August Special: Connect to Your Senses & Feel Calmer

05/08/20240

Connecting to your senses is a wonderful, accessible way to bring yourself back to the present moment, especially if you’re feeling overwhelmed or anxious. Expat Nest founder Vivian Chiona shares a list of her favourite resources, all from the Expat Nest archives, on how to deepen connection to your senses. 

Each August I compile a summary of our favourite resources. This time, the theme is the senses. Anxiety tends to take us away from the right here, right now, as we catastrophize about the future or dwell on the past. Attuning to your senses is one of the best tools for managing this, as you immediately drop into your body’s current experience of reality.

 
Here are some great resources to help you understand and connect to your senses:

  1. Expat Relocation: What Are Your Senses Telling You? Relocating means not only new jobs and languages, but also astonishing new sights, smells, sounds, tastes, temperatures and textures. 
  2. Using Essential Oils to Lift Your Mood: Essential oils, which can soothe or energise, are a wonderful way to acknowledge and reawaken our sense of smell – and they can also lift our spirits.  
  3. Hunger for Touch: Touch allows us to explore the world and to connect with others. It is also strongly linked to our emotions and mental functioning, and even crucial for our survival. 
  4. In Search of Home: Seven sensory clues that you’re beginning to feel at home in your new location – plus, what is your strongest “home sense”?
  5. Find a Moment of Peace – the Self-Soothe Box: This creative, self-made kit relies highly on the senses and guides you to ground yourself. 
  6. Get in Touch with Your Creative Side to Manage Transition: Creative exercises like art-making can help us cope with change and engage the senses as we play and explore.
  7. Silence in Our Lives: The importance of silence is increasing as our environments become more filled with noise and distraction.
  8. The 5-4-3-2-1 Method: This 4-minute animation on a grounding technique involving the 5 main senses, is perfect for adults and kids. 

 
Thank you for being a member of the Expat Nest family. Enjoy your break if you’re taking one too!
 
With love
Vivian

 

What’s your favourite way to connect with your senses? We’d love to know – simply leave a comment below!

PHOTO: Long Phung/Pixabay