Nervous System Regulation for Anxiety & Stress

If your mind feels busy, your body feels tense, or you can’t seem to fully relax, this gentle somatic meditation is here to help you come back to calm.

In this gentle, under 10-minute somatic meditation, you’ll be led through simple, seated somatic experiencing exercises designed to regulate your nervous system and release built-up stress from the body without forcing calm or trying to “fix” yourself. These slow, accessible techniques help you reconnect to the present moment so your mind can soften and your body can feel safe again.

Think of this as your moment to pause, come back into the present, and let your body remember what calm actually feels like.

This practice is for you if:
- your thoughts keep looping and won’t settle
- your body feels tense, restless, or on edge
- you’re tired of trying to think your way into calm
- you want something simple that actually helps you feel grounded

No experience is needed. You can do this anywhere, fully seated, at your own pace.

Transcript

I am Lexi Davis and I help people create deeply devoted lifelong love by learning how to feel peace, Safety and security within their own bodies. So today we're going to just do a very gentle practice, Very little movement and breathing to help calm down the nervous system and bring you back into a state where your mind can actually switch off. You can feel present again and the stress will start to go down. So all you need to do is get in a comfortable position, Whatever that looks like for you today, Honoring what your body needs. That could be seated like I am. Maybe you lay down. Maybe you need to stand. Whatever your body needs, Just asking and honoring. From there, Just start to bring in some gentle movement. I always like to start with the sway. But wherever your body is asking for, A little stretch, A little wiggle, Anything to start to move out some of that tightness, The tension, The stress. Wherever you feel it most in your body and just bringing spaciousness into that area. Again, It doesn't need to be big. It can be small, But bringing movement to. Get the body out of any freeze states that it might be in, Any stuckness, Any tightness. And as you do so, Really dropping the awareness down into the body. Becoming fully present with what you're feeling right here and right now inside the body, Not in the mind. And as we do this, You might start to feel some uncomfortable things, And that's okay. When we have more capacity, More regulation in our bodies, We're able to feel more. We're able to sit with the uncomfortable things. So the goal is actually to allow yourself to be in the sensations for this practice. Now, If at any time you start to feel your mind going, In disassociation, You start to feel yourself going out of regulation and it feels too much to feel these things. That's perfectly okay. That means you've expanded outside your window of tolerance. And so to bring yourself back into a calmer state, Again, Just start swaying or breathing or maybe you get up. Always just ask your body, What do you need right now? Then I just want you to gently squeeze your arms or you can squeeze your legs. And just feel your own touch, Feel the clothes that you're wearing or your skin. And just notice. Any temperature that you can feel on your skin, Any textures. And the goal here is just to be present. To really feel, To turn on all your senses. And also exchange a loving touch, A loving, Compassionate, Gentleness from your own hands into your body. And as you start to do this, Just see what you notice. Maybe you can breathe a little bit deeper now. Maybe you start to soften a little bit. And then let's bring your hands to the sides of your ribs and start breathing so you expand your ribs out wide. As you inhale, You feel your hands going wider, Spreading apart from each other. And as you exhale, You'll feel them coming back, Squeezing towards one another. Inhaling, Expanding the ribs. Exhaling letting it fall back down. And just repeating this for a few more breaths. Really feeling how you're growing your heart out wide. Feeling your rib cage really expanding out to the sides and gently coming back in. If it doesn't feel comfortable to leave your hands there, Then you don't need to, But it's just there so you can really feel the sensation. You can feel the body moving with your breath. And then I want you to breathe into the back of your heart. So again you can place a hand back here. Big breath in. Exhaling out. You can feel really nice to breathe in through the nose. And exhale through the mouth. Now feeling your heart expanding backwards, Feeling the back of your heart growing. More spaciousness back here. Exhaling releasing and now hand to the front of the heart sending your breath forward the front of your rib cage expanding the heart out wide in front of you and exhaling and bring it back down. One more breath like this. And release. And now breathing all four corners of the heart out wide, Forward and backwards. Big sigh out as you exhale, Breathe it in. And release. How good it feels to create more spaciousness. One more big breath in. And let it go. And then now we'll start to send the breath down into the belly. Inhaling, Expanding out wide. Exhaling release. Inhale breathe in and release And then we'll just do some gentle circles in our ribcage. Moving in one direction. And again, Feeling the movement. Notice how every time you move positions, You feel a different stretch in a small, Subtle way. And then reverse the direction of your stretch. Coming back to stillness, So I want you to just gaze forward. And as you do so, Start to notice what you see on the right side of you. Keeping your gaze directly looking at me or anywhere ahead of you. And then see what do you notice in your right side peripheral. I can see a chair, I can see a table, I can see a window I can see a shirt. And then now move to your left side. What do you see out of this side of your eye while keeping your gaze forward? Over here I see stairs, My kitty litter, Pillow, Mirror. It's really hard, Right? Our eyes want to go and look, But can you just look out through the sides of your eyes? Now, Keeping your gaze forward, Looking at both directions. And maybe you can even see your hands on both sides and bringing your hands out as far wide until you can't see them anymore. And then bring your hands back. And do this again. Bring your hands out nice and wide until you can't see them. And at the edge of where you can see them pause. And then coming back And one last time, Bring your hands out. See how far you can bring them. And come back. Now the reason we do this is because when we're really stressed when we're in survival states we get tunnel vision so we're actually making and gently guiding our vision to widen again so we can see more and the last thing we're going to do is smelling three things again regulation equals presence so when we can do these little sensory activations this starts to naturally relieve the stress quiet the mind and we're here and now we're out of the chaos and all the things that you may be going through, We can come back and gain capacity. We can gain safety by being in this moment so that we can handle whatever we're going through. So smelling three things. Now you don't actually need to grab a candle. You can just grab your shirt. Notice if there's any perfume left on it. Or maybe you gotta wash your shirt. You can smell your hair. And really try to pick up on the notes, The scents, Like what can you really smell? And since I don't have anything else, I'm just going to smell my hand. Maybe you can pick up on some lotion or the soap you washed your hands with. And then pausing and noticing and seeing if anything's different. Maybe you feel more here. Maybe your breath is a little bit deeper. Maybe there's a sense of peace coming online. And then taking one moment to just feel into gratitude for this body that you have, For this breath that you have, For this life that you have. Putting a smile on your face, Even if it feels forced, We can trick our minds. Taking a big breath in. Exhaling, Sighing it out. Thank you so much for joining me in this practice. I hope to see you again tomorrow or play this anytime you need it. I'll always be here for you and I hope to see you soon.