How to Revitalise, Restore and Renew Your Energy
Coming back from holidays can sometimes feel, well… exhausting.
Sometimes, all the holidays in the world can’t recharge our over-drained batteries (ever feel like you needed a holiday after your holiday?!).
So, what do you do to recharge during your daily grind – especially if this state of exhaustion has been plaguing you for a significant amount of time?
This is a familiar story for me and I want to answer this enquiry for myself and for my clients too.
After assessing my own life, meeting other exhaustion sufferers, and exploring alternative paths to health with experts, I discovered some amazing breakthroughs for reclaiming our lost energy – something we all could use right now.
That’s why I wanted to let you know that you can learn some of the tools and techniques I discovered in my RECREATE program.
Plus … I have more good news! You don’t need to wait to start learning from me. Here are some truly powerful techniques that will help you create the energy you deserve, no matter where you are or what your day-to-day life looks like.
Practice #1—Learn to Breathe
The breath has a powerful, almost magical effect on our energy. By controlling our breathing, we can directly impact our energy. Specifically, we can control whether we’re stuck in fight, flight, or freeze, or if we’re in rest and digest.
Most people are shallow breathers – and some don’t even know it until they begin to pay attention to how they are breathing – this was a huge insight for me last year. Many people breathe from their chests only, and from their mouths. But when we breathe slowly through our nose and deep into our belly, we can shift our nervous system into a slower, more peaceful, more relaxed state. All it takes is a few minutes, and we can move ourselves from stressed out to chilled out.
Try this now: Breathe in through your nose, down to the deepest point in your body (about three fingers below your naval) for a slow count of four, and hold it for four seconds, before breathing out through your nose for another count of four, then pause for four seconds. Do this exercise three times. Focus on breathing into your belly. Your belly should rise, not just your chest. This is called box breathing.
And here’s another great practice to try: Breathe in for a count of four, then breathe out for a count of six (or eight, if it’s not too stressful). This really slows your heart rate.
You can use these breathing techniques anytime you’re feeling a stress response or before a potentially stressful experience.
You can do deep breath work before a meal, before bedtime, or before going into that meeting with your manger, or hopping on that team conference call.
You can use it when you’re in the car and stuck in gridlock or wedged between strangers in a queue.
When you’re chronically stressed, learning how to breathe can be one of the most powerful exercises to Calm Your Farm and your nervous system. It costs you nothing, and it’s something you can do anywhere, anytime.
Practice #2—Plan to Relax on the Hour Every Hour
A lot of people need to train themselves to relax and reduce their stress – this was me!! An effective tool I discovered to work is to set a timer – once every hour, you stop what you’re doing and take a four-minute sanity break. If that’s too much, stop for a minute or two. You’ve got a phone with a timer in it—put it to use!
Do whatever you want. Get up from your desk and stretch. Do some squats. Close your eyes and breathe deeply through your nose and into your belly (as per practice #1 above breathing deep down into your belly). Or meditate.
What matters is you’re slowing down your system and reminding your body and mind what it feels like to relax no matter what’s going on around you.
Life is a journey, so keep going and keep growing.
Right now, it may seem so far away, maybe even impossible, to regain your energy and vitality. But little by little, day by day, tweak by tweak, you’ll start to get to the other side to an inner reserve of calm that creates the clarity of mind and ease of body we all deserve.
I hope these practices have inspired you to take action to get your energy back!
May the flow be with you!!
PS: If you need help to manage stress, calm your nervous system and improve your sleep, join me every Monday at midday (Brisbane time) for free 15mins online guided mindfulness practice. Here’s what a participant had to say this month: “I just wanted to thank you for these meditations and the positivity they bring to my life.”