Three specialists offer exercises that allow you to be present in the moment and reduce stress levels. EXERCISE 1: “TO GROUND YOURSELF IN YOUR SENSES” Jean-Gerard Bloch, rheumatologist “Regardless of whether you are standing or sitting and where you are — in line, on the subway or bus, or in the office — direct all your attention to the soles of your feet: which areas of them are in contact with the floor? How do you feel? Strong pressure or weak pressure? You don’t have to evaluate it, you just have to feel it. If you do this exercise every day for 20-30 seconds, gradually increasing the time, it quickly calms down, and also makes it easier to return to your senses and ground in reality, while thoughts, on the contrary, lead us away from it.” EXERCISE 2: “SEEING FOR THE FIRST TIME” Yasmin Lienar, psychotherapist “Look at everything around you as if you’ve just landed on Earth. No names, no ratings. Consider the colors, the material, the lines, the curves, the relief, the reflection of light, as you would do at a contemporary art exhibition, where everything has a place. Every time you have an obsessive thought or value judgment, let them go and return to visual perception, practicing to look at everything down to the smallest detail: a speck of dust on the floor, a thread of clothing, the tip of a hair … This exercise interrupts mental associations and immediately brings us back to the present moment. It also allows our consciousness to get out of its usual mode. After all, consciousness is usually constantly evaluating others, and this tendency to evaluate, categorize, compare, prefer, and deny is at the root of many of our problems. Meditation helps to get out of this lifestyle and develop an open mind.” EXERCISE 3: “COPING WITH PAINFUL EMOTIONS” Helene Philippe, clinical psychologist This exercise is performed in four stages. Step 1 — Acknowledge the presence of a strong emotion. Give yourself time to feel what is happening to you: what are your bodily sensations? Where are they located? In the stomach, in the throat, in the chest?.. Step 2 — Accept this emotion. Don’t try to deny it or fight against it: let it take hold of you, be with it, name it. Step 3 — Study this emotion. What thoughts come up with it? What other feelings? Do you recognize them? Are they familiar to you? The purpose of this is to penetrate deeper into the emotion, to direct all your conscious attention to the physical and mental experience that it offers you, but to analyze it effortlessly, just feeling it and noting the sensations. Stage 4 — Don’t define the emotion. The previous stages allow us to become aware of our emotional habits and how we lock ourselves into unpleasant emotions due to constantly recurring thoughts. To continue to distance yourself from the emotion and deprive it of its “identity”, gradually expand your consciousness, paying clear and conscious attention not only to those areas where this emotion manifests itself, but also to the body as a whole, and then, gradually, to your surroundings, to sounds, to the landscape. This exercise will help you find other ways to express yourself, such as expressing your disagreement or frustration, rather than chewing around endlessly in circles.” Source: www.psychologies.ru