How to stay calm

We all feel very strong emotions sometimes. Maybe we feel excited or nervous or even angry about something.

When we were in the middle of a very powerful emotion. We sometimes know it would be helpful to calm down.

But that can be so difficult. And if someone tells us to come down that can have the opposite effect.

Learning how to calm ourselves is a really helpful skill.

This exercise has three parts to it. They're easy to remember, a bit like learning your name and address.

First step, name how you're feeling. Just inside your head or you can even say it out loud.

I'm feeling really nervous. I'm feeling really angry, I'm feeling really scared.

The second step is like the address. Find out where this emotion lives right now in the body.

I feel the nervousness in my jaw muscles, shoulders. I feel the anger boiling in my chest. I feel the fear making my heart beat fast.

Now that you've named the emotion and found out where it lives, you're going to give it space. Maybe you can imagine when you breathe the air from outside, you're breathing space in and when we breathe out, you're breathing back out into the space that you're in.

There's no rush and there is no need to try hard to get rid of or change how you feel either.

You don't have to work hard not to feel anything. You just name it, see where it lives, where it can be felt and give it some space. It's a really good way to find some calm whatever you might be feeling.