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Top 4 Anti-Anxiety Tips for These Crazy Times
By Erin Harris | Life
I’ve spent years doing personal and family healing with many different modalities, and years writing for companies whose work is about teaching people how to stay calm in a crisis and how to create a beautiful world that works for all.
This combo of personal work and career work has equipped me with a lot of tools, and I feel called to share a few. I hope you find my Top 4 Anti-Anxiety Tips for These Crazy Times handy:
1. Limit your media intake.
Make a sharp distinction between staying informed and constantly absorbing bad news. Every single time it makes sense to do so, turn the statistics and reports off and focus on shit that lifts you up. It’s not about not knowing what’s going on — it’s about honoring the fact that fear lowers immunity and love raises it.
2. Do Qigong or kundalini yoga.
Both are about moving old, painful energy out of your body and bringing fresh, healthy energy in. Search for people like this on YouTube: Lee Holden, Austin Goh, Daisy Lee, Roger Jahnke, Mingtong Gu, Gurutej Kaur.
3. Do 4-4-4 breathing.
This works best when you’ve made a practice of the two things above. It will help now even if you haven’t started doing those things yet.
Close your eyes and note in your mind this intention: “Every breath I take in contains peace.” Then note this: “Anxiety releases from my body every time I exhale.” Breathe in for a count of four. Hold your breath for a count of four. Exhale through your mouth for a count of four. After a few rounds of 4-4-4 breathing this way, start exhaling through your nose. Exhaling through your mouth at first is really great for releasing excess shit.
4. Reframe your thinking.
I’m really lucky that (actually this isn’t luck — I’ve carefully cultivated this) my friends are kind, loving, exceptionally intelligent people who care about the earth, the arts, humanity, our fellow animals, and all the things that matter.
With that caring, people often feel overwhelmed, powerless, and sometimes hopeless given all the insanity that’s been rampant for let’s face it — our entire lives.
It’s natural to think “Oh god what’s happening to the koalas/the icecaps/the Amazon/this country?” (In whatever country you live in.)
I urge you to replace thoughts of “those poor koalas” and “what if I get infected” and “that orange-haired asshole” with thoughts of WHAT YOU REALLY WANT for our world and your life. Train yourself to recognize thoughts of lack and anxiety when you think them, and to replace them with thoughts about your highest desires — the reasons why you’re alive.
Across the entire planet we (and others) are going to be restructuring every system we’ve had in place: health, political, work, food, financial, education, transportation, everything. All those systems were broken in different ways. Crisis is an opportunity. Do all you can to usher change from a place where fear is minimized and your best intentions rule. ️
Image by geralt from Pixabay