Mental and Emotional Stress Exercises

Grounding Exercise

Throughout the day when you feel scattered, stressed or in need of calm focus start to pay attention to your feet. Feel them heavy on the ground. If you are walking feel the weight of your footsteps and your connection to the earth as you walk. From here begin to feel your body, feel as if you are fully within it filling up and filling out your bodies entire space. Feel how good it feels to be grounded to the earth fully in your power.

Tapping Exercise

This exercise is best done once a state of relaxation and mental stillness has been created. The first time you use it should be directly after using the Awareness Guided Meditation CD. Once you have reached a peaceful state that feels exactly the way you wish to feel pick a part of the body that you will easily and discreetly be able to tap. Start tapping this part of the body, with each tap let the feelings of peace, space and relaxation deepen. Every time you feel this state tap the same way again. For the first few times only tap when you are feeling deeply peaceful. Hold the intention that in times of stress you will be able to tap this spot and it will bring back this state of peace and relaxation that you have created. After your fourth session anchoring the positive state you may tap this part of the body any time you feel stress to bring back the positive feelings. Just take a deep breath and tap, feel all the feelings coming back and the stress dissipating.

Associating a Smell Exercise

This Exercise is similar to the tapping exercise in that we are utilizing an external force, or stimulus to return us back to our relaxed peaceful state. Instead of tapping have a specific smell, perhaps vanilla, lavender, orange spice or even cinnamon. It should be a smell that already makes you feel either happy, inspired or nostalgic; it should also be a calming and clearing smell. Peppermint is a good one as it brings a sharp crisp focus that cuts through mental chatter while rejuvenating the senses. Have the space that you use to either ground yourself or to do the awareness meditation aromatized. In this way you begin to associate the smell with the relaxed, peaceful state. You can either wear the smell or have a small essential oil bottle with you. You can also on short notice merely think of the smell. Allow the smell to take you directly back to being grounded, centred and in the moment.