Can’t Stop Overthinking? 9 Easy Ways To Drop Into Your Body For Instant Relief
I’m writing this article after having the total pleasure of my adult daughter visiting for a night, in the morning we went out for breakfast and a pedicure before she had to leave — what a rare treat and I soaked up every second of it.
It wasn’t until we finished our meal and were heading over to give our feet some TLC (read here if you want a medical excuse to get a pedicure!) that I realized exactly why I soaked it up more than usual — I did not have my cell phone with me at all.
When I was done my pedicure I had about a 30 minute wait for my daughter to be finished. If I had my cell phone on me, for sure I would have been going through emails, responding as many as possible, checking my Grounding Boutique inventory, even possibly watching a few TikTok’s for a laugh or two.
Instead, I sat there.
I breathed.
I looked around the room.
I noticed everyone, felt their moods, heard chatter in different areas of the room, saw folks coming and going, watched the technicians as they were working, and thought how lovely and random (or not) it seemed that about 25 different people were gathered in this one space at the same time, from all different parts of town, for all different reasons, some working, some relaxing, for me, the ultimate blessing of spending a morning with my stunning daughter before she left again.
I felt so much warmth and connection, even in a room full mostly with strangers, even without talking to any of them. Just sitting there.
The one thing I can promise you, is I would not have had that unity experience and I would not have felt that surreal interconnected moment with people I never even spoke a word to, if I had been holding my cell phone.
It reminded me that sometimes all we need to do is put down our devices for an uncomfortably long period of time to be back in the present moment and let the other bullshit fall away.
If putting down your phone isn’t an option, or you already do that routinely and are looking for even more ways to shift back into the present moment, quickly, I’ve got you. Here are:
9 Ways To Become Immediately Present In Your Body:
1. Go Outside
If you are feeling utterly overwhelmed, all you have to do is walk out your front door, step out of your office, or stop driving and step out of your car. To reconnect with nature is to reconnect with the bigger picture and instantly release pent up frustration, tension, anger, anxiety and fear.
Multiple studies, including this meta analysis (published 2022) looking at 24 different medical studies, found that going outside in a natural environment significantly improved psychological health over staying in an urban environment.This study published in 2016 found that just going outside just 30 minutes a week was enough to provide mental, physical and social health benefits.This meta-analysis published in 2021, found an “effective dose” of going outside was as little as 20 minutes, with significant benefits accumulating in as little 8 weeks time of routinely going outside.Twenty minutes is great, but taking even one minute to surround yourself with the power of nature can instantly alleviate the false narrative you are telling yourself when you are indoors. In fact, indoors is such an artifical environment — form the lighting, to the surfaces, even the temperature indoors is fake — it stresses the mind and creates separation between what is real and what isn’t.
I alway tell my kids — NEVER make a bid life decision indoors… NEVER. How you feel indoors is not real. Ready to try it? I made this super quick TikTok for you remind you to give this a try any time you are feeling overwhelmed:
How You Feel Indoors Is Not Real (YouTube)How You Feel Indoors In Not Real (TikTok)
@laurakonivermdGo outside to come back to yourself #laurakonivermd #intuitionphysician #grounding #earthing
♬ Relaxing Music – kucing tetangga
So the next time you are having a panic attack, or a pounding headache, a knot of worry grow in your stomach, or just feel indecisive… just go outside. Get out there. Don’t force anything, just start walking and let nature work its magic.
Whether it’s just a few deep breaths as you sit on a patch of grass, taking a walk through a local park, or standing outside at night looking up at the stars… reconnecting with the wonder of being a human being standing on a rock that spirals through space and seeing the earth for the vast support network it is can’t help but lift your spirits for the better.
2. Turn Your Face Towards The Sun
It’s important to get sunlight every single day. If you are going outside daily (see tip #1, above) this will be a win-win situation! Sunlight actually prolongs life span, in a dose dependent way… meaning more time in the sun = longer life span.
I blog about the medical studies on this for you right here.
Get indirect sun exposure whenever possible, for at least 10 minutes or more daily, ideally in non-peak hours (before 10 AM or after 4 PM) by:
sitting on a porch, balcony or front door stoop every morning and every eveningeating picnic lunches outside mid-dayobserving which of the windows in your home or work space are sunny and at what time of the day there is a sunbeam and sitting in those precious light rays while drinking your morning coffee, your evening tea, while working on your computer or while reading a good book, etc…going on an early morning walk before the world wakes up around yougoing on an after dinner walk each evening, to release stress from the day and help boost digestioneven going for a drive if you have a car — roll the windows down and enjoy!Go outside, stand on the earth, and turn your face towards the sun. Close your eyes and breathe. Welcome back to you:
The Sky Is Yes (TikTok)
@laurakonivermdGo outside to instantly de-stress. #laurakonivermd #intuitionphysician #grounding #earthing #holidaystress
If you can’t get any sunlight where you live, or because of mobility issues, you might want to consider a light box.
Light therapy is very uplifting, and has been found to be an effective treatment for depression, anxiety, fibromyalgia… heck it even boosts libido that’s how much better it can make you feel… you can read an article I wrote about that right here, and find the light box I recommend most right here.
3. Eat A Snack Mindfully
While you are outside getting grounded and/or getting some light exposure, try taking a small snack outside with you. Combining a sensation (in this case — taste! Flavor!) drops you right out of your mind and into your body… immediately. Just like closing your eyes and listening to sounds (more on that in #6, below) shifts you instantly into the now, so does any sensory experience. You can leverage this with the power of a small snack or a meal eaten mindfully.
Why does food always taste better at a picnic?
Why does your morning coffee seem so much more satisfying when you take it outside to your front doorstep?
That’s because taking care of your body in any way — eating, drinking, breathing, listening, seeing, walking, etc — mindfully brings you into the present moment, especially when done outside.
Instead of eating while you are multitasking at your desk, driving, working on your computer, or shoving bits in your mouth while doing chores (or is that just me?) take a moment to have the same meal, outside. Literally 5 or 10 minutes will change your entire mind-frame and relax and ground your body from head to toe.
In addition to bringing you to the present moment, eating grounded will have a profound impact on your entire digestive tract — from your esophagus to your colon and everything in between! — while meanwhile directly impacting your ability to feel full and satiated, even enhancing absorption by decreasing inflammation, which also helps with recovery after a meal.
Have 10 minutes right now? Grab a drink and a snack (or your next meal) and come get grounded with me:
10 Minute Grounded Mindful Eating Practice (YouTube)
From every single angle, eating grounded helps: putting you more deeply in touch with your hunger and satiation, helping you digest and absorb your nutrients better, boosting your metabolism and keeping weight gain at bay, even decreasing discomfort after eating.
Even if you eat completely organic, fresh, raw, dairy-free, gluten-free, best-diet-in-the-world you can easily still have irritable bowel issues, or indigestion, or bloating, or pain. That’s because you can’t fully resolve bowel inflammation without being grounded.
Today I’d like to invite you to give it a try to see (and more importantly, feel) the difference in your digestion when you are eating grounded. If you are going to eat food for a few minutes anyway at some point today, you might as well make that a time of healing and support by doing it outside, grounded.
4. Move
The feeling of worry and stress and anxiety is often the stress of energy that is accumulating in the body without release. I know I personally feel this as a ball of pressure right in my solar plexus, but it’s different for everyone.
Irritability, crying, headaches, diarrhea, nausea, tension, muscle stiffness, decreased or increased appetite, weight loss or gain, insomnia… often these all represent energy that just needs to be released to make room for the natural healing process and health/hope to return.
The easiest thing you can do to invite movement into your body and get your energy flowing again is just go on a walk. Even just walking once around the block, or up and down a flight of steps, can make a world of difference. Here are other ideas you can do even inside your house to get a little movement into your body, helping you drop out of your head-space and into your heart-space immediately:
Easy Ways To Bring More Movement Into Your Daily Routine. Even In Winter, Even At Home.Need to go deeper than just a walk or a few stretches?
Here is a list of ideas for deeper bodywork that will help release stuck emotions and stress that builds up in your body over time:
Bowen Therapy (I blog about this here: Why Your Fascia Is Your Best Friend + 3 Ways To Support It For A Lifetime)YogaGuided Meditations (like this one for fall: Grounding Fall Meditation)Self Massage — foot, neck, scalp and hand massages are all massages you can do on your own body to release tensionConsider deep tissue massage by a therapist for more profound reliefHeat (grounding hot water bottles are the best!) over tense areasWater (in the form of showers or baths, as well as increasing hydration by drinking lots of water!)OrgasmAcupunctureQigongTai chiReikiPhysical therapy
5. Take A Deep Breath
In medicine, we know it only takes three deep breaths to significantly support your vagal nerve tone, which helps modulate your autonomic nervous system. Meaning your heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure and brain all get calmed and centered and soothed… and pain actually significantly decreases as well.
The best part about a deep breath? You can only notice it if you are in the present moment. The minute you forget you are breathing likely signifies you are in your head, ruminating about the past or worrying about the future.
Take 3 deep breaths gives your mind a mini-break and immediately focus on the present moment, getting you out of worry and fear. If you would like to incorporate mantra work into your breathing, here are some ideas for you…
breathing in: I am lovablebreathing out: I am lovedorbreathing in: I am safebreathing out: I am taken care of by Godorbreathing in: I am protectedbreathing out: I am healing
Want to do it right along with me? Watch this video and lets take a few deep breaths together, right now, and you can feel how much more present you are in your body — it’s like night and day:
Reduce Your Overwhelm In 3 Breaths, Right Now With Me
Take 5 Deep Breaths With Me (YouTube)
Did you know deep breathing actually nourishes your brain?
Deep breathing actually does more than center and relax you, it actually helps provide increased nutrition to your brain and boosted removal of toxic metabolic waste — because medical studies show that deep abdominal breathing actually increases movement in the cerebrospinal fluid that bathes your brain. So taking a couple intentional deep breaths actually means you have conscious control over your brain’s environment, brining more oxygen and nutrients to it!
I go into the science of that and how grounding might play a factor into increasing those health benefits in this medical review article I published in the American Journal of Neurology Research in 2023, you can read that right here:
Cerebrospinal Fluid & Brain Health: Optimized By GroundingIf you’d rather hear me talk about it than read it, here is a video I recorded for you:
And if you prefer TikTok, here is an abbreviated version from TikTok… I would love to have you follow me on TikTok here!
6. Listen To Music
Just like taste (#3, above) which can only be tasted in the now, sounds can only be heard to in the now — so listening to a song you really love, one that uplifts you and makes you smile, even sing — the easiest way I know to be immediately present in the current moment.
My kids will tell you that if I am really grumpy, all we have to do is hop in the car and turn on the radio and within a few songs, all of a sudden I don’t feel so hopeless. In fact, I feel optimistic and grateful and filled with the same sense of wonder and possibility that I feel when I spend time in nature.
The power of music to wash through you and lift you is amazing.
This is how powerful music is: if you play music that holds special meaning to a patient experiencing memory loss, they can recover context and depth and recognition in the form of long term memory recall while the music is being played. (watch this fascinating trailer for Alive Insideto see this happen!)
Playing music that is personally relevant to a patient has been shown to:
increase communication skillsincrease long term recallincrease activity level and energy levelincrease social function and engagementdecrease high blood pressureimprove moodreduce pain levelsenhance sleepSo if you are feeling stressed or depressed, especially if you can not leave your current surroundings to a new change of scenery, slip on some music and allow it to sweep through your soul and lift you higher.
Music is an invaluable tool for self-soothing and decreasing anxiety and depression rates. So play music out loud and use it to connect with everyone in your family — seniors through the youngest children — everyone can benefit! Take turns playing your favorite music, having a family dance battle, or creating playlists for different times of the day.
7. Connect To Your Favorite Human
Touch is another sensation you can only feel in the now… so take advantage of that by leaning on a loved one to help you break out of your overwhelm and drop back into the present moment.
Touch from loved ones is so important that it even helps provide anesthesia to pain… that’s how much physical closeness helps. A medical study (published in 2018 in the Proceedings Of The National Academy of Sciences) showed that simply holding hands provided significant analgesia during pain.
Physical touch calms brain activity during distress, which helps explain why it reduces the brain’s perception of pain, a study (published in 2006 in Psychological Science) found. In this study, brain activity was measured via a functional MRI while partners held hands with their spouse — hand holding significantly reduced level of brain activity during painful stimuli.
Another study, published in 2019 in Pain Management Nursing, found that simply massaging a patient’s hand reduced pain and provided longer pain free intervals in critically ill patients in a surgical intensive care unit.
Physical touch even has the power to calm your heart rate and respiratory rate, as well as lower blood pressure. A study published in 2017 in Scientific Reports found when evaluating patients who had a pain event while being monitored via an ECG… patients holding their partners hands had significant analgesia which resulted in lowered blood pressure, lowered heart rate response, and a lowered respiratory rate.
physical touch has the power to reduce painphysical touch has the power to prolong pain free intervals (even in critically ill patients)physical touch has the power to calm brain activity during distressphysical touch has the power to lower heart rate and blood pressurephysical touch has the power to calm respiratory rateWant more details on how contact with loved ones helps boost your health and tips on how to do it? Read this blog post here:
8 Ways To Boost Your Health By Boosting ConnectionMeanwhile leverage the power of touch by connecting to you favorite human and drop from you mind space into your sensory awareness… feeling the warmth, comfort and sensation of touch and welcome back to the current moment.
8. Connect To Your Favorite Animal
It’s not just the touch of a human being that brings comfort and relief — do you have a beloved pet?
I absolutely did, a once-in-a-lifetime pup, unfortunately she passed away a few years ago and I still miss her – painfully so — every single day. And there is a reason why: our heart fields were attuned to one another for 17 years. As I wrote about in this blog post here: The Health Benefits Of Having A Pet, pets actually boost health and longevity, much like connecting to your favorite human.
From boosted cardiac health and improved survival rates after heart attack to improved outcomes in cancer treatment, your life is absolutely enhanced by your fur baby and that special connection you share. In fact, studies have found that animals can decrease stress in our bodies after literally only 5 minutes (and not only that, but they decrease stress more effectively than other activities, such as coloring or taking a break to relax!). For example one study, published in the Academy of Emergency Medicine in 2020 found that spending 5 minutes with a dog was able to significantly lower participants cortisol levels.
From walking your dog to playing with your cat to letting your guinea pig or bird out of his or her cage for a little play time, pets provide us precious time bonding with a heart energy field that absolutely loves you unconditionally. To help leverage the power of connection with your fur baby to get you out of your overwhelm and into the present moment, just connect with them through one of your senses, which is what pull you back into the current moment:
watch them with your eyestake a few deep breaths smelling their scentrun your hands down their back as you pet them, feeling exactly what their fur feels like right here and right now,let them sit on your lap and feel their weight anchor youor even take a nap with them and let their energy sync to yours……you can only truly enjoy your pet in the present moment. They are the sweetest little reminders that pull you back into the present moment, so use them as a touchstone often.
Play is not only a relief and a fun way to bring joy into your life, it is actually therapy. Play time is therapeutic time, point blank. Child psychologists use this healing tool often, because play is a child’s way to express and release any inner turmoil or fears that the child doesn’t even consciously know they have.
But it isn’t only therapeutic for children, it’s therapeutic for adults too.
In fact, I would argue that engaging in some form of play daily is one of the best things you can do to safeguard your physical health. And like other tips that involve your senses, you can only enjoy playing if you are actually present for it. From physical play (whether through dance, playing a sport like golf tennis or bowling, painting, playing a musical instrument, bird watching, hiking, you name it!) to mental play (such as crossword puzzles, chess, sudoku, reading and discussing books, watching plays, learning a new language, etc…) many studies have proven there are mental and physical health benefits from time spent in play.
Play and Optimal WelfarePlay and Adult CreativityPlay in AdulthoodCurrent perspectives on the biological study of play: signs of progressThe relationship between playfulness and coping in preschool childrenUsing play and playwork with teenage parents and their childrenThe importance of play in promoting strong bondsPlaying to learnWhether it is dusting off an old pair of rollerblades, or heading outside for a game of catch with your dog, to crafting or creating something, learning or playing an instrument, dancing to your favorite music, trying a new recipe in the kitchen, heading outside to watch the sunset, blowing bubbles in your living room, singing songs around a campfire, going on a walk, playing a pick up game at a park with friends, playing card games with your family, doing a jigsaw puzzle all week long, riding a bike, laying down to look up at cloud shapes in the daytime or twinkling stars at night, writing poems, learning how to sew, creating a scrapbook, practicing photography, and on and on and on…
…know that time you devote to playing is every bit as healthy for you (& let’s face it, probably even more healthy) than the time you spend in serious mode, tackling things like chores, work, emails, and catching up on the news. And the best part about it is that the time you spend playing will be time you are present in the current moment. At the end of the day, the time you spend working or stressing or in overwhelm will probably feel like a blur, and the time you spent enjoying play will be time you spent actually in your body, enjoying the current moment.
Need help remembering what brings your inner child out? Read through these different “Play Personalities” below to help you discover — or re-discover — what activities might bring you joy:
Make Time To Play Today, If You Are Stuck, Here’s How To Figure Out Your Play Style
A painting I created to remind myself to stop and breathe — prints available here.I hope some of these tips inspire you to drop out of over-thinking mode back into the present moment — and many of these ideas take only a few minutes: eating a snack, stepping outside, facing the sun, deep breathing, listening to a song, snuggling your pet.
And some are even better if you can take 10 minutes or more — and if it’s for your mental wellbeing, yes you absolutely must take 10 minutes to prioritize that, which you can do by: connecting to a loved one, going on a walk, taking time to do something playful.
Pick one to do today and pick another one to do tomorrow. Try to do a few of these this week and see which becomes your new go-to.
Offered with much love…xoxox,Laura Konver MD
The post Can’t Stop Overthinking? 9 Easy Ways To Drop Into Your Body For Instant Relief appeared first on Intuition Physician.
