Let Your Own Relaxed Brain State Heal Yourself
By Atrium Specialist Counsellor, Nastassia Tsuei
Advanced Mindfulness Imagery Breathing Exercise: Let Your Own Relaxed Brain State Heal Yourself
We all know that abdominal breathing can help sleep, eliminate tension, and reduce stress.
According to research, when breathing exercises are combined with imagery and mindful meditation exercises, the benefits can be, but not limited to, as follows:
- Lower blood pressure
- Promote blood circulation
- Improve palpitations/stabilize heart rhythm
- Lower the breathing rate to normal/ improve hyperventilation
- Alleviate anxiety
- Reduce the stress hormone (cortisol) in the blood/Reduce stress
- Deepen the physical relaxation level
- Regulate our Central Nervous System/Parasympathetic system/ Vagus Nerves
- Improved overall physical and mental health
I want to introduce an advanced version of breathing exercise, which is a homework I often give to my clients.
This is a combination of Mindfulness, Meditation and Imagery Therapy all together. This exercise helps you to regulate your stress and worries, release anxiety, improve your sleep quality and even reduce depression.
Do it before going to bed, as a daily routine.
Calmness Exercise
You can also do the Step 3 to 5 when you are feeling overwhelmed or stressed, as this exercise can also calm you down.
Steps:
When you are ready to go to bed/or want to rewind/boost yourself up:
1. Turn off your mobile or put it on mute (not in vibration mode), and put it away with the screen in downward direction.
2. Lie down/sit well in your own most comfortable position.
3. Take a few relaxing breaths first.
4. After adjusting your breath, focus on your out-breath. When you are exhaling, imagine your fatigue, unneeded emotion, uneasiness, negative energy, tension, stress-whatever accumulated day by day in your body-all leaving your system when you exhale.
5. After you feel it’s enough, focus on your in-breath. When you are inhaling, imagine the energy, light, calmness and tranquillity are inside of you. They are all coming your way as you inhale.
6. Enjoy the moment of feeling the relaxed moment that you deserve for yourself. Most people will easily fall asleep naturally at this stage.
Here are some tips for your imagery exercise. When exhaling, imagine your fatigue, emotions, uneasiness, negative energy, tension that you have are all exiting your system when you exhale. This can also be years of uneasiness, unhappiness, unevenness, grievance, anger, resentment, physical or mental traumas, and sickness.
You can use imagery to represent the negative feelings, such ascertain unwanted colours or even symbols. When inhaling, imagine that energy, light, calmness, and tranquillity are also coming to you and are being inhaled into your body.
The healing light is also inhaled inside you when you inhale. You can also imagine yourself floating gently like a cloud in a comfortable and relaxed atmosphere.
Doing this exercise before going to bed every day can also help you slowly clear your negative emotions. With everyday practise, it gets easier for you to get into a relaxed state.
In the beginning, you might feel that it is not easy to concentrate, and your thoughts wander around. It doesn’t matter. If you find this occurs, just bring your focus back to the exercise, as noticing your thoughts wandering is also mindfulness.
Just like we would put some lotion and serum on our face and body, our mind also needs some daily care. Do this practice every day to improve your physiological function, cardiac system function and mental health.
BIO: Nastassia Tsuei
Nastassia Tsuei is a Specialist Counsellor with Atrium HR. She is an experienced therapist, a Clinical Psychotherapist, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Mental Health Consultant, Advanced BWRT Practitioner, Specialist in Trauma and Abuse and Specialist in Psychosexual Dysfunction. She is also a Therapeutic Guided Imagery Master, Inner Child Healing Specialist, Mindfulness Master Practitioner and Master Life Coach.
