10 Days for Mental Health Free Online Course - Day 2

Today we're going to help you to be a little kinder to yourself and give you some positive alternatives to counteract any negative thoughts that are causing anxiety.

We’ll introduce you to techniques to quieten that brain chatter, and show you some calming methods to help you ease into periods of being alone with only your thoughts.

Yogic breathing

The first method is a breathing technique called Ujjayi Breathing. It’s a form of yogic breathing that is very focused so that all your effort is spent just concentrating on your breathing which means there is very little space to allow negative thoughts to come through.

After you’ve done a few rounds of Ujjayi breathing, you’ll hopefully feel so relaxed that those negative thoughts become duller and lose some of their power. It’s also great to imagine blasting out all those negative thoughts and feelings with the exhaling breath.

Listen to the clip below, where we demonstrate the Ujjayi breathing technique.

Autogenic Phrases

Brains are very fickle sometimes and whatever we repeat, it believes. So if we repeatedly tell ourselves that we are feeling stressed and overwhelmed, then the brain believes it and we feel nothing but stressed and overwhelmed.

In the same way, if we repeatedly tell ourselves that we are worthless and useless, we start believing it and it’s very difficult to get out of that negative cycle of thinking.

This nasty voice inside our heads that is hectoring, critical and negative is called an “inner critic” and it always seems to really ramp up whenever we feel stressed, anxious or depressed. Click on our blog article: The Best Way to Stop your Inner Critic to find out how you can manage that negative voice.

We also have a guided meditation that is excellent at tricking our brains into feeling relaxed instead of stressed. During the meditation we’re going to repeatedly give our brains lots of helpful relaxing phrases and by the end of it, both our bodies and minds will feel that benefit.

Water Therapy

Hydrotherapy is quickly becoming one of the most effective ways of helping people with anxiety and depression. The temperature and time of day you have your water therapy is very important – a quick cold shower in the morning or a warm bath in the afternoon has been proven to help people with a multitude of mental health issues.

So today we’d like you to try one of those options and see how you feel. If you’ve already had your shower, don’t worry. You can try it tomorrow instead, but familiarise yourself with the techniques by reading up on them first.

For more information on the amazing differences a quick bit of cold water in the morning can do for you, click on our blog page for articles such as: ‘How Cold Showers Can Help Anxiety & Depression’ and ‘Can a Hot Bath in the Afternoon Reduce Depression?’

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)

This technique has been proven to help those with distressing, anxious or uncomfortable feelings such as panic, sadness, anger, guilt or phobias. (For full information on the technique, please click on this link from the UK National Health Service Community Health Services which goes into more details on how the technique works.)

It is also called “tapping” as it involves tapping your fingers lightly on various parts of your body and - much like the autogenic phrases - it involves repeating soothing words in your head.

The parts of your body that you tap are acupressure points that release tension and the rhythmic tapping is almost like a repetitive heartbeat noise that triggers your brain into relaxing. The acknowledgement of the problem at hand and then the positive words you repeat to yourself allows an acceptance of the issues and then a more positive framing of how to deal them.

And this video below from one of the leading US ETF practitioners demonstrates exactly how to carry out the process.

So good luck for the techniques today – try and do them as much as you can and see how you feel - and we’ll see you tomorrow for Day 3.