3 Techniques To Reduce Anxiety In 3 Minutes (Instant Relief!!)

When anxiety and stress kick in, we don’t feel quite like ourselves. Our body changes, we feel rigid and tensed. Even though we may want to offer our perspectives, we can’t even articulate our thoughts and speak! Not to mention we can’t enjoy the present moment, we can’t even function normally.

If you have heard from me before, you know I am a proponent of using physiology to affect psychology and vice versa. If you feel like your mind is so anxious now that you can’t think right anymore, using these three techniques that I will share with you will influence your body and eventually calm your mind in just 3 mins!

Before we start, rate your anxiety level on a scale of 1-10. 1 is the least anxious, and 10 is the most anxious. Give yourself a number, and we will check in after we are done.

Okay, let's start!

1. Deep Breathing

Hold on! Please continue to read!

I know it sounds too simple that you may wonder if it would even work.

Spare me one to two mins here, and let me explain why simply doing a few deep diaphragmatic breathing or belly breathing can be so effective.

First, we may think how we feel depends on our environment or what other people do to us, but on a vast level, it depends on our nervous system.

The highest aim of our nervous system is to serve and protect us. You may have heard that the autonomic nervous system is divided into the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system. 

The sympathetic system is responsible for the fight/flight/flee functions if you need to react quickly or there are perceived threats, such as if there is a car running into you, the fight or flight mode will be switched on instantly, increasing your heart rate and pump blood to your legs so you can run!

When you are relaxing and connecting with your loved ones, your parasympathetic system is switched on, allowing the rest-and-digest function to take place for the body to recover and restore.

The nervous system picks up how you respond to the environment and adjusts its ways to suit your needs. Nowadays, we don't have much real danger, like life-or-death situations, but we are still pretty vigilant. We respond to emails or messages in secs, like how prey react to their predators. As time goes by, the fight or flight mode, also called stress mode, becomes our normal mode of functioning.

That's where the problem is.

The stress mode per se is not good or bad. It becomes bad when we can't switch it off.

So here it comes why the first technique, deep breathing, is so beneficial.

It is simply because slow and deep diaphragmatic breathing can activate a "relaxation response" in the system. Especially the slow out-breath can stimulate the vagus nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system.

That's why we always say, if you want to feel calm, breathe deeply. When we breathe deep and slow, we send cues to the nervous system that we are safe because slow deep breathing matches what a calm state looks like. And we extend our exhalation because we want to stimulate the vagus nerve.

There are so many types of breathing techniques out there, but in fact, any type of deep breathing will do the job. 

I personally like to inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 7 with a chin lock and exhale for 8 seconds.

You can repeat this 3 times, which will take just a minute.

Why I do the chin lock here because it can stimulate the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve branches out from the brain stem to many locations of the body, and one of the locations it reaches is the vocal cord.

For more information about the vagus nerve, check out the work from Dr. Stephen Porges.

2. Get Into A Power Posture

Imagine when you feel sad, afraid, anxious, and bewildered. What does your posture look like?

You likely hunch your back, your shoulders go forward, curl your body into a fetal position, and you may even close your arms.

We naturally hold our bodies this way because we don't feel safe. And again, we are sending cues to the nervous system for protection. So, we curl our bodies to protect our vital organs. But when we feel safe, we naturally open our chests and open our arms, just like when you meet your friends, you open your arms and hug them because you welcome them!

You can see the research about power posing the Harvard researcher Amy Cuddy, and now they call it postural feedback. It shows that participants who sat in high-power poses, which means expansive open posture, feel more powerful and perform better in interviews compared to those who sat in low-power poses, which means leaning forward and legs crossed.

So, you can simply be aware of your posture. If you notice are hunching your back, then correct to an open chest posture.

Or, you can take this moment to do this second technique, the shoulder circles.

This is what it looks like:

• You roll from the front to the back

• Incorporate slow deep breathing

• When you roll up, inhale, roll down, exhale

• Do it 8 times

• Feel your back muscles contract and get warm

• While your chest is stretched and lengthened

After the 8th time, take another big deep breath, and put your hands on your waist. Remind yourself what Wonder Woman looks like.

It takes you less than one minute.

3. Massage Your Ear

Why massage?

It's almost like a no-brainer. When we want to relax and self-soothe, massage is one of top activities we can think of.

But why the ears?

Have you ever done acupuncture before?

You may know there are many pressure points on the ears. And in ear reflexology, different pressure points are linked to different body parts and organs. And since the ears have many nerve endings, they can carry much blood supply. If we can keep the ears warm and encourage their blood supply, it can benefit the whole body.

And one important fact is the vagus nerve also reaches the middle ear. We can stimulate the vagal tone through ear massage.

We will make this very simple.

1. We can fold the ears a few times, increasing their flexibility

2. Then pull them sideways a few times

3. Pull them upwards a few times

4. Pull the earlobes down a few times

5. Then we can rub along the rim of the ears

6. Then form circles with the index fingers inside the ears and the thumbs at the back of the ears. And we can do a few circles forward, then a few circles backward

7. Last but not least, we can use our index fingers and press into the hollow area just below the ridge and massage in circular motions, one direction a few times and the other direction a few times

8. When you are done, take a deep, slow nourishing belly breath

It takes around one minute.

Now, you can check in with how you feel about your scale again.

Do you notice a relief?

That's it!

This concludes how the body can help calm our mind in just 3 mins. If you are ready to work on your mind as well, please stay tuned for my other articles.

I hope these 3 techniques can help you feel calmer and more composed instantly. And when you feel better, remember to seize this momentum to  

walk around and allow your energy to flow. If possible, let your eyes see far. This enables you to relax the ciliary muscles of the eyes and gain a more expansive perspective as well.

Thank you for reading!

If you want to work on improving your anxiety, please book a session with me today!