When you feel overwhelmed, stressed or anxious, here’s a quick way to find peace, calm and clarity:
- Close your eyes.
- Place your hand on your heart and breathe slowly.
- Focus your attention on your pineal gland, which is in the center of the brain, and continue breathing slowly.
You don’t need to know exactly where the pineal gland is; just have the intention to focus on your pineal gland.
Practise these three steps each time you feel overwhelmed or stressed and you’ll get to a calm and peaceful state faster. When you’re in that space, you have the clarity to find a solution to whatever problem you’re facing. You see, when you’re stressed, your brain doesn’t function properly – you’re in fight-or-flight mode – and you can’t process information efficiently because the blood moves from your brain to large muscles in your body to help you fight or run. This is the body’s automatic, built-in system designed to protect us from threat or danger. But, unless you’re in physical danger, this survival response isn’t useful. In fact, a constant state of stress can cause serious health problems.
Stress comes from our thoughts, our minds, and we’re used to being in our heads. The problem is that’s not where life is happening. Life isn’t happening in our minds, life is happening in the present moment. But we’re rarely present in the moment. We’re either worrying about some event that hasn’t happened yet or thinking about what happened yesterday and feeling guilty about what we did or said, or getting upset about what happened. We’re living in our heads, watching a movie.
Say you had an argument with your partner last night. You get up in the morning to walk the dog. It’s a beautiful, sunny day, but you’re not aware of it because you’re playing the argument with your partner over and over in our mind, and you’re getting upset all over again. The argument is over. You’re outside, the sun is shining. But you can’t enjoy this beautiful day because you’re not present. You’re playing a movie in your head.
Now let’s take a future event: your boss scheduled a meeting to talk to you about a project you’re working on, for example. You start to worry – “Did I do something wrong? What if I screwed up and I’m taken off the project?” You’re stressing about something that hasn’t happened yet. There’s nothing you can do about it now, so you’re just wasting your time and energy thinking about it. When it happens, it’ll happen in the present moment and if you’re present, you’ll be able to handle it with clarity and calm.
If you practise these steps each time you catch yourself getting overwhelmed or stressed, it’ll create a mechanism in you and it’ll become automatic. This simple process will save you from the emotional rollercoaster of worry and give you strength and clarity.
Life is a series of moments, all happening now. When you’re present, you can appreciate and enjoy each of those moments AND have the clarity to handle problems when they arise. With presence come empowerment, peace and joy.
Do you want to go through life in your head, stressed, anxious, overwhelmed, and risk having serious health problems? Or would you rather live fully each moment feeling calm, empowered, and joyful in a healthy body?
I’m looking forward to hearing your experiences with these steps and the results you get!
– Sylvie Grégoire