5th week: presence and easing up

Previous week’s exercises

You have now reached the final week of this self-care programme! That is a fine achievement, and you can now thank yourself for having taken the time to learn something new and care for your own wellbeing. Adopting the skills of this self-care programme is not a linear process, as is the case with most learning processes. It involves setbacks, more difficult periods and moments of less diligent practice. Do not let that discourage you; even if your practice routine is disrupted, just keep returning to it.

Lets us now look back at the previous week’s exercises and their potential benefits to your wellbeing. You can check in the monitoring form how much you practised last week.

How many times did you practise
– finger breathing 2
– the tension and release exercise
– body scanning
– the breathing exercise?

What other exercises and things did you do over the past week to regulate your anxiety or take care of your wellbeing in general?

Return to the ‘Intensity of anxiety and selection of methods’ form. Which of the previous week’s exercises could help you with anxiety regulation in the future? In what kind of situations?

Which of the exercises could you see yourself doing in the future? How well do you find them to alleviate your anxiety symptoms or maintain your wellbeing?

Continuing breathing exercises

The final week’s exercise focuses on circular breathing. For the exercise, you will need a peaceful space and roughly five minutes.

Circular breathing

Contemplate: How did circular breathing feel? Did it affect your emotional state? What about your bodily sensations? How could continuing the exercise help you with regulating your anxiety or maintaining your wellbeing?

Grounding aims at reinforcing the connection between your body and the surrounding reality. In principle, it can mean any exercise that can help make your mind be present in the moment and clarify your experience of your own body.

The video below features a few different exercises that you should try. These exercises are based on motion and the sense of touch.

Grounding

Contemplate: How did stomping and crossed-arms patting feel? In what kind of an emotional state could you benefit from these exercises?

Grounding is often associated with notions of a connection with nature and the ground. Accordingly, many find activities such as barefoot walking to be grounding. However, paying conscious attention to any sensory experience can be grounding.

Utilising the senses (touch, taste, smell, hearing, vision, balance, the somatic sense, the kinaesthetic sense) consciously is a worthwhile endeavour, as you can do different sense exercises in any situation. Different items can also be very helpful. The video below presents tried-and-true items and ways to use them in anxiety regulation.

How to use senses and items in anxiety management

Almost all sensory exercises are based on the principle that they can be used to shift your focus from your anxiety to something external. After having shifted your focus, you can continue the exercise by concentrating on what the external thing feels, smells, tastes, looks or sounds like, for example. You can try to describe or examine the thing in your mind as if you have never seen anything like it before.

Use cold to relieve anxiety

Many benefit from using cold. The next video demonstrates a few ways to utilise the sensation of cold.

Finger exercises

Finger exercises are based on strong tactile sensations – as is using cold. Finger exercises can help you shift your focus onto the present moment, and they are especially useful when you are in a public place or other situation in which you want to do a fairly unnoticeable exercise.

Directing your attention is a good momentary recourse that helps you enter challenging situations, for example. Different items, sensory activation, using cold and finger exercises can also provide excellent support in exposure practice. The purpose of directing your attention is not to avoid anxiety altogether.

I always carry my keys in my pocket. They’ve become an aid that’s always at hand.

Lotte, expert by experience

Gradually, as your sense of control increases and you learn to regulate your level of alertness and emotional state, you can “get acquainted” with the feeling of anxiety and even direct your attention incrementally to the anxiety itself. This way, you can learn to listen to the message that your anxiety is sending instead of just perceiving it as a feeling that you need to get rid of or is a bad thing to experience.

It is important that you relieve the stress on your body and mind from time to time. Experiences of anxiety tend to be strong when you are stressed, making their regulation more difficult. For this reason, increasing experiences of calming down and easing up in your everyday life will help you manage better in the long run.

For trying the exercises below, you will need a peaceful space and roughly ten minutes.

Crossed positions

Rocking

Contemplate: How did the rocking exercises feel? In what kind of an emotional state could rocking help you?

Try this: You can practise easing up by starting from the muscles in your head area. Let your breathing flow freely. You can close your eyes if it feels good. Then, focus your attention on the sensations of your face. Shift your focus from your forehead to your eyes, cheeks, jaws and tongue. Observe whether there are tensions in these areas. If you notice that you are tensing your face, see if you can ease up a little on the tensions during every exhale.