The technique to relax in 20 seconds

Of course, we all have to go do yoga on a mountain to find inner peace, but sometimes you just need a quick fix. Right before that first date that already has you sweating or when you're about to have an important conversation that makes you completely peuneveu (that was the internal word for being nervous in our family). You have a technique to actually become physically calmer in 20 seconds, and that's exactly what you want.

How then? How then? How then? You naturally want to know if you're bloodily nervous and clicked on this link because you've started googling. Breathing is the solution. You need to breathe in and out very calmly. Five deep breaths in, hold it for a moment, and then out seems to be enough. And with each exhale, you try to relax your shoulders a little more. I got that last part from my own meditation mastermind Willemijn Welten.

By breathing very calmly while you have a restless feeling, you give your body the signal that everything is okay. And the body can be quite easily fooled in that regard. If you breathe zen-like, your body thinks that nothing is wrong, because you wouldn't be breathing calmly if you were face to face with (just to name something) a brown bear. That restlessness comes from our primal instinct, which you needed relatively more often in the past than in our 2021. That's why we sometimes flip out over something that your body shouldn't really react to. What science is actually trying to tell us is that we can definitely use a bit of fight and flight in our lives again. But until then, we stick to breathing.

I read on Bedrock some other handy tricks to be immediately more relaxed. It seems to work to look at very impressive photos of the universe to make your problem or little thing seem smaller. Little thing, I'm already making it tiny. Of course, you shouldn't have a huge fear of the universe, because then you're just further from home.