Evening Nervous System Reset: Calm Your Body Before Sleep

End your day with a soothing practice that helps your body unwind. Zara Dureno guides you through alternate nostril breathing and a gentle humming breath, then invites you to notice any shift towards calm. You can come back to this practice as often as you need. This content is educational and is not a substitute for one to one professional care. Please do not listen while driving.

Transcript

Good evening, This is a nervous system regulation practice that you can do in the evening or night to release stress from the day. Let's begin. We're gonna begin with something called alternate nostril breathing, And we're just gonna alternate the nostril that we breathe from. So we're gonna start with our thumbs on our right nostril, And you can keep your eyes closed or you can have them open for this, Whatever feels more comfortable for you. So we're gonna start, Thumb on the right nostril, Breathing in the left. Holding both breathing out the right. Breathing in the right. Holding both. Breathing out the left. Breathing in the left. Holding both. Breathing out the right. Can you do this with softness, With gentleness, Breathing in the right. Holding both. Breathing out the left. One more time, Breathing in the left. Hold in both. Breathing out the right. Breathing in the right. Hold in both. Break out the left. Good, Now allowing your hand to come down. Always noticing with these practices if there is an intention that comes out to do things with intensity, So to breathe really intensely or to get it perfect, And see if you can just soften a little bit. See if you can be a little bit more gentle with your system. That's what we're trying to communicate. Not that we can do an exercise perfectly. Your nervous system doesn't care about that. Your nervous system just wants to know that you can be soft and gentle with yourself. So let's bring that sort of intention and attitude into the next exercise. We're going to do a progressive muscle relaxation. So we're going to squeeze and release different parts of our body to release some of the stress we may have built up throughout the day. We're going to start with our face and head. If squeezing your muscles is too much for you and it hurts, Just focus on the release or focus on squeezing a little bit less, Like 10% rather than 100%. You can always be a little softer with yourself. So let's try squeezing through the face on the inhale. Letting go on the exhale. Might look a little funny, That's okay. And we're going to squeeze the shoulders up. Squeeze the arms, Squeeze your fists. And release. But if my timing doesn't work for you, Find your own timing. Squeeze through the back. Release. Squeeze through the front of the body, Through the abs, Through the chest. And release. I always encourage you to smile during these exercises. It communicates more to your brain about happiness, About joy, About regulation. Squeeze through your legs. And release. And then squeezing your whole body. Let's squeeze everything in the body. And release. We're going to do that two more times, Squeezing the whole body. What tension did you build up today? Can you release it now? Once more. And release. So just noticing how these two exercises made you feel. Notice if there's any shifts towards more regulation. You can always repeat the exercises. You can always do this video as many times as you want.