What a Wonderful Life, When I'm Calm

Are you already frazzled and worried abut the holiday stress ramping up? Shopping, baking, cooking, planning for meals with extended family(ies), kids gift lists, driving you bananas?

Take a break and consider some of the calming remedies you can do to help feel more serene in the middle of the rushiest season of the year:

Calming remedies and actions you can take

In her newly updated best-selling classic, New Menopausal Years The Wise Woman Way, Susun Weed offers a number of approaches women can use to calm jangly nerves, achieve greater overall calm, and cope on-the-spot with stressful situations.

For instant calm, Weed suggests one or more of the following simple calming exercises, herbal allies, or movements, and can give you more details on how and why they work:

Unfreeze yourself: Curl up in a fetal position (on your side with keens drawn up), breathe deeply, and hum. You may want to rock back and forth. Concentrate on what feelings want to emerge. Do not be surprised if grief is what you are really feeling.

Focus your eyes: Look at anything, steadily, with concentration, and breathe deeply. Feel a warmth in your upper abdomen; breathe; focus.

Conjure an image of safety: Imagine a huge image of safety, such as a cowrie shell, the palm of Buddha or Christ, a giant mother’s lap, or a cloud of pink light. Surround the object of your anxiety with this image. Fear locks up movement and speech; a clear visualization can unfreeze you.

Take an herbal calmative: Tincture of red clover is a profound relaxer and soothing calmative. Its salicylic acid content (similar to aspirin) makes it an excellent pain reliever, too. Motherwort is also effective. Motherwort is not sedating, but calming, leaving you ready for action, not flying off the handle or bouncing off the walls. Try 10 to 20 drops as soon as you feel your nerves starting to fray or just before a stressful event. Repeat every five minutes if needed.

Try yoga postures. Yoga postures, yoga breathing, and quiet, focused meditation soothe the sympathetic nervous system instantly. Regular practice alleviates anxiety, often permanently. 

N.B. Forward bends are particularly calming for the nervous system, anything with your head lower than your heart.

adapted excerpt from New Menopausal Years the Wise Woman Way by Susun S. Weed.

Enjoy the holidays, it's a wonderful life. Give yourself the self-care you need to enjoy the season!

remember you are a wonderful, loving, creative person!

Musemother/jenn

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