Hi Everyone!

Times like these require a real effort to stay in good mental health. Even a vacation feels like an anxiety attack. I can attest to this firsthand after flying last week with my son and our new dog.

With so many changes happening daily, it can feel like a safety net was completely taken away.  If you are feeling anxious too, I wanted to share with you my favorite tools for staying calm in a storm. And please share yours with me! I firmly believe that community and helping one another will and does bring more peace into the world.

Body work

For me taking the time and spending the money to get a massage feels so very indulgent. Almost like I ate the last piece of cake, and it wasn’t my Birthday lol. But not anymore. We hold so much stress in our bodies and we simply have to move it out. Exercise yes – but human touch with the intention of healing is a powerful medicine! I am now getting a quarterly massage, and I think the simple act of making my body’s health a priority has made as much a difference as working out the kinks in my shoulders. I truly believe we need to make this as important as a regular checkup.

Sound Therapy

When I was diagnosed with breast cancer over 10 years ago, Tibetan Sound Bowl therapy became an integral part of my healing and recovery. It was so powerful that I became a practitioner myself during the covid pandemic. Just like a sonogram at the doctors, we feel the waves of sound when the bowls are played. It is a great way to really check out and be present in one’s body. Google search a sound meditation by you. If you are in NYC, my friends opened a studio called Official Ritual offering daily sound meditations. If you prefer to be at home and listen in bed, here is one of my favorite sound bowl recordings it is 8 hours of continuous play.

Meditation/Qi Gong/Observing Nature/Writing/Boxing

I had a very strong meditation practice for about 5 years. I sat daily for 15 minutes every morning. Then I stopped. I now walk our dog one hour every morning in observance of the nature around me. I feed the birds, talk to them and they chirp back lol. I think any practice where you get out of your thoughts and into the present is a form of meditation. The key is to stay out of the mental predicting of a future you and I don’t know. Mental predicting can easily bring us into anxiety and panic. But a task or exercise that requires you to be here in the moment, will eliminate anxiety immediately.

I took up boxing with my son in 2020. We exercised outside with a trainer and not only got in amazing shape, but it also helped us heal the very difficult feelings we were having with my mom’s death and the pandemic. If I don’t pay attention in boxing, I will get hit with the training mitts. It is simple as that lol. We hear so much about staying in the present, but it wasn’t until boxing that I fully understood it. Many things that help me stay present are writing, qi gong, baking, cooking, snorkeling, knitting. LMK what yours is.

Staying off the phone and turning off the TV.

I can’t even go on Tik Tok it is so overwhelming for me. I said to someone it feels like time is moving so much faster these days. They said it is because of the 5 second videos we constantly watch. It is giving the illusion that time is much faster than it really is. Our brains are fed so much information we simply cannot keep up. The only solution is to turn off the devices and turn them off often. Including the TV.