A 2-Minute Practice to Calm Anxiety and Nurture Curiosity

Anxiousness usually contributes to maintaining us caught in habits we don’t need. This mindfulness apply lets us soothe racing ideas by letting us tune in to embodied consciousness.

Through the years, as I’ve studied how habits work within the mind and the methods during which mindfulness may help, I’ve discovered that curiosity is a straightforward software that helps folks—no matter language, tradition and background—drop immediately into their embodied expertise. Curiosity lets us faucet into our pure capability for marvel and curiosity, placing us proper in that candy spot of openness and engagement. From this frame of mind, we’re extra empowered to assist ourselves break previous habits and construct new ones.  

Let me stroll you thru a easy curiosity train. Doing this 2-minute apply can work as a type of panic button for when nervousness hits. 

Step 1: 

Discover a quiet comfy place. You may be sitting, mendacity down or standing up; you simply want to have the ability to focus with out being distracted.

Step 2: 

Recall your most up-to-date run-in or incident with a behavior loop, which is any behavior you end up returning to everytime you’re nervous or anxious.

See if you happen to can bear in mind the scene and relive that have, specializing in what you felt proper on the time once you had been about to behave out your ordinary conduct. What did that urge to go forward and “do it” really feel like?

Step 3: 

Verify in together with your physique. What sensation can you are feeling most strongly proper now?

Right here’s a listing of single phrases or phrases to select from. Decide just one—the one you are feeling most strongly:

• Tightness
• Strain
• Contraction
• Restlessness
• Shallow breath
• Burning
• Stress
• Clenching
• Warmth
• Pit in abdomen
• Buzzing/vibration

Step 4: 

Discover the place this sensation is in your physique. Is it extra on the appropriate facet or the left? Within the entrance, center, or again of your physique? The place do you are feeling it most strongly?

And was there something you observed about being interested by what a part of your physique you felt the feeling in? Did being a bit curious assist with getting nearer to this sensation?

Step 5: 

Discover what else you’ll be able to really feel in your physique. If the feeling continues to be there in your physique, see if you may get curious and see what else is there. Are there different sensations you’re feeling? What occurs once you get interested by them? Do they alter? What occurs once you get actually interested by what they really feel like?

Step 6: 

Observe them over the following 30 seconds—not making an attempt to do something to or about them—however merely observing them. Do they alter in any respect once you observe them with an angle of curiosity?

At any time when I do that train, I like to make use of the sound “Hmmmm”—as in, the hmm you naturally emit once you’re interested by one thing (and to not be confused with the standard mantra “Om”). I discover saying “hmm” to myself will get me out of my head and right into a direct expertise of being curious. It additionally permits me to carry a playful, even joyful attitude to what I’m doing; it’s arduous to take your self too severely if you end up hmm-ing.

This brief train is simply supposed to offer you a style of curiosity and to assist your pure capability to remember about what is going on in your physique and your thoughts at any second as an alternative of getting caught up in a habit loop. In the event you discover that by being curious you gained even a microsecond extra of being together with your ideas, feelings and physique sensations than you might have previously, then you definately’ve taken an enormous step ahead.

Generally I get the query “What occurs if I’m not curious?” My response is to make use of the sound of “hmmm” to drop proper into your expertise. Ask your self: “Hmm, what does it really feel like to not be curious?”

This helps folks transfer from their considering, fix-it thoughts state right into a curious consciousness of their direct sensations and feelings of their our bodies and transfer out of their considering heads and into their feeling our bodies.

Discover extra data and science-backed practices for working together with your nervousness within the Unwinding Anxiety app.