In the following video, Helen from the Holding Space team talks about her experience of working in remote Australia with Aboriginal families. She explains how the Elder women’s practice of sitting down on Country created a sense of calm and stillness that supported the children to use the naturally available resources (sand, rocks, sticks etc..) to explore and process their feelings and experiences through play.
In the following videos, Treena from the Holding Space team shares some of her favourite calming techniques. They are designed to help you when you might be experiencing stress, overwhelm or anxiety. These states are caused when the brain and body perceive that it is potentially under threat or danger, or if an experience is too overwhelming for our resources to handle. Regardless of what kind of threat, the body and brain will engage the survival response which prepares us to fight, run away or freeze. It doesn’t know the difference between a real or imagined attack or the thoughts we tell ourselves. Unfortunately we are the only animal that can turn our stress response on by thought alone.
You do not need to do all the techniques in the following videos, try them and do the ones that work best for you. However, it is important to do these techniques not just when you are feeling stressed or anxious but all the time, as this will help build your bank account of resilience for times when you are more stressed.
We have also included these Calming Techniques for Adults, and others, in a PDF document that you can access and download.
You might like to also access and download the following PDF document that provides examples of Calming Techniques for Children. Videos to support this booklet may be provided in the future.
When we are stressed or anxious, we tend to take short rapid shallow breaths into the upper part of our chest in order to get more oxygen into our body to be able to fight or run. However, this style of breathing interrupts the exchange of gasses in our body, decreasing the amount of CO2 in the blood and inadvertently, keeping the body in the stress response. Controlled belly breathing for at least 10 times a few times a day, increases oxygenation, slows the heart rate, massages the internal organs in the body, helps pump the cerebral spinal fluid around the brain and initiates the release of some feel good hormones and endorphins. There are many ways to calm your breathing down. It doesn’t seem to matter which you use as long as it is a slow out breath.
Bilateral stimulation has been proven to calm the nervous system. Cross your arms over your chest and slowly tap on each shoulder, one hand at a time. You can incorporate deep breathing with this while repeating the affirmation “I am safe”.
Slowly rubbing down your arms with your opposite hands, while thinking of a relaxing place, helps produce calming hormones. Repeat these many times until you feel calmer.
For more information on Havening go to: https://www.havening.org/
If we are sympathetic dominant or in survival mode, over a long period of time our pupils constrict and we tend to have tunnel vision (not see the forest from the trees). Focusing on the periphery has a calming effect on the brain and body.
EFT which stands for Emotional Freedom Technique has become very popular in the last decade, even with many doctors and psychologists teaching it to their clients and getting great results.
Holding specific acupressure points (points on the meridians used in acupuncture) can also bring a sense of calm to the body.
This is an old Qigong technique which can help with grounding and as it follows the natural flow of the meridian system giving you more energy.