relaxation – Crisbie Coach

Ideas to Try Out in Your Free Time (part three)

Do you know what are you going to do today? Are you bored sometimes on Sundays?

Here are some ideas that you could try out in your free time, or when you feel bored.

Have you ever thought about becoming a juggler? In addition to the development of concentration and the improvement of psychomotricity, juggling is very fun to learn. Once you master it, it is an activity that will entertain children, but not only. Then, who knows, it could become a second source of income.
Offer yourself a moment of relaxation. Whether you go to a specialized center or have someone come to your home, offer yourself a moment to relax. A massage with essential oils made by expert hands is a panacea for relaxation. You can call someone to your place, as I do when I want to get a pedicure. You could also organize a complete home ritual: scented bath, candles, and of course relaxing music.
Organize a movie night. Choose your favorite film, or one you would like to share with your friends, prepare some popcorn, something to drink and start watching the movie. At the end you can discuss it with your friends.
Participate in a festival. Look on your town’s online agenda to see if you find a dance, music, or theater festival. If you don’t find it nearby, then look for it in other places, maybe in one of those places that you wanted to visit for a long time. And if you do not find anything today, look for something to do next Sunday.
Plan a visit to a museum or exhibition. We usually are prepared to go more or less far to see an exhibition, forgetting about the treasures close to home. Search for the list of museums that are located in your area and book a guided tour with the one that interests you most. Of course, if you don’t like guided tour, you could also go on your own!

Have you come up with ideas for activities to try in your free time to share with others?

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More ideas here:

https://atomic-temporary-125951525.wpcomstaging.com/en/2022/01/09/ideas-to-try-out-in-your-free-time/

and here:

https://atomic-temporary-125951525.wpcomstaging.com/en/2022/02/20/ideas-to-try-out-in-your-free-time-part-2/

How to Improve the Quality of Your Life with Relaxation Techniques

As you may know relaxation techniques are simple practices you can do to help yourself calm down, cope with stressful situations, and relieve stress. The warning signs are out there: headaches, stomach knots, and racing thoughts. They are all signalling you to take action. The good news is that you can. The resources are here. They can also help you fall asleep, and go to sleep (or back to sleep) faster.

Try out the different tips and techniques listed here and see what works best for you.

1. One Hour to Let Go

This technique allows you to finish your daily tasks and help you get ready for sleep an hour before bedtime. This exercise is done in three 20-minute sessions.

In the first 20 minutes, take care of any simple tasks, for instance preparing the dishwasher or feeding your cat.
In the second 20 minutes, do some relaxing activities like talking with family members, doing an additional relaxation technique, or thanking for three things that have happened in your day. Avoid scrolling on your phone though, as the blue light on your screen can inhibit your natural melatonin production and make it harder for you to fall asleep.
In the last 20 minutes, take care of your personal hygiene. Take a warm bath or shower.

Creating consistent and healthy rituals is really a good way to getting a good night’s sleep each night.

2. Guided Visualisation

Guided Visualisation uses your imagination to engage your senses. This simple exercise can be done on your own, or with the help of a therapist or a guided imagery practitioner. Here are some questions you can ask yourself:

What can you see? Look close and far, colours, shapes, and light.
What can you hear? Hear as many sounds as you can and keep looking for new ones, don’t focus on anyone for too long.
What can you taste? This is less fun as you are not eating, but try to imagine yourself eating something you love.
What can you smell? Focus on the smells around you – what are they and how many can you find?
What can you feel? Send your attention to the parts of your body that have contact with something, like the floor or a chair or table.

Through this technique, you can connect your conscious mind to your unconscious mind and help direct your body and brain towards a desired goal response. Guided imagery helps you relieve stress, reduce feelings of anxiety, and encourage healthy sleep.

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3. Self-Hypnosis. If you are only familiar with hypnosis that you might have seen on films, forget about it. Hypnosis is a state of consciousness where someone is intensely focused on an idea, which can make their brain more receptive to new thoughts or ideas. If you want to try it, there are apps or tutorials on YouTube available.

4. Breathing Exercises

You probably know that a deep breath can help you stabilize your breath when you are anxious or worry about something deeply. A breathing exercise can help encourage relaxation, reduce muscle tension, and even lower your heart rate and blood pressure. Repeat this as many times as you need. By practising deep breathing, you reproduce your breathing patterns as you fall asleep. In doing so, you encourage your body to enter that state of restfulness and get itself ready for sleep.

5. Progressive Relaxation

This technique allows you to become more familiar with your body and any of the places you may be holding onto stress or tension.

Progressive relaxation involves working with your body in different areas and each muscle group, first by tensing the muscles and then relaxing them. Usually you start with your feet and go your way up to the top of the head. In this way you will be aware of how the parts of your body feel when they are tense, as well as when they are relaxed. You can use this technique to address any tension or stress you may have.

6. Yoga Nidra

Yoga Nidra is also known as yogic sleep. It helps the body relax while the mind is alert and awake. The goal is to guide yourself through the main four stages of brain wave activity— beta, alpha, theta, and delta— and achieve a state of being between wakefulness and sleep.

To practice Yoga Nidra, all you need is a comfortable place to lie down. Begin then by lying face-up and set an intention for that session, for example stress relief or relaxation. Watch your body and notice any tension or sensations you feel. You can always find apps or tutorial on the Internet to guide you through this practice.

One study has shown that Yoga Nidra can be a very effective supplemental treatment for insomnia. In participants practicing Yoga Nidra, regular participation improved their sleep quality and reduced their insomnia severity, anxiety symptoms and their stress levels. This improvement even continued 3 months after they began practising.

Remember not to practice any of these relaxation techniques while operating machinery, driving a car, or doing anything that requires your full attention.

Have you ever heard of any of these techniques before?

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How and Why Yoga Helps You Maintain Physical and Mental Balance

Over the last few years, a very old practice has become the subject of scientific studies: yoga. Positive effects on the brain have begun to be measured, such as anti-stress and anti-depressant effects.

The studies began thanks to the spectacular spread of yoga. Millions of people practice yoga regularly. Positions (asanas) such as the warrior or the cobra are increasingly known among different people and age group. The reasons are mainly that persons want to learn how to relax, how to get rid of several kinds of pain (back, neck, shoulders, etc.) manage stress, and maintain good physical shape.

Traditional yoga (from the Sanskrit “yuga” which means “union”) comes from India and is a discipline more than five thousand years old. An important source of this spiritual school, which should guide us towards the divine, is a writing by Patañjali: Yoga Sutra, which contains the essential foundations of the discipline.

According to this essay, the purpose of yoga is to attain a higher form of self-knowledge, which can be achieved with inner contemplation. In addition to specific physical exercises, and breathing techniques, traditional yoga also includes meditation, a vegetarian diet and an entire philosophy of life. The modern and western form of yoga omits many of these elements. The development of strength and plasticity, meditation and breathing exercises play the most important role today.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a small group of Indian yoga teachers began to spread the teachings of yoga in the Western world. After the explosion of fitness in the 1980s, which focused above all on the cult of the body, the spiritual part has been lost a little. Therefore, in the Western world mainly hatha yoga began to spread.

The effects of hatha yoga on health are: improving body consciousness and coordination, strengthening muscles and enhancing blood circulation. Moreover, yoga is also beneficial to stress management.

From experience, I can say that after a yoga session I feel relaxed and rested. It takes longer to reach a similar state with meditation, while hatha yoga produces effects immediately, probably thanks to the more marked physical component. It is actually proved that physical exercise is good for your spirit. Perhaps, this is why yoga is a fast-acting cure-all, as it associates physical exercise with meditative practice.

In fact, by associating postures (asanas) with breathing (pranayama), we act on the body by relaxing the muscles, and on the spirit because the sympathetic nervous system (the nervous system that is stimulated when we rest or sleep) is activated.

Yoga allows you to find calm despite the limits imposed by everyday life. With regular practice, even 5 minutes a day is enough, you will sleep better, your self-confidence will increase, as well as your ability to make decisions and manage stress.

Considering all those positive aspects, are you planning to start practising yoga?

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How and Why to Prevent a Recurring Thought from Turning into an Obsession.

You have thought – and rethought – if you locked the door when you went out? Are you on the street and you wonder if you turned off the light; or the gas? This is not as serious as it looks like. Moreover, you are not the only person it happens to. The thoughts that come to your mind are normal; they are not obsessions … yet.

Thoughts don’t turn into obsession overnight. At first, they are imperceptible, then they grow, but they don’t seem so serious to you; when you start having problems at work, in the family, with friends, you may have developed an obsession. Recognizing the degree of frequency and intensity is crucial to avoid that one of your recurring thoughts starts to be harmful.

If you don’t get major problems in your daily life, you can let your recurring thoughts flow and unlock them with relaxation techniques, and by becoming aware of their cause.

Imagine a grandmother lighting a candle in the Church so that her grandson succeeds the exam. Or the songs you hum in your brain and can’t get rid of them. Or the cultures that pray to get some rain. They are examples of small obsessions that do not harm anyone or give problems in everyday life. Therefore, in similar cases, you do not need to take actions.

However, there are other kinds of thoughts that trap the mind in a vicious circuit and catch your attention very often. They are called OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder).

There are some tricks you can use to keep them under control.

Let’s see some of them.

If, for example, you wash your hands too often, try to actually count how many times you’ve washed them. Then, think about the absurdity of doing it so often because washing your hands well once should be enough, and doing it twice should reassure you that they are really clean.

If your fear is to get infected on the public transport, because you touch knobs, bars, doors, use gloves every time you take them or take a hydro-alcoholic gel with you to be used as soon as you get off (very useful also during Covid times).

The important thing is to be able to rationalize your recurring thoughts and find solutions to control them. If you really cannot manage to do it, however, you should consult a professional (doctor, psychologist, coach) who can help you keep your thoughts from becoming obsessions.

Also be aware that genetics can be a cause of your recurring thoughts. If you are very emotional and have difficulty controlling your impulses, you are somewhat predisposed. Exposure to obsessive models in the family, which transmit the values of order, norms, not making mistakes, can also be a cause. Highly demanding, perfectionist, rigid, excessively ordered, inflexible and reluctant to delegate tasks personalities are also more prone to developing OCD.

Recurring thoughts are normal until they become fixations. In addition, remember that most of the things that worry us never happen. Try to notice it and let me know.

5 Secrets To Sleep Better

We all know someone who complains about not sleeping or sleeping badly. In Europe, about one third of the adult population has difficulty falling asleep and between 10% and 15% suffer from chronic insomnia. I myself have suffered from insomnia for a long time. This is a problem that can have various causes (from the excessive use of digital devices that emit blue light – computers, tablets, TVs, etc. – to biological issues). One of the causes may also be the obsession with sleeping well.

What is this obsession? It is a phenomenon called orthosomnia (from the Greek ortho, “perfect”, and from the Latin somnia, “rest”) and, according to experts, although it is not yet considered a disorder, it is getting increasingly common. It consists in continually recurring thoughts, that I call “circular thoughts”, namely thoughts that enter a vicious circle precisely because they are always the same and recur all the time. The main causes of these thoughts are, guess what, stress and anxiety. Not being able to sleep, your mind does not stop thinking about the same things over and over (hence circular thoughts, i.e. thoughts that come back).

If you suffer from insomnia, even if not severe, it would be good to do a complete sleep study (polysomnography) to find an effective solution. I had this test. I was in a sleep clinic for one night, with electrodes attached all over the body including, of course, the head. I have found that, during my sleeping time, Alpha waves (the brain waves typical of the awaking period) intrude from time to time.

The obvious solution would be to try eliminating or at least reducing stress. I know, it’s not easy. Therefore, I propose that you try the following five tips.

Learn to breathe well and deeply by practising a discipline such as Yoga, Pilates or meditation.
Create a relaxing environment. A quiet home is the key to a restful night. If you have trouble falling asleep, keep your bedroom clean and clear of unnecessary items, tidy up the things you have left lying around and you will see that you will have a more peaceful night.
Use essential oils that are particularly suitable for inducing sleep, such as lavender or chamomile.
Create a playlist to help you relax and fall asleep.
Try using Bach Flowers and melatonin. White Chestnut against circular thoughts and Rescue Sleep to help you fall asleep. I used them for several months, then gradually I stopped and now I suffer much less from thoughts that come back and I also sleep much better. At the moment I use only melatonin and I think it is a good solution for my insomnia.

And you, do you suffer from insomnia? Do you have circular thoughts that haunt you? Would you try these tips?

How And Why Adopting Resolutions Now.

When the holidays are over and you start working or studying again, you want to commit to getting back in shape.

Maybe you ate too much and did little physical activity but it is normal, you have been on holidays!

It could also be an opportunity to take stock of the resolutions taken at the beginning of the year and see where you are.

Often, however, among working or studying and other daily activities, you do not have neither time nor motivation.

How would it be following a program that helps you in achieving your objectives now?

Here are some ideas to help you stick to an easy-to-maintain schedule.

Small daily efforts

Decision taken, this year you will try to use less the car, both because it is a super ecological action and therefore good for the planet, and because you will be forced to find other means of transport to get around. You will also strengthen your body without realizing it.

Ready to include some physical activity in your daily life?

Do not park the closest possible to the shop entrance. Park further away and take a stroll.

2. Stop taking the elevator if you live or work on a relatively low floor.

3. Get around by bike or on foot.

4. Don’t have your shopping delivered to you, do it yourself.

5. Go and buy a sandwich at lunchtime on foot. It allows you to relax a bit, change air and walk.

6. Go for walks of at least 30 minutes at least once a week (I walk at least 30 minutes every day, but I suffer from the restless legs syndrome – RLS). You can walk on the street, in the nature, on the beach, alone or with friends. The important thing is to walk.

7. Buy a Pilates ball and sit on it to watch your favourite TV series, movie, or whatever you like.

As you can see nothing strange and impossible! Start introducing one habit at a time and you will soon find your shape again with a minimum effort. To help you out, you can use an app or a bracelet that monitors your activity like a real coach.

Little efforts at home

We know that sometimes it is hard to find time to go to the gym. Why not doing some physical activity at home then? You can buy accessories that allow you to do some gym without leaving your place, such as electro-stimulators, vibrating platforms or abdominal belts, which tone the muscles by causing contractions. You can also follow some exercises online, YouTube offers them of all kinds. You can do Yoga to relax the body without forgetting the muscles, meditation and relaxation, perfect for learning to breathe deeply and to use breathing as a method to fight stress and anxiety. 10 minutes every morning when you wake up will be good for you. Find a trainer you like, subscribe to their channel and receive notifications every time they upload a new video.

Small efforts on the plate

Holidays are sometimes synonymous with excess. To get back in shape you need to fill up on vitamins. Start the day with a smoothie or fresh fruit juice. Then continue with a healthy, non-fat lunch of seasonal vegetables. It will help you regain your shape.

You can also drink a glass of warm water in the morning on an empty stomach to stimulate metabolism, detoxify the body and facilitate digestion. Add some lemon and it will be tasty.

So, are you ready for this little revolution?

Summer Quotation # 3

Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.

William S. Burroughs

Summer Quotation # 1

Tension is who you think you should be.

Relaxation is who you are.

Chinese Proverb

5 Effective Ways to Relax Yourself

Do you feel the need to relax but don’t know which relaxation method to choose? Here are some of my favourite ones! You have to just choose the one that inspires you the most.

Method 1: mindful breathing.
Obviously it is not our normal way of breathing, which consists of inhaling and exhaling without even realizing it. It is a conscious breathing, to which you have to pay attention.

How does it work? Sit where you want, on the floor, on a chair, on the sofa. Begin to inhale through your nose by inflating your belly. Slowly breathe out through your mouth, emptying your belly (it’s also a good exercise for your abs). Just focus on the air flow that passes through your body. You will see that your breathing slows down and your body slowly relaxes. The ideal would be to practice this type of breathing at least three times a day. You can do it everywhere, you always breath, you only need to do it mindfully. One minute of deep, conscious breathing will help you to relax.

Method 2: meditation.
I am not referring here to transcendental meditation, but to meditation in full consciousness (mindfulness), accessible and easy to apply. Meditation helps you take care of yourself and your mind, allowing you to be aware of the “here and now”, moving away from stress and problems.

How does it work? Close your eyes and concentrate on the sensation of the air going in and coming out from your nostrils. Try not to be distracted, and every time you notice that your mind is wandering, focus back your attention on the breath. A meditation session can last a few minutes for beginners and hours for the more experienced. If you are a super technological type, you can try apps that guide and follow you during your meditation journey. It would be ideal practising this type of meditation a few minutes several times a day.

Method 3: massage
Massage eliminates tension and provides a feeling of serenity and super pleasant well-being. So if you have the chance, get a massage. Your stress will disappear. If you don’t find anyone among your family or friends that can massage you (in these confinement times you cannot go to a wellness centre), you can take massage devices, which you can use for the neck, feet, back or head. There are also armchairs that do massages and even a mask that gently massages your eyes and makes you look and feel perfectly rested! A simple solution for the feet could be crushing and rolling tennis balls. It is almost like having a reflexology session. Give it a try!

Method 4: Yoga and Pilates
They are two similar disciplines and are both helpful for your physical and mental health. While Yoga focuses on the physical and mental connection, Pilates is more similar to a sport that, however, makes us use deeply the muscles of our body.

Method 5: aromatherapy
Aromatherapy uses the aromatic essence of plants to prevent, cure or relax. In the latter case, you can use an essential oil diffuser that allows the atomization of the oils and their diffusion in the home environment.

What oils can you use to relax? Here are some that I like very much:

Lavender essential oil: it has sedative and calming properties and allows relaxation.
Neroli essential oil: it reduces stress and fights insomnia and tension.
Marjoram essential oil: it regulates emotions and protects you from fears.
Grapefruit essential oil: it combats stress and helps you resolve doubts.
Mandarin essential oil: it is relaxing and sedative.
Scots pine essential oil: it helps you control emotions.

Here are my favourite relaxation methods. Choose the one you like most and, if you like, let me know. You can even choose more than one because taking care of yourself is the best thing you can do!