Exercises To Calm Your Anxious Thoughts
Muscle Release Exercise
When you feel anxious, you might notice strain or tension in your muscles. This muscle stress can make your anxiety more difficult to manage in the moment you’re experiencing it. By relieving the stress in your muscles, you can usually reduce your anxiety levels. To quickly relieve your muscle tension during moments of anxiety:
Sit in a quiet and comfortable place and close your eyes.
Use your hand to make a tight fist. Squeeze your fist tightly.
Hold your squeezed fist for a few seconds. Notice all the tension you feel in your hand.
Slowly open your fingers and be aware of how you feel. You may notice a feeling of tension leaving your hand. Eventually, your hand will feel lighter and more relaxed.
Continue tensing and then releasing various muscle groups in your body, from your hands, legs, shoulders, or feet. You may want to work your way up and down your body tensing various muscle groups. Avoid tensing the muscles in any area of your body where you’re injured or in pain, as that may further aggravate your injury.
Breathing Exercise
When you’re feeling anxious, you might notice that your heart rate and breathing get a bit faster. You may also begin to sweat and feel dizzy or lightheaded. When you’re anxious, getting your breathing under control can relax both your body and mind. To get your breathing under control when you’re anxious, follow these steps:
Sit in a quiet and comfortable place. Put one of your hands on your chest and the other on your stomach. Your stomach should move more than your chest when you breathe in deeply.
Take a slow and regular breath in through your nose. Watch and sense your hands as you breathe in. The hand on your chest should remain still while the hand on your stomach will move slightly.
Breathe out through your mouth slowly.
Repeat this process at least 10 times or until you begin to feel your anxiety lessen.
Shake it off
When you experience anxiety, your body goes into fight-flight-freeze mode. Chemicals including adrenaline and cortisol are released into your body, causing physical agitation and further fueling the anxiety. In these moments of panic where anxiety already feels like it’s past the point of no return, coping techniques like meditation or even breathing exercises might not be as helpful, especially if those types of exercises are not your thing. Some people need techniques that are a little more physical or sensory-oriented.
You can literally shake off the anxiety by moving your hands, arms, legs — wherever you’re feeling tension. You can also try stomping, punching a pillow, or dancing! You can also do more traditional exercise like jumping jacks, burpees, fake jump rope, whatever you choose.
While it might feel counterintuitive to exercise in the moment, by actively doing high intensity exercise that boosts the heart rate, you are able to take control of your physical symptoms.
Movement inherently releases tension. When animals reach the freeze state, the way they get out of it is to shake it off. They literally shake every part of their body!
Tap it out
Emotional freedom technique (EFT) is an alternative treatment for emotional distress. It’s also referred to as tapping or psychological acupressure.
People who use this technique believe tapping the body can create a balance in your energy system. Though still being researched, EFT tapping has been used to treat people with anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Similar to acupuncture, EFT focuses on the meridian points — or energy hot spots — to restore balance to your body’s energy. It’s believed that restoring this energy balance can relieve symptoms a negative experience or emotion may have caused.
Proponents say the tapping helps you access your body’s energy and send signals to the part of the brain that controls stress. They claim that stimulating the meridian points through EFT tapping can reduce the stress or negative emotion you feel from your issue, ultimately restoring balance to your disrupted energy.
EFT tapping can be divided into five steps.
Identify and name your issue/fear
Establish a benchmark for level of intensity – from 1 to 10.
Establish a phrase that explains what you want to address. A common phrase is: “Even though I have this [fear or problem], I deeply and completely accept myself.”
Begin tapping each meridian point (below) while repeating your phrase three times at each point.
At the end of your sequence, rate your intensity level on a scale from 0 to 10. Compare your results with your initial intensity level. If you haven’t reached 0, repeat this process until you do.
Meridian Points: Start from the first and work your way down.
karate chop (side of hand)
eyebrow
side of the eye
under the eye
under the nose
chin
beginning of the collarbone
under the arm
top of head
Find your personal method
The same techniques don’t work for everybody. It might take some experimenting to figure out which of these coping techniques works for you. Alternatively, you might need to use a couple of them to help you calm down. Everyone’s anxiety is different, but there’s one thing that’s universal: Everyone deserves relief and the ability to calm down.
The services provided have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This blog is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. This material is provided for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. Always consult your physician before beginning any treatment or therapy program. Any designations or references to therapies are for marketing purposes only and do not represent actual products.