking you questions to make sure that they understand you.

All 6 activities have you moving your body to get something accomplished outside of the thoughts and feelings of the moment.

Change what your body is doing to change your thoughts and feelings.

Moving around can help you to burn off stress energy to help you get to a calmer state.

Getting healthy food can help your energy levels. Getting water to drink is very important to wash away some of your body’s stress chemicals.

Helping someone will also have you focusing on someone else’s feelings or thoughts for a while so you might feel more able to help yourself with the challenging thoughts and feelings when you are done.

When we think about being a friend to ourselves, then new solutions often open up.

We are used to encouraging others and so we begin to talk to ourselves to feel more encouraged as well.

It is alright to talk to yourself. You are just focusing your thoughts on making a message to help you just as you can focus your thoughts to do math. Thoughts happen because we focus to think, and also thoughts just happen by themselves during the day like dreams do at night. The more we practice focusing our thoughts in a certain direction, then the easier it will be to deal with the thoughts that just happen by themselves. We can decide if we want to focus on those thoughts or do a different activity.