There are so many good reasons for taking some time and focusing on relaxation - I won’t dive deep into the “why”….this post is more a guideline on “how”.
So below, I have listed some of my favorite tools to access a relaxed, calm state of body and mind.
Essential oils
Affirmations
Movement
Journaling
Meditation
Music
How beautiful, that we don’t have to choose if we don’t like - as many of them are going together perfectly.
Listening to your favorite music and dancing while diffusing some essential oils, Sitting in Meditation and listening to Affirmations and relaxing music - like binaural beats of specific frequencies that are helping you releasing negative emotions.
Our intuition can easily guide us to what is best for us right now.
Essential Oils
From my point of view, the intention behind our actions is very important, especially when it comes to substances or anything exterior. What do I mean by that?
You could very well use essential oils in way that is more surpressing your learning, your growth, the beliefs that are causing your discomfort. This is using them like pharmaceuticals, to cure or numb a symptom instead of looking for the root cause of disease and working on this. So what I would like to inspire is an approach of using them as assistance to learning, to healing the root cause.
The difference might not be visible from the outside, but it is a huge difference for your spiritual and personal growth.
So, to make it more tangible, I am suggesting using an oil like lavender, which is very well known for its abilities to calm down and promote relaxation and healing with the intention to learn the lesson you need to learn.
Lavender is widely known for its calming abilities- a characteristic that can be of great benefit when we want to come back to more balance in our lives. For unfolding our life’s purpose freely and getting a clear communication with our higher selves, it is necessary to calm down body and spirit, to find a way to relax and reflect, so that learning and healing can take place.
With Lavender, you have an assistant that can help you coming back into alignment more easily and that can balance your mind - both by calming down but also by energizing in a relaxed, unstressful way. Lavender is a good tool to ground yourself and balance your communication - it is connected to our root and throat chakras.
In short, some benefits of Lavender can be:
reduced stress and uplifted mood
antioxidant protection
antimicrobial
healthier skin and hair
improved sleep
more balance
grounding
clearing up communication
holds space to relax and reflect
Aromatic use of Lavender
For example, you could diffuse a few drops of lavender oil in a diffuser, make yourself a cup of tea, inhaling consciously the beautiful smell and sitting down, asking yourself what it is that is holding you back from feeling calm and relaxed.
Having a pen and paper near you is helpful, so write down everything that comes to you, everything that your mind wants to let go of.
Next, pick one situation that stands out and is keeping you from feeling at ease and ask yourself: what does the universe want me to learn from this? What is the underlying message or sign?
Write down anything that comes up.
Maybe, at first nothing comes up, so be patient with yourself and wait a few seconds.
Your intuition will send you the answer - maybe just not in the form you are expecting it. It can come as a clear thought, or as a memory of something, as an idea or a line of song that is popping up in your mind.
Be open and curious as to which way the answer will come.
And if tis there, write it down, without judgement or the intention of solving this problem.
If you realize this is a reoccurring pattern, you might want to ask one more question in your mind: what can I do differently so this does not need to repeat?
Again, give yourself time for the answer to present itself and then write it down.
When it feels complete, focus again on the scent of Lavender, maybe thanking the plant essence for assisting you.
Taking in the purple cooler of lavender, visualizing the color being inhaled with your next breath and diffusing all over your body and energy field.
Visualize it staying there, offering you protection from anything stressful that might want to approach you in your upcoming day, and anchor in the feeling of calmness and relaxation.
You can come back to this feeling of wellbeing and calmness anytime during your day if you need to, by consciously remembering the color and scent of lavender.
Topical use of Lavender ( applying it directly on the skin ):
Mix up to 5 drops of lavender with 10 ml carrier oil ( jojoba oil, coconut oil, sweet almond oil or apricot kernel oil are great carrier oils for massage). Self-massaging your hand, feet or head or, if you can, ask a dear one to give you a massage.
Taking a lavender bath: mix 5 drops with 5 ml carrier oil and add to your bathing tub. Before taking the bath, you can set an intention to relax and release all thoughts, patterns or experiences from your mind, body and energetic field that are no longer serving you,
// To get your own, high quality, calming essential oils directly from doterra, click here //
Affirmations for relaxation
With Affirmations, we are suggesting to our minds what we want to experience in our lives. It is a very powerful tool when used frequently and a great way to reprogram our way of talking with ourselves in a more empowering, loving way.
If you feel that you deeply need some rest and time to relax, it is powerful to write down these Affirmations ( in your own words, or in my version, what ever feels best for you - let your intuition guide you to the right wordings )
If you are on the go, or wanting to close your eyes and meditate on the, listen to the Relaxation - Affirmations here:
Movement
Moving our bodies is always a great way to process emotion and initiate a change of attitude, a train of thought.
For relaxation, it obvisously makes sense to not choosing a form of movement that is hyping us up, like martial arts or competitive sports in general. Although in a way that can work too, if we afterwards are so exhausted that we feel relaxation, but that is not where I want to go right now.
For really relaxing and opening up a space of calmness, peace and reflection, moving our bodies with the intention of releasing and relaxing is a great way to step into a state of calmness.
Maybe you feel like you need to release a conversation from our mind or any stress that you feel physically, then exercises like TRE or bioenergetics are amazing. Also dancing, an all-time-favorite, can do miracles for your peace of mind.
You are in the process of taking care of yourself, listening to your own needs.
Journaling
first it is very cleansing to just write out everything that is on your mind, without judgement or the intention of creating a to-do-list from it. The only important thing is to get it out. In the next step, you can journal about your stress, picking a situation that is coming to mind and asking yourself some questions, like mentioned above at the chapter about essential oils:
What can I learn from it? What does the universe want to tell me?
How can I avoid it next time? What can I change?
Meditation
Sometimes, when being upset or in a hurry, it is hard to go into a state calm enough to meditate. So in this case you might want to do any of the above suggestions first and come back to meditation when feeling like sitting down is possible. Or choosing a form of meditation that is not a classical sitting meditation, but an intentional walk in nature or a walking meditation.
Music
Add to any of the suggestion above, if you like, some music that is calming your system. There are wonderful meditative pieces with specific frequencies that can enhance healing, relaxation and releasing negative energy. From Binaural Beats to classical music, from the Schumann Resonance to Sounds of Nature - again, choose what your intuition guides you to, she always knows best.