When your body heads into fight-or-flight (and you’re not actually in physical danger), your mind tries to fly right out of your body. Or it can feel like that, anyway. When you’re so reactive that you can’t focus or think straight, somatic exercises can be more helpful than trying to think your way through the situation. Here is a quick, simple somatic exercise to calm down. You can do this anywhere:
Here’s a quick coping strategy for those moments:
- Hold one hand up with fingers straight, palm toward you. Use the index finger from the other hand to trace around the outline of your hand.
- Combine tracing with breathing exercises. Whenever your tracing finger moves upward along one side of a finger, inhale.
- When your tracing finger is moving downward, exhale.
- Continue breathing in as your tracing finger rises and breathing out as the tracing finger falls, until you’ve traced the outline of your whole hand, so that you’ve taken five deep breaths. Focus on the sensations in your as you trace.