This article was originally published by mindbodygreen.com. Read the original article here.

Life can feel fast-paced at times, and it’s easy to get swept along and forget to nurture your health. Neglecting yourself is not a wise choice though, because it can zap both your energy and your motivation. So instead, try these top self-care strategies to look and feel your best.

Get Your Sleep

The top item on your self-care list should be getting enough quality sleep. Inadequate sleep can damage your health in a myriad of ways, including:

• Increasing your risk of cardiac disease
• Elevating your inflammation levels
• Reducing your immunity
• Causing issues with weight control
• Lowering your level of energy
• Impairing your focus
• Increasing your chances for depression and anxiety

To ensure you get the sleep you need to feel your best, try to schedule at least 7-8 hours of sleep each night. Make your bedroom as conducive to sleep as possible by ensuring the room is dark, cool, and relaxing. Also, try to avoid exposure to blue light later in the day, and limit your intake of caffeine and alcohol, as well. Finally, consider taking a magnesium complex supplement to help you relax and get the sleep you need to feel your best.

Stay Physically Active 

When your job involves staring at a computer all day, your physical health and mental wellbeing can suffer. A sedentary lifestyle increases your odds for cardiac disease, chronic illness, arthritis, and weight gain. It can also take a toll on your mental health, increasing your odds for both depression and anxiety.

To feel your best, consciously choose to exercise on a regular basis. Experts recommend that you aim for at least 75 minutes of vigorous exercise or 150 minutes of moderate exercise each week. As long as you can reach your target rate, the type of exercise is not critical. Instead, it’s more important to choose something you love so that you can successfully maintain a regular workout routine.

You can also integrate movement in small ways throughout your day. For example, use a standing desk and make a point of walking whenever you are on the phone. Also, sneak in steps by parking further from your destination and opt for the stairs rather than riding an elevator.

Take A Breath And Relax

It is becoming increasingly clear that taking time to calm your mind can have a plethora of advantages for your health. One option is to spend a few minutes each day doing breathing exercises, such as belly breathing, alternate nostril breathing, or resonant breathing.

Alternatively, consider starting a meditation practice. Meditating helps you gain control of your breath and your mind. Not only can it help you feel more centered and peaceful, but it can also help you become more mindful and better able to control the direction of your thoughts.

Being deliberate about self-care can go a long way towards helping you feel your best. By making sure you get enough sleep, scheduling regular physical activity, and using relaxation techniques, you will find yourself better equipped to tackle anything that life throws your way.

This article was originally published by artofhealthyliving.com. Read the original article here.

Photo courtesy of James Branaman and Elaina Bellis (@elainadbellis) for Frank and Eileen

There are certain daily practices that are good for a calm and positive mood: Exercise regularly. Meditate. Eat nourishing foods. Turn off unnecessary push notifications. Done consistently, those all help manage our baseline levels of anxiety so that daily stressors don’t push us past our limits so easily. But in moments of sudden overwhelm—perhaps work is piling up quickly, or you’ve found yourself in close quarters with a few too many strangers—it can help to have some stress-reducing techniques in your (literal or figurative) pocket.

1. 1

   Take a slow breath

   Mindful breathing can be an easy practice to brush off. It might seem too simple or to be promising too much. But it’s a bit of mind-body psychology that works: You practice slow, steady breaths that mimic a calm and restful state in your body and your mind follows. Most of us can benefit from a digital helper like The Breathing App. Consider physical mindfulness tools, too. Komusō Design’s The Shift is a small silver tube modeled after the flutes of Japanese Komuso monks. Take a deep breath in, lift the tube to your lips, and breathe out through it. It limits how much air you can release at once, slowing down your exhales. The effect is like that of mindful breathing techniques, where longer exhales translate to greater feelings of tranquility and ease. Go for five rounds of breath (or as long as you’d like).

2. 
   
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1. 2

   Press an acupressure point

   You can find the Hegu acupressure point, which is known for its soothing effects, in the fleshy area between your thumb and forefinger. Feel around until you find an especially tender spot—that’s Hegu. When we’re feeling overwhelmed, squeezing that pressure point with the fingers of the opposite hand usually helps bring us back down to earth. (It’s believed to help with minor, occasional headaches, too.) When we want sustained pressure, a pair of acupressure rings helps. You just slip the rings onto the Hegu point of either hand and let them sit for twenty minutes.

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1. 3

   Massage your shoulders

   They say stress gets stuck in the body. Intuitively, we know this—we get stressed out and our bodies get tight. We can work to reduce stressful feelings by working backward, massaging the body to mellow the mind. Thought Sanctuary is known for its essential oil rollerballs, which are handy tools for aromatherapy, but it’s the vagus nerve oil, gently worked into the back and sides of the neck, that can really turn a painful moment around. Rub one pump of oil into your palms—the silky jojoba oil feels good on skin—and sweep your hands down your neck and shoulders. If any particular spot feels especially sensitive, spend some extra time there. When you’re done massaging the blend into your neck, cup your hands over your mouth and nose for a long, deep breath. (The delicate mix of lime, clove, bergamot, copaiba, juniper berry, chamomile, lavender, and frankincense plant essences comes together beautifully.)

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1. 4

   Leave it to the cards

   This card deck was developed by Deepika Chopra, who’s known as the optimism doctor for her science-backed approach to cultivating a sunny outlook. Each of the fifty-two mindfulness tips comes straight out of positive psychology research, which digs into the data behind concepts like gratitude, curiosity, and awe and helps people pursue longer, happier lives. We keep the deck on our bedside table for a quick hit of joy as we’re getting out of bed, but they’re just as great on the go. Break out the cards and shuffle through until you find one that offers what you need right now (a few deep breaths, a break from your Twitter feed, three things you’re grateful for…).

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This article was originally published by goop.com. Read the original article here.

How to cope with feeling overwhelmed

Many of us can identify with experiencing feelings of overwhelm: it is a universal experience that can feel all-consuming and challenging to manage at times.

In its most basic form, overwhelm can be described as a build up of stressful, worrying, or anxious feelings, which can overpower your train of thought and state of mind. This can leave you feeling unable to cope, with symptoms including loss of concentration, and thinking irrationally or illogically, either for a brief moment or for an extended period of time. Overwhelm can have an impact on our physical health as well as our mental health, and can often be felt physically as tension in muscles and joints, or an increased heart rate.

However, just like other forms of anxiety, overwhelm is a very common feeling that many people experience throughout their lives in different situations, and it is something that we can manage. If you are struggling or know someone who is, keep reading and discover three simple techniques for coping with, and overcoming, overwhelm.

3 coping strategies to help beat overwhelm

The circle of choice

The circle of choice is a technique that allows you to regain control over your thoughts and feelings. Grab a pencil and paper and write out everything you’re feeling overwhelmed about. This will help you to gain a sense of clarity on your current circumstances. Ask yourself two simple questions, looking at the list you’ve written down – what is in my control and what is out of my control?

Then, draw out two separate circles on another page, keeping your list nearby. Write the first question above one circle, and the second question above the other. Start by listing out what is in your control in one column. This part of the exercise will enable you to feel like you are gaining back a sense of control. Secondly, list out what feels out of your control in the second column – it’s not possible to control everything in life, so instead focus on how you can positively respond to these circumstances.

You may not be able to control everything in your life, yet you can always take control of how you choose to respond to situations, even if you can’t change the circumstance at hand.

When you are feeling overwhelmed, it is all too easy to lose sight of the fact that you have a choice. This exercise helps to give you a sense of stepping back into the choices that are available to you, find greater clarity, and move away from the foggy feeling of overwhelm.

Ask yourself empowering questions

Often, when we’re overwhelmed, a key contributing factor is feeling out of control in your circumstances. An effective way to manage this is to take a step back and ask yourself the question – “What is getting in the way of me feeling in control?” Whether it’s a challenging conversation you’ve had, unmanageable workload or an issue in your social life. State what your boundaries are and then ask yourself – “Have these boundaries been breached?”

To allow yourself the opportunity to recall and name your boundaries can be an empowering tool. In effect, this can help you to explore a renewed sense of purpose, and prevent overwhelm from escalating in the future.

Give yourself permission to gain a new perspective

When we are experiencing overwhelm, it can feel incredibly challenging to take time out of our commitments to get some breathing space. However, in doing so, we can help ourselves to gain a new outlook and overcome feelings of worry.

If you feel like you struggle to do this or don’t have the time, try setting aside just a few minutes to start with – perhaps while you’re boiling the kettle, or walking from one place to another. Attach some time for reflection onto a task you already do in your day to day life, and over time this can inspire you to carve out other pockets of time in the day for yourself.

Using these gaps of time, wherever you can find them, allows you the opportunity and space to reflect on your feelings. Taking the time to do this not only helps to reduce stress levels, it creates the space for you to identify what created the overwhelm, and how you can prevent it from escalating.

In these moments of reflection, allow space for the practice of self-care. This comes in many forms, whether it’s breathing exercises or other Mindfulness practices, this can help you to bring yourself back into the present moment and gain a new perspective.

Allow yourself the time to step back and reflect

All of these strategies for coping with overwhelm include setting aside time to reflect.

It’s easy to get caught up in work, social commitments and the constant news cycle, to name a few, however the first step you can do to begin addressing those feelings of overwhelm is to take a step back.

Remove yourself from what is causing you worry or stress, and try one of the techniques above to help beat and prevent overwhelm from manifesting and taking over your day.

Find out more ways you can beat feelings of overwhelm over on the Calmer blog.

About Tania:

Tania Diggory is an entrepreneur, international Mental Health & Wellbeing speaker and Founder and Director of Calmer. Tania is a leading expert in the field of burnout prevention and is the Author of This Is Calmer: Inspiration, support and encouragement for the entrepreneurial mind, and Working From Home: The Complete Calmer Guide To Remote Working. As a qualified NLP Practitioner, Mindfulness Teacher and Mental Health Trainer & First Aider, Tania has trained and consulted over 300 companies since founding Calmer in 2016.

Image Getty Images

This article was originally published by psychologies.co.uk Read the original article here.