3 Simple Ways to Soothe Your Nervous System During Chaotic Times
Not your typical self-care
If you’re experiencing a lot of charged emotions and stress lately due to current events, you’re not alone. However, it’s easy to add to the collective reactivity if you aren’t feeling grounded and centered in yourself.
Peace starts within.
Soothing the sympathetic nervous system, the fight-flight-freeze response, helps us to act not from our triggers but from a place of deeper awareness and, hopefully, inner wisdom. Also, since we’re still in the pandemic, having an adrenalized nervous system doesn’t help your immune system do its job!
Here are three easy, calming techniques that are also quite enjoyable.
1. Grounding
Also known as “earthing,” grounding is a technique of simply putting your bare feet on the earth. This can be grass, sand, or dirt.
It’s very rare in our modern lifestyle that we connect to the earth as our ancestors did — who walked barefoot and slept on the ground — and we’re missing out on the vast amount of electrons on earth’s surface. A scientific study shows that reconnecting to these electrons by grounding decreases our stress levels and balances the nervous system, specifically our flight-fight-freeze response. It also improves sleep and can reduce pain.
Grounding works better on wet grass, which is why my neighbors often see me standing barefoot in the dewy plot of lawn in our communal courtyard like a weirdo.
15 to 30 minutes is ideal. Even in my very urban setting, I use this time to “connect with nature” and am mindful to be off my phone. Also, the feeling of grass under my bare feet feels really pleasurable. So do barefoot walks on the beach.
Try taking a grounding break when you’re stressed or activated by current events, and see how you feel. It always makes me feel calmer and, well, more grounded.
2. Listening to the birds and the bees
Get your mind out of the gutter!
This technique I stumbled upon when coming across a YouTube recording of bees buzzing in a hive. I discovered that listening to it before bed was incredibly relaxing and put me right to sleep.
If you’re afraid of bees, you can listen to a recording of birds chirping (this one is my favorite). Or sit in a park and listen to them.
There’s really not much to this. Put on headphones, noise-cancelling ones if you have them, and just LISTEN as if it were your favorite song. You don’t have to visualize anything, unless you want to. I find listening to bee or nature sounds very effective at getting me into a parasympathetic nervous system state, the relaxation response.
Sometimes I make it a little ritual by sipping lemon balm tea, a favorite plant of bees, which has similar relaxing properties as camomile tea. If that’s not your cup of tea, so to speak, just listen to these bee sounds as Nature’s white noise machine to help you relax or drift off to sleep.
3. Repotting houseplants
A few years ago when very upset by current events, I took a break from the amygdala-triggering news cycle and decided to repot some houseplants.
I discovered how soothing it was to plunge my fingers into soil, massage roots, and tuck my plants into their new homes. As someone who lives in an urban area, I find small ways to connect to Mother Earth each day. Even if it’s just potting a plant.
Many of the houseplants I have I’ve rescued from neighbors throwing discarding them on the street. There is something deeply satisfying about tending and nurturing a plant back to life.
Another mindfulness practice is when watering your houseplants, focus on how you are supporting life in this action, however small.
Part of self-care is taking care of others. Do your part by being responsible for your own nervous system so as not to add more chaos to chaos but instead be a bringer of peace and calm.
