WHEN YOUR BODY NOTICES a potential threat (real or imaginary), it activates a stress response to help you survive. To make survival possible, other functions get put to the side until the perceived threat is gone. These include digesting food and sleeping. In today’s world the stress response, for many people, is triggered constantly.
Completing the stress cycle means sending a signal to your mind, body, and soul that you are once again safe. It’s not enough to tell yourself, “Everything is okay now.” You need to speak your body’s language.
This 10-minute routine helps you communicate with your body, telling it that the time of stress is over so that you can fall asleep peacefully in minutes.
Dim the lights, put on your PJs, turn off any possible distractions, and let’s get cozy.
GRATITUDE JOURNAL
[TWO MINUTES] Start by journaling for two minutes about five things that you’re grateful for and why. Thoughts of gratitude and appreciation can help your brain create endorphins, the happy hormones, and help release negative thoughts before bed.
Start with general areas in your life and move to more specific ones. You can use phrases like “I am grateful for my family because they are very supportive” or “I am grateful for my bed because it is cozy and comfortable.”
This story is from the September/October 2022 edition of Spirituality & Health.
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This story is from the September/October 2022 edition of Spirituality & Health.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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ONE WORD TO BEAT WINTER BLUES: BIOMIMICRY
CREATURELY REFLECTIONS
THINKING ABOUT RESTITUTION
THE HEART OF HAPPINESS
WAITING IN LINE
OUR WALK IN THE WORLD
ENTER THE SAUNA
Journalist Emily O’Kelly shares some uplifting research on the benefits of sweat bathing, a global healing practice not just limited to Northern climes.
the trail of ATONEMENT
One Ashkenazi Jewish family escaped pogroms in Russia and then flourished in South Dakota, but the “free land” of their new homestead had been unfairly taken from the Lakota by the United States. Generations later, a celebrated investigative journalist set out to tell the truth of the Lakota and her family, calculate The Cost of Free Land—and pay it back.
STALKING YOUR Mind
Stalking the Mind is part of an ancient Indigenous American Medicine Way to tame your guilt, fears, and shame. What we’re “stalking” are our thought patterns and beliefs that seem to create the opposite of happiness and wellbeing. It’s a powerful psychotherapeutic journey of healing without the diagnosis or labels.
LEAVING MESA VERDE
After 21 years of service at Mesa Verde National Park, RANGER DAVID FRANKS recently guided his last tour of the pueblos and cliff dwellings. He says he was fortunate to assist the archeologists with a variety of work and never lost his amazement with their ability to figure out how and when things happened. The question he still wrestles with is much deeper: Why they left?
BECOMING YOUR OWN LEAD RESEARCHER IN HEALTHCARE
PEGGY LA CERRA, PHD, downloaded a health app to aggregate her medical records and was stunned to see the phrase \"aortic atherosclerosis.\" What she did next is a helpful model for all of us.
ARCHETYPAL ASTROLOGY
\"Is astrology true?\" is the wrong question, writes RABBI RAMI SHAPIRO. He suggests that the truth is out there, but out there is really in here.
WELLNESS IN THE WILD
Spa aficionado MARY BEMIS takes the [cold] plunge at Mohonk Mountain House.
