Why slowing down is difficult (and what to do about it) - part 2

As promised, I will be sharing a few suggestions on slowing down and on how to stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system (the part of your nervous system that gives you a sense of calm. The resting state).
If you are arriving now please read Part 1 in the last post.

🏝Tips for stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system (resting state)

• Gently run 1 or 2 fingers over your lips. This stimulates the parasympathetic fibres on your lips and it will invite a wave of calm.

• Use calm imaginary. Take a moment to imagine your favourite place. Visualise exactly how it looks like. Pay attention to the details in the image you chose. Bring this feeling into your body. Feel in your body how relaxed you feel in this place you have imagined.

• Breath deeply and slowly from your belly. Exhaling longer than inhaling.

🐢Tips for slowing down:

• Instead of moving at full speed with everything you do, make a point to consciously perform a few tasks at a slower pace. Pick a couple of tasks to experiment with at first.

• Choose a task, estimate how long it would take to get it done, then double the time. By deciding this you will unconsciously start to relax, knowing that there is no huge push to finish a task to quickly move to the next one.

• Avoid multitasking. If your lifestyle doesn’t allow you to avoid it often, make a list of a few activities you can do without multitasking. While doing the single tasks make sure you are present and paying attention to the task at hand.

I hope these tools can support you in your journey. Feel free to share with those you think may benefit from this information.

If you would like to get a flavour of what your own nervous system states feel like, you are welcome to book a 1:1 somatic session with me, so that we can do an automatic mapping of your nervous system.