Anxiety symptoms can change if you can embrace healthy changes.
Situational COVID anxiety seems to be the elephant in the room. While it’s plastered all over the news, not many casually talk about the invisible spreading virus that has changed and threatened our health, daily lives, and world. Our world has been tipped sideways with people walking around anxious about their situations, work, health, relationships, and future.
Did you know that at least 50% of anxiety comes from situations, habits, thoughts, words, actions, or attitudes? In essence, some you can control, and most things you can change. You can exchange your anxiety for better mental health.
You don’t have to live anxiously, or hold onto fear, worry, or uncertainty. That is not the new normal. You can thrive despite the times and your circumstances.
Mental health awareness week is a good time to reflect on how far you’ve come in your life. Healing wounds from childhood trauma calms anxiety.
If you held shame inside as a child, you grew up with a distorted view of life. Then you most likely had emotions you repressed inside you such as anxious feelings, sadness, and frustration. As a child, you learned and used anxiety to cope.
When you became an adult, you expressed anxiety in unlikely moments when your brain confused current situations with the past. That’s what post-traumatic childhood wounds can do, and can stay with you. It’s the elephant in the room. And no one teaches you along the way how to heal on your own.
I know this because that’s my story in a nutshell.
Home exercise program habits are a great way to get your exercise and healthy energy jolt in if you only have a few minutes.
And enjoying a blueberry bite can refreshing when you’re warmed up! Sherbet recipe below ⬇️ 🫐
Since the pandemic days, most of have tried or incorporated a video or home exercise routine. And for some this has stuck and is a regular plan over gyms or in-person fitness classes. And wherever you choose to exercise, your body will appreciate. You can check your minutes, stand, and move points. 🎯
A regular home exercise program is good for relieving anxiety and daily de-stressing if you need a motivator during low energy times. You don’t need equipment, just your body as weight.
You can even do simple exercises laying on your bed, a mat, or a floor. You don’t need equipment other than your body. That’s what yoga is.
You can do leg lifts and invisible bicycle movements while you’re watching shows. Those are low-intensity but they add up. And may keep you away from the couch potato moves that you’re trying to get away from.
Using just your body, you don’t have a clunky piece of equipment that’ll become a towel rack in months. Most of us have all done similar where we had a good exercise plan in mind and it didn’t pan out. Keeping things simple always pays off!
And implementing a simple home exercise program can be the change maker to your feeling happy, energetic, and successful today… in addition to being more fit.
Because if your mind is satisfied and feeling accomplished, then you feel happy. And feeling happy is all that matters over an activity you don’t enjoy and it feels like work. Amen!?
Getting oxygen circulating to your brain also is the energy boost you need to get things going! And in that positive direction, exercise can motivate you to eat healthier and lighter that helps your gut. For some people, exercise is a good activity to do while fasting especially in the first few hours where you reap several benefits.
Today we know that most of our happy hormones are made in our gut so we want to keep our gut happy and healthy. Plus, there’s a gut-brain connection in the body-mind connection that affects our daily moods, outlook, and attitudes. 🌱
With our world back together, let’s keep up our steps. 👣
Easy home exercise program ideas needing no equipment:
Cardio exercise and high intensity interval training (HIIT) get the heart rate up that is one life-giving activity every human can use. We also improve our breathing and ability to control our breath longer.
Exercise examples include:
Burpees push-up and jump-up combos are a great way to ease tension from staying in cramped quarters. You can burn off pent-up Pitta anger or Vata anxiety you hold in seconds.
Plus, exercise helps the Kapha wake up and all of us sleep better.
If you want to stay indoors or have outdoor allergies, running (in place), and doing jumping jacks works too.
Online classes with yoga, barre, and pilates can keep you engaged and in a routine if you need more focused stimulation.
Most of us have taken a class or two this way that you can even find for free on YouTube channels like the Well+Good channel I subscribe to where you can get a balanced workout.
Here are some other home exercise program moves you can create for relieving anxiety and overall good physical fitness health:
House stair master substitute. If you live under a roof with stairs, run up and down the stairs several times. Then when you come down the, slowly walk down backward (recommended if you have carpeted stairs only so as not to slip).
If you live in a condo or apartment, opt to take the stairs instead of the elevator. And if you live in a one-story home, you can do repetitive leg lifts.
You can switch the mindset of parking closest to your destination. Park far away and avoid the potential car dings, get the shaded parking spots, and also get your exercise points in.
You can also practice mindfulness and get present with your body and how it feels in each muscle movement.
As we age we start to feel joints more and we lose muscle. And that’s all the more reason to keep up the exercise!
Natural steps stretch your hamstrings and other muscle parts of your legs and buttocks. Your gluteus maximus has the largest muscle group in your body, so focusing on these muscles will provide a high reward for your efforts.
Jump rope (or jumping jacks). Take a piece of rope and add a small weight to the bottom. Then start jumping rope. Do repetitions of forward and backward jumps for variety.
This (and hula hoops… remember those?) is great for tiring kids out with lots of energy. Of you can bounce a stress ball against the wall and play catch for stretching arms naturally.
…Jumping jacks are also a great way to get your blood circulating from head to toe. These are great to do especially if you’ve been sitting for a long time, and your legs or feet have fallen asleep.
Daily sit-ups. Do daily repetitions. Your stomach supports your back that you need for just about every movement.
If you have a longer torso, a better situp would be half crunches where you don’t go back down to the floor fully. You will still get the stomach benefits. And try to hold the crunch longer to reap more muscle benefit.
A variations is you lay flat on your back, raise your legs straight up to the ceiling and then lift up your torso and try to reach your hands to your ankles. That’ll hurt good!
Rest, and then continue and do as many reps as you can.
Lift dumbell weights or use milk gallons filled with water that have handles.
But before you do that move, add in a warm up routine. Yoga works well for this before you lift weights when muscles can be cold, tight, or contracted. Never skip the warmup part even for a home exercise program that you’re in charge of..
And one exercise that you probably haven’t counted…
Cleaning and straightening the house stretches your muscles and is exercise. When you’re cleaning, you’re actually doing yoga. You have to bend, stretch and squat to reach every nook and cranny in the house. Your cleaning poses are working smaller muscles. When you look at it that way, cleaning isn’t a chore and can be relaxing. 😊
That is a good segue into yoga that has great physical and mental health benefits, such as helping you calm, reducing anxiety, stress, tension, and depression.
If you don’t have a yoga mat, you can use beach or old towels (aren’t you glad you kept those?).
Start with deep breathing. For calming, I’ve modified my own yoga breathing technique. I found that inhaling deeply through your nose and exhaling long breaths through your mouth (for full air release from lungs) are most satisfying for releasing tension.
You instantly feel lighter.
But you can also stick with traditional yoga breaths through the nose.
Performing these breathing exercises increase the flow of oxygen, releases tension, slows the mind, improves concentration, and calms emotions.
When you’re ready to start your poses, keep in mind you can do your own modifications. Yoga poses should feel good for you, like a good stretch. Poses should not hurt. Everyone’s bodies are different so adjust the variation of the pose to your body.
Use: in any yoga pose, you can hurt yourself to be mindful and careful.
Test the waters on each pose without trying the maximum stretch on your first few sessions. Like the effects from any exercise in an exercise home program, you won’t know how the pose affected your body until a day or two later.
You can have a flexible torso, but a stiff neck or back. Everyone has a different range of motion.
We all need daily stretching and cardio to stay limber, healthy, and fit. The goals in yoga are flexibility, balance, and strength.
The best way to learn yoga poses is to see the pose and hear the pointers on what you don’t want to do.
From your home, you can watch and listen to videos on each pose to see the proper body alignment and learn about the intended goal of the pose.
Yoga Exercises For Your Home Exercise Program
Standing poses:
Sun Salutation poses — good for morning heart openers. We have a tendency to cave our bodies inward and look down. Sun salutation help to open the body.
Mountain poses (commonly referred to as tadasana) — aligns the spine and restores balance to the body and mind.
Start mountain pose standing with hands in a position like the prayer emoji where you’re praying at your heart center
Then raise your arms up towards the ceiling.
Fold the entire torso down towards the floor, and let arms hang down (in forwarding bend pose). Hands can rest on feet or as far down on your calves as you can.
Forward bend poses — helps back, spine, and back of hamstrings
Standing or sitting poses: Do Cactus Arms throughout the day to open your shoulders. Good especially if you hunch over a lot, are straining on the computer, or work in a kitchen or factory standing for long periods of time.
Yoga Floor poses:
Cat/Cow (knees and hands-on floor) — good back and spine stretch. Tabletop is the neutral position in between Cat and Cow poses.
Downward dog (feet and hands flat on the floor) — releases tension in the shoulders, hamstrings
Chair with hands in the air (feet on the floor) — energizes the body, strengthens the entire leg muscles and lower back
Sitting poses:
Spinal twist — helps the spine to rid of stiffness
Hero — keeps your knees flexible
Front on mat poses:
Cobra — expands the rib cage, chest, and abdomen
Bow — strengthens the back, opens the chest, tones the thigh and buttocks
Half locust — helps buttocks, back of thighs, posture; improves circulation
You could do a Plank pose (great for arms like push-ups) and then lower down into a Cobra, Baby Cobra, or Sphinx pose as a (Vinyasa) flow.
If you’re new to yoga, many yoga poses have animal, nature, or object names. Their pose names inspire peace, beauty, and purpose. For more inspiration, check out these 100 yoga poses.
Yoga can help keep intention focused on staying healthy and provide calm, gentle exercises for anxiety and stress reduction.
And to reward yourself in all your hard work and to cool down, how about a low-fat blueberry sherbet.
First of all, why care if you’re feeling anxious vs. irritated?
Because you will use different healthy ways to combat and soothe each.
Anxiety can be based on fear, worry, feeling (or being) attacked, threatened, stuck, or overwhelmed.
Irritation can come from situations you encounter or people who do things that offend you. Or if you’re in an environment that frustrates you.
The easiest way to tell the difference if you’re anxious or irritated is by your bodily functions. The body tells the story truth. It expresses with your being balanced or imbalanced.
When you’re out shopping for candles, is there a candle good for calming your anxiety (in the sea of candles to choose from)?
Yes! All Candles are not created equal to soothe and calm anxiety. Orange candles are special. Some candles have deeper scents like the Yankee Candle.
I found one that I love. It’s the Village Candle Orange Dreamsicle (creamsicle). If you flip to the back, you’ll see I bought at HomeGoods for a fraction of the price.
