Anxiety is known to be something that many women experience during perimenopase and menopause. These feelings of anxiety can become debilitating and impact on every day life knocking your self-esteem and self-confidence along the way.
Mindfulness is a way to reconnect with yourself and bring yourself back to the present moment which is shown to help reduce feelings of anxiety.
Here are 3 simple mindful exercises you could try.
1. Take a deep breath
There is lots of evidence that deep breathing can help when we are feeling anxious. Of course we never stop breathing but when we are feeling anxious our breathing can get quicker and shallower.
Deep breathing helps to calm our nervous system which becomes heightened when we are feeling anxious.
Box breathing is a simple technique that you can do anywhere:-
Start at the bottom left of the square. Trace your finger up the side, while you take a deep breath in. Hold your breath for four seconds as you trace the second side. Breathe out as you slide down the other side. Hold your breath for four seconds, as you trace the bottom of the square.
Once you are familiar with box breathing you can do it anywhere without needing to trace the square.
2. Ground yourself
Often when you are feeling anxious you will be worrying about something that happened in the past or about what might happen in the future.
Grounding techniques help us to bring ourselves back into the present moment and reduce those anxious feelings. This is a simple exercise that involves using all 5 senses.
This is a simple grounding technique that you can you do anywhere but is a nice one to do if you are outside.
Name five things you can see, name four things you can touch, name 3 things you can hear, name two things you can smell and name one thing you can taste.
3. Release the tension
Here is a simple mindfulness exercise you can do to help release tension when you start to feel it building up.
Tension and stress can lead to anxiety so finding way to release it can stop it becoming an anxiety attack.
Sit in a chair with you feet on the ground. Close your eyes and really concentrate on feeling the chair under you and the ground firmly beneath your feet.
Place your hands on your stomach and take three deep breathes in and out. See if you can feel your hands rising and falling with each breath.
Now scrunch up your toes and hold for a 3 seconds and release.
Slowly work your way up your body tensing each part (calf, thigh, glutes, stomach, shoulders, arms, hands, eyes) and holding for 3 seconds before releasing.
Finish by taking 3 more deep breathes then slowly open your eyes and bring yourself back into the room.
This is also a great exercise to do lying in bed before trying to drift off to sleep.
All these exercises are things you can do on your own or you can share them with a trusted person who can talk you through them when you tell them (or they can see) you are feeling anxious.
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