5 Minute Ideas To Give Yourself Love and Destress

How often in your busy day do you find time to care for yourself?

Instead do you find yourself rushing from one task to another and end the day depleted and exhausted?

How often do you wake in the morning dreading the day ahead?

Today I am sharing some ideas of things you can do that will take 5 minutes.

Some of my categories may seem weird but I have based them on research about what assists us to experience less stress. I have given some ideas, you can probably think of many more.

Simple 5 Minute Ideas

My favourite go to simple ideas are:

• A short guided meditation. The app Insight Timer is a great source of 5 minute mediations.

• Writing in your journal about anything.

• Sitting quietly and deep breathing.

• Looking up at the stars in the night sky.

• Savouring a favourite herbal tea.

• Close your eyes and imagine a peaceful place.

• Walk outside and breathe in the fresh air.

• Write down 5 things you are grateful for.

Calming 5 minute ideas

My favourite go to calming ideas are:

• Pat your pet

• Sit in a quiet, peaceful place at home and practice deep breathing.

• Create a vision board of your favourite self care practices. Add to it when taking your 5 minute calming time

• Sing a favourite song

• Close your eyes and just focus on breathing

• Massage your wrists

• Doodle

Positive 5 minute ideas

Focusing on the positive is very calming. My favourites are:

• Visualising a wonderful future

• Reading a good news story

• Writing a loving, positive note to your future self

• Reminisce about a happy memory

• Smile as you take a selfie

• Look at Art that inspires you

• Quick repair to an item of clothing – such as sewing on a button.

Declutter 5 Minute Ideas

May seem weird but clutter is stressful and decluttering is calming.

• Quickly throw together some leftover fruit and green vegetables and make a smoothie

• Organise a drawer (or part of it)

• Write down on thing to achieve for the rest of the day

• Make a list of the things you have completed/accomplished recently

• Reorganise part of your desk (or all if it can be done in 5 minutes)

• Journal what you are thinking

• Tidy your Email inbox

• Choose one item of clothing you no longer need and donate it

Social 5 Minute Ideas

• Text a friend a message of appreciation

• Post a positive status on your social media

• Send a friend a song you think they will like

• Send a message to friends suggesting a get together

• Send a thank you note to someone

• Have a quick catch up with someone special – let them know you have 5 minutes and just want to connect for 5 minutes.

• Share a joke or funny meme you have seen recently

• Tell someone you love them

Move 5 Minute Ideas

• Stand up and stretch. Reach for the sky then down to your toes.

• Dance to a great song

• Roll your shoulders backwards and forwards

• Try out assorted power poses – shoulders back, feet firmly on the ground, head up.

• Sit in your chair slightly differently. Maybe push yourself back into the chair more so you sit more upright.

• Try some simple yoga poses

• Jump. Use a skipping rope or do star jumps.

• Go outside and walk around the garden

• Give a thirsty plant some water

Enjoyable 5 Minute Ideas

• If you like incense or scented candles light one and breathe in that beautiful aroma

• Listen to something inspirational

• Listen to a song you love

• Read a motivational quote

• Start your bucket list and spend 5 minutes brainstorming ideas for it

• Draw what you can see out the window

• Doodle – have a special notebook to do this in and you will always have it on hand

• Colour a page in a colouring book

• Give yourself a quick foot bath

Cozy 5 Minute Ideas

• If it is nighttime, put on your comfortable pyjamas

• Snuggle up with a favourite book

• Massage your palms with your thumbs (it feels so relaxing)

• Put your favourite songs into a playlist.

• Watch part of a favourite movie

• Write a comfort food shopping list

• Sit in a favourite corner with a hot chocolate

Mindful 5 Minute Ideas

• Read a book for 5 minutes, reading slowly to take in the words.

• Work on a puzzle that requires focus. Maybe a crossword, sudoku for example.

• Sit quietly focusing on your breathing and the sensations in your body.

• Paint your nails (try doing that without paying attention!)

• Sit quietly and listen to white noise while breathing deeply

• Walk around outside

• Stretch slowly, focusing on the feeling of the stretch

• Hug a tree

• Repeat a personal mantra

Easy 5 Minute Ideas

• Just sit quietly and be present in your body

• Make yourself a drink of water, herbal tea, anything calming

• Work on a jigsaw

• Take a quick walk

• Cuddle your pet

• Massage your feet

• Listen to the sound of running water

Still Stressed?

If you answer that question with a yes that is not surprising. One 5 minute activity is not going to remove your stress. But many throughout the day, over a period of time can help.

It is also important to take more time out regularly to practice longer self care.

It is also a good idea to start your day with some sort of mindful self care activity to clear your mind and calm your body. This is also a good time to set your intentions for the day. As for yesterday’s stress. Don’t take that on board, but you may consider what needs to be added to your to do list from yesterday’s stress. Take on the activity, not the stress.

It is also important to end your day with a mindful self care activity. This focus is on putting aside the day and allowing yourself to calm your mind before going to sleep. You will sleep better and wake up more refreshed.

Can I Help?

I have studied Mindfulness as part of my Master of Counselling and teach mindfulness as well as practicing it myself.

I have also studied the impacts of stress and stress relieving activities.

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with managing your stress or would like to learn mindfulness, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

If you would like to learn more, I write a regular newsletter with helpful information, tips, information on courses, and the occasional freebie. At the moment I have a free mindfulness meditation for anyone who signs up to my newsletter. This meditation offers a way to safely explore your feelings and learn to be okay with them. If you would like to subscribe please click on the link here: http://eepurl.com/g8Jpiz

Trauma Impacts Your Adult Life, Even When You Don’t Think It Has

“Few of us have escaped experiencing trauma in our human life. I define trauma as a difficult life event that was too overwhelming to emotionally process when it happened. When you become emotionally overwhelmed, trauma is stored in your body, waiting for another time in the future to be digested, resolved and healed.” ~ Shelley Klammer

Many of the difficult feelings that are experienced in life are never dealt with. Maybe at the time there was too much going on to be able to process what had happened. Maybe there wasn’t support available to help you process what had happened. Often these traumatic experiences occur in childhood.

Frequently other people don’t understand how traumatic seemingly (to them) unimportant events can be to a child. If others don’t comprehend the impact the event had on you, then they can’t help you process it.

Sadly, not all children have adults in their lives who are attuned to them or have the skills to help them process the difficult things that happen in life.

So You Think Your Childhood Trauma Didn’t Impact You?

I have witnessed so many people who claim they were never impacted by the difficult things that happened in their lives, but the way they react to things and the difficulties they face in life tell another story.

So often individuals are unaware of the impacts because they have covered them up for so long, at first as a matter of survival and later because they have covered them up so successfully they can no longer see them as existing.

My Journey Of Discovery

I know. I did the same thing. As I grew older, and learned more, I started to try to understand what was happening for me.

My mother dying helped, as her hold over me was broken. It was like waking up and seeing the things she did to me and hearing what other people had observed but I hadn’t been ready to hear until she was dead.

When I studied counselling I discovered a lot of places where trauma had impacted me. I was able to see that shadow side. The trauma side.

Along the way I sought my own counselling to help heal the trauma impacts.

Shame

I was also able to acknowledge the shame I felt at being abused as a child.

Shame is a major part of childhood abuse. The child is often told the adult’s bad behaviour is the child’s fault. Even if the child is not told that, the child concludes they are bad and shameful because it is the only way they can make sense of what is happening to them.

Trauma Healing Is Active And Lifelong

I continue to discover places where trauma has impacted me. I suspect I will continue finding these impacts until I die. They are not major now, but they are still there.

Seeing Trauma Impacts As Different Parts Of You

I have learned to be able to see those impacts as a child of the age when the trauma occurred. That helps to be more objective about the impacts.

It helps to have compassion for the child, rather than judging her. It helps me to understand better how hard I had to work as a child and how well I have done to be fairly normal as an adult.

Mindfulness, reflection and compassion are my tools for exploring all those hurt places.

You can learn this too. On your journey you will find it hard to be able to do this alone. This is where a trauma trained counsellor is helpful.

Can I Help?

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your trauma impacts, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

Sadly, not all children have adults in their lives who are attuned to them or have the skills to help them process the difficult things that happen in life.

Subheading So You Think Your Childhood Trauma Didn’t Impact You?

Subheading My Journey Of Discovery

I know. I did the same thing. As I grew older, and learned more, I started to try to understand what was happening for me.

When I studied counselling I discovered a lot of places where trauma had impacted me. I was able to see that shadow side. The trauma side.

Along the way I sought my own counselling to help heal the trauma impacts.

Subheading Shame

I was also able to acknowledge the shame I felt at being abused as a child.

Subheading Trauma Healing Is Active And Lifelong

I continue to discover places where trauma has impacted me. I suspect I will continue finding these impacts until I die. They are not major now, but they are still there.

Subheading Seeing Trauma Impacts As Different Parts Of You

I have learned to be able to see those impacts as a child of the age when the trauma occurred. That helps to be more objective about the impacts.

It helps to have compassion for the child, rather than judging her. It helps me to understand better how hard I had to work as a child and how well I have done to be fairly normal as an adult.

Mindfulness, reflection and compassion are my tools for exploring all those hurt places.

You can learn this too. On your journey you will find it hard to be able to do this alone. This is where a trauma trained counsellor is helpful.

Sub heading Can I Help?

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with your trauma impacts, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

Live Life. Don’t Just Survive

Here, right now, stop.

Breathe deeply in and allow that breathe out slowly.

Breathe in and out a few more times.

Turn your attention to your heart centre.

Maybe you would like to place your hand over your heart.

Ask yourself the question:

Am I just surviving, or am I living my life creatively?

The Curse Of The Modern World

With the busy lives that are led in the modern world, it is easy to get caught up in just surviving. Rushing from activity to activity. Never stopping, never relaxing, never just having fun. Never allowing yourself to use your creative side to enrich and grow your life.

Scientists who study our ancient ancestors contend that once people were able to move away from spending all their time surviving, they had time and space to be creative. It was this creativity that allowed them to expand their lives and further improve their situation.

It was this time for creativity that allowed our ancestors to become farmers, then to devise new tools and weapons. This creativity allowed progress to occur.

Growing Creatively

In order to grow this way, our ancestors had to allow space in their lives to allow creativity to work.

When you become caught up in surviving, you lose that ability to expand your life and improve your situation. You get caught up in surviving. That is a scary, anxious place. It is a place where your quality of life deteriorates.

But it doesn’t need to be that way. You need to allow creativity back into your life. Creativity feeds your mind and your soul. It should work alongside survival, with its focus on your body.

Yes your body needs to survive, but so do your mind and soul.

Finding The Balance Between Survival and Creativity

Finding that balance between survival and creativity is essential for a happy, full, productive life.

One of the ways you can survive and be creative is to meditate. It is that action of stopping and allowing yourself to just be. In this moment. With nowhere to go. With nothing to do. Just be.

At the start of this blog I invited you to have a moment to just be. At the end of that moment, I invited you to ask yourself a question about how you are living your life.

It is in the moments that you stop and just allow yourself to be that allow you to find space for creativity in your life.

After you meditate and clear your mind to allow that sense of just being, there is a time for creativity to allow yourself to connect to your creative inner self. Your soul.

Connecting To Your Creativity

There are many things you can do. Some people write a journal. Some people write poetry. Others dance to their own sound or music.

Then there is painting. This is my preferred method of creativity. After I meditate I use water colour paints to paint what comes up for me in that moment.

This act of creativity has allowed me to discover deep insights into my life and my place in this world. This has allowed me to live, not just survive.

I run workshops to teach people this method of meditation.

Do You Want To Know More?

If you would like to find out more about meditating and creativity, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au

PaintingYourSoul

Learning to Sit With The Discomfort and Journal

I often write about the way our brains suppress uncomfortable feelings. In this blog I am going to talk about how this relates to grief and how you can learn to sit with what is uncomfortable in your grief journey.

When you feel uncomfortable feelings, your brain responds in many ways.

The first way is you may consciously push the uncomfortable feelings aside. The more you do it, the easier it is to do next time. A lot of people learn to do this as they grow up. It is how we survive in a society that expects us to push our feelings aside in order to maintain the status quo.

But your brain acts subconsciously (without thinking) and unconsciously (below conscious awareness) as well to suppress the uncomfortable feelings.

Where does the brain hide these feelings? In your body. But those feelings don’t just stay there. They agitate to be heard. A lot of pain in the body actually comes from those suppressed, hidden feelings.

Imagine how hard it is to find those feelings and express them when your brain has been so efficient at hiding them!
This happens generally in life, but in this blog I am talking about how this happens with grief and makes it hard to process that grief and move forward in life.

What are the impacts of pain hidden in the body?

The raw pain that sits in your body has never had a chance to be processed. That pain can and does get triggered on occasion and then you are left feeling overwhelmed. Often the pain is never recognised for what it is. But its impacts are far reaching. They may even cause you to feel so overwhelmed with life that you are unable to move forward with your life.

What can I do about this pain?

Processing your pain daily is helpful. That is the ideal. In the early weeks of grief you may find daily too hard to do at first. But try when you can and eventually you will reach a point where you can process this pain daily.

How can I process this pain?

There are many ways to process the pain. I have a daily practice, which I teach in my “Paint Your Soul” workshops. If you have not explored what is hidden within yourself before, it may be more helpful for you to start with a different approach. This allows you to process the great volume of past hidden feelings.

Trust Your Intuition

I often have people telling me they don’t trust their intuition. This is because they have had bad experiences where they thought everything would work out and it didn’t. They often think they have listened to their intuition and it turned out badly. When asked to describe the experience in more detail, it emerges that their intuition was sending clear messages they weren’t heeding because their needs were drowning out the wise voice of their body.

Sit with your body

I teach people to take the time to sit with their feelings and focus on their bodies. Shutting down the brain’s chatter is challenging. But this practice, which is mindfulness, can be learned.

It is often better to learn from someone skilled with mindfulness. I often teach people who come to see me to practice mindfulness in their bodies.

Mindfulness needs to be practiced or it doesn’t work. When you are feeling relaxed and secure is a great time to learn how to tune into your body and listen. When you learn how to do that, it is more likely you can use mindfulness when you start to feel unsafe.

How do I use mindfulness to explore these hidden feelings?

A daily practice of mindfulness meditation and journalling is a great way to explore these feelings.

This involves meditating, listening to the body and writing in a journal the things you have observed.

This method helps you to listen to your body, understand the uncomfortable feelings hidden there and learn how trustworthy your intuition actually is.

How do I journal?

To do this practice, you need to commit to 15 minutes of practice a day.

It is best when you can be in a quiet place and undisturbed.

Getting up 15 minutes earlier in the morning is one way to achieve this if you can’t find space at any other point in the day.

What I have found when I did this practice was that the more I cleared subconsciously, the more my unconscious mind released for processing.

Sitting With The Discomfort Journal

Before you start, you need something to write your notes in. You will find you won’t write a lot, but it is important to record what you need to. This allows you to see patterns, discover hidden feelings, see progress and be encouraged. An old exercise book is ideal for this.

You may like to set a timer for 15 minutes so that you will know when the time is up.

Step 1 – Clear the Space Around You

To do this step, you may like to play some relaxing music quietly in the background. This is useful if there are distracting noises within hearing range.

Sit quietly and focus on your breathing. Note when you breath in and when you breathe out.

Breathe in deeply so that your chest and belly rise. Then breathe out slowly.

Take a few minutes to breathe in and out, just noticing the feeling of your in and out breathe.

Now notice your body. Breathe into each area of your body and observe how it is feeling. Then breathe out any tension held there.

Once you feel you are relaxed, ask yourself how you are feeling today. Don’t push the answers, just allow them to come up. Don’t let the issues that may arise overwhelm you. It helps to identify what comes up as “the feeling of”. This helps to keep it more objective.

Step 2 – Choose a Problem

Now choose one problem you will focus on. Remember to be outside the problem, keeping it objective.

Notice where in your body you can feel this problem. What are you feeling in your body?

Note down without too much detail what and where you are feeling things.

Step 3 – Explore the Problem

After writing down your notes, come back to the breathing in and out, and feel into that part of the body that is housing the problem.

What word, phrase, symbol or image comes up when you sit observing this problem?

Allow yourself to sit for a while to allow something to come up. Don’t try too hard. Just allow what comes up to come up. If nothing comes up that is okay.

Stay with what comes up and allow it to develop. When you feel you have enough detail then write a description of this in your journal. This is your felt sense.

Step 4 – Matching the Felt Sense and Description

Go back to breathing in and out as you focus. Once you are focused bring up the feeling of the problem again and think about it with the words you used in your journal to describe it. Do you feel they were the right words? If your body experience of your problem changes then follow the new changes. If either the feeling or the description need to change then do that.

Keep exploring this until you feel your description is the right one.

Step 5 – Ask More Questions

Now that your description of your problem feels right, it is time to ask your sense of the problem to deepen.

Feel the part of your body where you sense the problem. Ask it what the significance of the problem is. Ask it if the problem has more to add.

One technique I often use is to ask the problem what it wants, what it needs and what will it feel like if it gets what it needs.

Keep asking it questions until you feel you have explored enough.

Step 6 – What Does Your Body Want to Give You?

This may not happen on your first go. It may be that you may not even be able to identify the problem or find it in your body.

Persevere. As you do this practice every day you will learn how to find these problems in your body and understand your body better. You will also get faster at exploring the problems. With practice, you will learn to trust your intuition.

For this final step just sit again with your breath and the awareness of the body part where the problem was hidden. Allow yourself to be aware of anything that comes up. You may observe images, symbols, words, colours or any way you gain an impression of what you are experiencing around your intuition and the problem.

Sit with whatever comes up.

Sometimes you feel emotionally there has been a major shift. Just sit with that as your body absorbs what has happened.

As you sit you may develop an understanding, or that may not come for some time.

When you open your eyes you can record any impressions you gained.

Sit quietly for a few minutes. Feel your feet on the floor. Wiggle your toes. Move your fingers. Stretch your arms above your head. Listen to the noises in the room and outside. Then when you are ready open your eyes and go about your day.

Daily Practice Leads to Results

It may take some time to gain understanding and insights and that is normal. As you practice every day, you will notice over time that things become clearer and with that comes understanding.

You will also notice that the uncomfortable feelings are not as uncomfortable as you thought they were.

How This Relates to Grief

A major aspect of grief is being able to experience the pain and understand it. It is in letting yourself feel the pain that you are able to process it. Processing involves the experience of pain and the giving of meaning to it. It also allows you to be able to move through life with the pain so that it is more manageable.

Sometimes This Practice is Better Learned From a Professional

If you are having trouble learning this practice. Or the pain is overwhelming and you can’t do it. I am experienced in teaching mindfulness, as well as being trained in Grief and Loss Counselling. You are welcome to make an appointment to see me so that I can help you with mindfulness, being able to sit with those uncomfortable feelings, and learning how to do the steps of the daily practice.

I can be contacted on nan@plentifulllifecounselling.com.au or 0409396608.

Can I Help?

If you would like to talk to me about how I can help you with learning to complete your Sitting With The Discomfort Journal, please contact me on 0409396608 or nan@plentifullifecounselling.com.au