#3 A Peaceful Pause

Overcoming overwhelm

Photo by Joice Kelly on Unsplash

A Peaceful Pause is one of my regular monthly offerings for my closed Substack community, along with The Reset. Each month A Peaceful Pause features a guided audio practice from me. If you’re currently a free subscriber, upgrading your subscription will give you access to all my new meditation and yoga practices here as well as my growing archive of all posts.

“One of the benefits of breathing practices is that you can usually do them anywhere at any time to help ground and calm yourself and often no-one else needs to know what you are doing… Deep breathing stimulates the vagus nerve, soothing physical and emotional stress, and calming both body and mind.” – Extract from my book, Rest + Calm

Welcome to this month’s edition of A Peaceful Pause. If you missed the previous ones you can find them here and here.

Our breath is a wonderful tool we can utilise to regulate the nervous system. We know that steady, controlled nasal breathing can slow the heart rate and by consciously adjusting your breathing in its rate, rhythm and depth we can change our state. 

Anxiety was the theme of Mental Health Awareness Week earlier this month, and feeling overwhelmed is a common anxiety symptom. In the past several months I’ve heard so many more people admitting that they’ve been struggling with overwhelm. If this is where you are currently, even though it might seem easier said than done, it’s really important to let yourself pause, if only for a few minutes. With that in mind, this month’s Peaceful Pause is a short breathing practice for you to try when you want to soothe feelings of overwhelm. 

Find a comfortable place to sit or lie down as I guide you through this Overcoming Overwhelm practice…