Just take a moment to close your eyes and let's start our practice as I like to do with three self-soothing breaths.

So taking a nice long complete in-breath

through the nose and while you do so lift your shoulders like you're trying to touch

your ears if you like and then keep them up there while you're holding your breath and

then breathe out through the mouth and drop the shoulders.

Like they each are carrying heavy bags that you've just dropped and you finally can just release.

So let's do a second complete in breath and this time pull in the belly like you're trying to tighten your abdomen, holding it in and then breathe out with the mouth and soften the belly and from this

point I try to just breathe in and out from a really soft belly and really relaxed

shoulders and then the third embre squinch the muscles in the face make a really ugly pinched face that you

hope nobody's looking at right now and just really squinch the nose of forehead around the eyes lock the jaws and then

breathe out and soften the face.

So we've just worked on two different regions of the vagal-vegas nerve and that is a way to speak to

pre-conscious structures in the limbic region.

Basically, you're speaking amigdala,

and you're telling you're amigula that you're okay now you're safe So, bring the mind something that's been really stressful, challenge you're facing that feels overwhelming, something that feels daunting,

something that creates a sense of too much to handle, stress.

And just hold that image in your mind at first and what we're going to do is just relax the body beneath it.

So I hold this topic that's daunting in your mind.

Keep the shoulders relaxed.

Keep your belly relaxed.

And now what we're going to do is while we hold that task in mind, we're going to practice long

exhalations, which is another way to reduce stress.

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