3 Ways to Reduce Overwhelm

For decades, I’ve struggled with overwhelming emotions and energies in a variety of forms. Anxiety and depression are the most common forms for me. In recent years, I began to understand that this overwhelm was so persistent because I didn’t allow myself to actually feel the emotions, energies, feelings when they arose. An exhausting cycle of resisting fear, anger, and sadness for so many years and then becoming overwhelmed when they came up for release. For the past two years, I’ve begun to give myself the time and space and permission to feel the feelings, despite the fear of being stuck in overwhelm forever. It’s not easy- it’s a gradual and scary process. Part of this reacquaintance with allowing my emotions and fears is experimenting with being in my body and moving my body to move and shift these energies and emotions. Embodiment, if you will.
Here are 3 overwhelm-reducing practices:
-being present while showering
-noticing 5 things with my physical senses
-singing/dancing, jumping around 

The other day, with feelings of intense overwhelm in my chest- singing and dancing/jumping around provided the greatest shift of these energies. I danced, I sang, I jumped, I punched the air,  and did jumping jacks to some upbeat 80s songs for maybe 4 minutes. In short, I felt a lot better in a relatively small amount of time.
Kinda funny, I worked as a physical therapist and Reiki practitioner and I had forgotten- we need to move our bodies to move emotions and energies. Time to get reacquainted with that knowledge and discover what works for me now.

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