Relaxing Your Eyes and Mind Before Sleeping

There are many relaxation techniques out there that we can all learn and practice. However, I find that many of my clients (and me) struggle with how they present themselves, and also have problems themselves the motivation to use them. In response, I have studied the types of relaxation techniques that have the support of most investigations and developed a sequence of five steps that everyone can do to feel more relaxed in minutes unless new -age vibes .

Stress, Emotions, and Brain

Usually, we need to relax when we feel tense, anxious or angry. Some of these feelings are due to the activation of something called the sympathetic nervous system, which includes parts of your brain that detect and react to threats and stress. Without going too deeply into the physiology when it is tense, anxious or angry, your sympathetic nervous system is activated and increases your heart rate, your breathing becomes rapid and shallow, blood pressure rises, digestion stops, muscles tense, changes in circulation, stress hormones (cortisol and adrenaline, among others) are released into the bloodstream, and his thoughts are accelerated and focused on a target (more on this in three moods). When this happens, our bodies feel uncomfortable and looking for ways to feel better.

For almost everyone, after a certain period of time kicking our parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which brings together all these physiological changes back to normal. Your heart rate returns to baseline lower your blood pressure, digestion starts again, stress hormones are metabolized, your breathing slows and deepens, and your muscles relax. When finished, you’re back to a slower and more pleasant state control.

How to Relax

The following relaxation process is all about taking steps to change your physiology when you are tense, anxious or angry. This is done mainly by moving the attention and take control of breathing as a way to revive the parasympathetic nervous system. There is no magic, some basic steps (some already do) that should lead to feeling more relaxed, quickly. I encourage you to practice with the complete sequence at least once a day for two weeks during periods of lower voltage before starting to use it more urgent situations. In addition, no time is needed. It could take as little as one or two minutes, or go all the time you want.

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The process

So when you are feeling active, stop what you are doing and follow these 5 steps:

1. East: the first step is voluntary directs you to your environment. This means visually and mentally recognize where you are right now and what is around you. If I did now, I look around the room and I recognize that I am in my office at 16:05, with the sun shining.

This step may seem silly or obvious, but when we are anxious, tense, or angry, we rarely pay attention to our immediate environment. Instead, it consumes us usually with thoughts or feelings associated with things that are not present where we are. The guide allows us to start relaxing the recognition of our immediate surroundings, which are expected peaceful, stable and secure.

2. Grounding: the second stage to move your attention to how it is connected with its surroundings. Since relaxation is a physiological process, it is important to direct your attention to your senses. So for this step, note intentional forms that are connected to your environment. To me, that would mean that I realized voluntarily feet on the floor, back against the chair, and how my sweater feels in my arms.

3. Slow down: this third stage now draws your attention to what is happening inside you, especially breathing and heart rate. Although there are many ways we can learn to change the way our body reacts in a given moment, the easiest way is to control our breathing. There are dozens of breathing techniques, but I have found to be the easiest to use is called “4-7-8 breath.” It works this way:

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Sit comfortably in a chair with your feet on the floor and close your eyes. Once installed and notice your breathing, inhale through the nose count of 4, hold it for a count of 7, exhale through your mouth for a count of 8, and repeat. The pace does not matter, you should just be something that feels good to you. The key is having the expiration really stretch much longer than inhalation. Try to make the soft expiration and have almost all the air out of your body. Count do with all the time you need to get the rhythm down before going to the next step. For me, it takes a few minutes.

While doing this, you really should start to notice changes in how you feel, more obviously a heart rate slows. This is the parasympathetic nervous system in action.

An advanced technique would be to try to use the diaphragm to control your breathing, so your stomach expands his chest. This reflects the way you breathe when you are in a deep sleep. Also, if 4-7-8 does not feel right for you, try starting with 4-4-6.

4. Training: Once you have the rhythm of breathing down, continue to do so while continuing with this step. The key here is to be positive, reassuring, calm and messages, instead of continuing to spread, anxious and angry thoughts. When I do, I think things like “I can get through this. It will be fine. I can handle whatever happens. I’ll do my best softly.” Everyone will have a different way of doing things and some people like to imagine that in the voice of someone they care about, or image of that person to say these things. Continue to do this with enough breath until ready to resume what he was doing sitting.

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5. Emerging: the key to this last step is quietly reentering the world. Rather than simply stop the process and jump back, again focus on what to do with the same peace you may have when you wake up from a pleasant dream. Just slowly during the day. This should keep your mind and body while remaining in a more relaxed and positive state.


Once the sequence is obtained below, I encourage you to innovate and find little things that specifically make it more powerful for you. Remember to practice every day, especially during periods of lower voltage, since the effect is cumulative. That is, the 20 time you do this you should have a greater and faster than the first impact. If it does not work immediately, stay with it and move on, and be sure to follow all the steps. Also, if this process is not preferred for you, try the 5 steps of processing emotions as an alternative.