We all know sleep is essential and vital for our health! When we don’t get good sleep it impacts our mental, emotional, and physical functioning.
According to the American Sleep Apnea Foundation these are some current stats about sleep health in America:
50-70 million Americans suffer from sleep related problems
Excessive daytime sleepiness is an increasing cause of on-the-job accidents and car accidents
There are over 80 different sleep disorders. Some of which are sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, nightmare disorder, and insomnia.
There are ways we can improve our sleep by working to have healthy sleep hygiene, limiting caffeine, and seeking treatment for underlying problems. One thing that helps we relax and sleep better is using grounding techniques.
Grounding Exercise for Sleep
This video I created had a simple grounding exercise to help your body and mind relax to get better sleep.
Resilience is something that we can practice daily. There are many tools to build resilience. I wanted to share a time recently when I used grounding.
Practicing Grounding
I was starting to feel overwhelmed and my thoughts were spiraling. I could feel the stress increasing in my body. For me this feels like a pit in my stomach and my body tightening. Before I learned about resilience I would feel this way and let myself continue to spiral. This time I knew I needed to decrease my stress. I stepped away and went outside. I sat on a bench and closed my eyes and grounded myself. Here are some of the ways I did this:
I put my attention on the support of the bench beneath me and against my back.
Then I put my attention on the feeling of the breeze against my skin.
After that I allowed myself to put my attention to the sound of the birds around me.
Grounding is all about allowing your attention to totally shift from your stress to one of your five senses. Taking this moment to take care of myself was huge! I felt so much better and my stress decreased. I could now think clearly and wasn’t spiraling anymore. Sometimes stepping away is essential!
How could you use grounding when you get stressed?
The more you practice grounding, the easier it will be to use it to decrease stress.
Comment below with your favorite way of grounding!
Grounding is a great way to start your yoga practice. It can increase calming sensations and help us tune into your body. Here is an audio of me explaining how I incorporate grounding in my practice.
Grounding is a great way to experience sensations of calm in our body. Grounding is focusing your attention on one of your senses. Often when practicing grounding we focus on a solid surface supporting us or that our body has contact with. But we can also use our other senses. I was thinking of this today as I heard the rain falling and allowed myself to tune into the sound of the rain. When we focus all of our attention on our senses we are able to distract ourselves from what stressors we are experiencing and allow our mind and body to rest in that sense.
I recorded the rain with my phone to share with you. Try listening to the sound of the rain and focus all of your attention on what you are hearing. Feel free to close your eyes if comfortable. If a thought starts to distract you let it pass you by as you refocus on the sound.
There are so many great tools to use daily to practice and build resilience. One of my favorite tools is grounding. This is the practice of putting your focus on the here and now by paying attention to a solid surface around you. I use grounding all the time to help center myself when struggling with anxiety. One of my favorite parts of the grounding script I use is the beginning, “Look to the left and to the right and remind yourself that you are here, right now in this space.” I love this!! This simple statement has helped pull me out of some big moments of anxiety. Many times when we are anxious, worrying, or fearful our attention is either on the past or the unknown future. Sometimes reminding yourself that you’re not in the past in those moments that caused such anxiety and that you can’t be in the future to know what will happen is huge. This can be a great way to help us to build resilience and stay grounded.
There are so many ways that we are resilient and we weather through so much in our lives. The key to building even more resilience is to be able to focus our attention in directions that brings us feelings of calm, joy, and keeps our body from being in survival mode. When we do this we are able to respond instead of react, our body doesn’t release stress hormones, and we can thrive physically, mentally, and emotionally in our lives. One of the ways that I grow my resilience is taking time to go outside and listen to the sounds around me. I often close my eyes and just listen. There is often birds, traffic, and sounds of people golfing. It is so calming to redirect my attention from the daily stresses of life and instead to tune into my immediate surroundings. Here is a recording of the sounds at my home when I was doing this the other day.
How can you practice tuning into your environment and just listening to the sounds around you? If you do give this a try comment below with how this worked for you!
Stuck in a situation, relationship, or moment, that left you feeling shut down or like there was nothing you could do?
In these situations when we are experiencing the freeze survival response, our body is seeking to restore safety by getting through whatever distressing event is happening by being still. This happens when our body detects that it is not possible to achieve safety through fighting or fleeing. In these situations, the survival response is to disappear and simply get through what is happening (Seltzer, 2015). The freeze response is also associated with feelings of numbness, disconnection, exhaustion, inability to physically respond or move.
The freeze response is different than fight or flight in that the stressful energy from the event is not resolved and stays within our body. One of the videos below talks about how this can impact someone when they are reminded of the past event, in which they coped with the freeze response. Mental illnesses such as phobias, anxiety disorders, and panic attacks may be symptoms of an unresolved experience with the freeze response (Seltzer, 2015).
Here are two videos that I thought were very interesting about the freeze response:
Dr. Peter Levine Discussing the nature of the freeze response (NICABM, 2020)
Dr. Stephen Porges discussing the freeze response (NICABM, 2021).
Tools for Coping with the Freeze Response
These are tools of resilience that can help with coping with being outside of our resilient zone. If you are feeling distressed or in crisis, consider talking with a mental health professional.
Tune into the sensations in your body. Track the sensations you are feeling.
Practice grounding. This is the practice of focus on a surface supporting you. Below is a recording of a grounding exercise.
Blooming Resilient 