BLOG 277: WANT LESS STRESS IN YOUR DAY? TRY MY EASY HACK NOW!
Jul 23, 2024
Having some stress in our lives is inevitable (and normal). But when it becomes a feature of every day, it becomes a real problem – one that can cause major issues for our physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing.
If you’ve noticed that your stress levels are creeping up and feeling under pressure has become a regular part of your life, this is the post for you!
I’m going to take you through a series of steps that I like to do when I notice that my days are feeling more stressful than they should. These exercises help you to connect with your intuition, let go of some tension, and recognise what you might need to change in your life to make everything flow more easily.
This is also a really simple sequence that takes less than five minutes, so if you are already feeling like there’s not enough time in the day, don’t worry. This isn’t going to take long.
Getting ready
I’m going to take you through a couple of stress-relieving face yoga moves as part of this sequence, so make sure you have clean hands and a clean face before you start.
Apply a few drops of serum to give your skin a lovely glide – my go-to is the Pro Lift Moisturising Serum from my Fusion by Danielle Collins range. It is packed with high-performing botanical ingredients and is designed to work beautifully with facial massage and face yoga.
Find somewhere comfortable to sit – ideally somewhere quiet where no one will interrupt you for the next five minutes.
Take a couple of deep, grounding breaths through your nose. And you are ready to begin.
1. Connect to your intuition
If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ll already know that I am a huge believer in using my intuition to guide me. That little voice of inner knowing brings so much wisdom – when we slow down enough to hear it, we often find we already know what our next step needs to be.
So, I’d like you to start by closing your eyes and tuning into your intuition. Ask yourself, “what can I let go of?”
Listen to the very first answer that pops into your mind – that instant response that comes in the first second or two.
As we go through some face yoga techniques, this is the answer that I want you to keep in your head.
2. Face Yoga
Our next step is to go through some of my favourite face yoga moves for releasing stress and tension. So, start by making a V shape with your index and middle fingers.
Using both hands, glide your fingers over your jaw line, starting at your chin and smoothing out to just below your ears.
We tend to hold a lot of stress and tension in our jaws, so this is a great technique to help you release some of that. Focus on breathing deeply and relax the muscles of your face as much as you can while you do this.
After 30 seconds to a minute, move up the face a little to massage over your mouth and lower cheeks, using the same action.
As you massage, focus on letting go of stress, letting go of any emotions that are no longer serving you, and letting go of whatever your intuition told you needs to go.
Next, use your fingertips to tap rapidly tapping all over your forehead area. There are loads of acupressure points here, especially at your temples, above your eyebrows, and between your eyebrows.
Again, keep breathing deeply as you tap. With every exhale, imagine that you are exhaling anything that no longer serves you at the same time.
Finally, let’s finish off with Lion’s Breath – one of my favourite ways to let go of stress and emotional tension.
Bring your hands up beside your face. Inhale through your nose, closing your eyes and forming your hands into loose fists.
Then, forcibly exhale through your mouth, sticking out your tongue and making a “haarr” sound with your breath – like a lion’s roar. At the same time, open your hands and your eyes as wide as you can.
Repeat this a few more times.
3. Back to your intuition
Close your eyes again, breathe deeply through your nose, and tune back into your intuition.
This time, the question I want you to ask yourself is, “what do I want to call in to my life and/or business?”
Again, listen to that first, immediate answer that comes into your mind. This is the voice of your intuition speaking.
Finishing
We started this sequence by connecting to our intuition and asking what we need to let go of. We’ve done some steps to start physically letting it go through our breath and through face yoga. And we’ve asked ourselves what we need to call in too.
To finish, place your hands on your heart. Repeat these words, filling in the blanks with your unique answer:
“I let go of [your answer].”
“I call in more of [your answer].”
Take this with you as you go through your day, really putting out to the universe what you want to let go of and what you want to call in.
And we’re all done! You can come back to this exercise whenever you sense that your stress levels are telling you it is time to make a change.
If you want to take a deeper dive into using face yoga to reduce stress and support your physical, mental, and emotional wellness, I have a great bundle of online retreats that is perfect for moments when you want something more deeply restorative.
