Color Me Calm: Uniquely Colorful Strategies to Reduce Stress

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High achievers, by nature, often purposefully put themselves in situations where new challenges pop up unexpectedly around every corner. While these challenges are often experienced as exhilarating and motivating, they can also be exhausting and depleting if not balanced by activities that calm the mind and body. However, a common problem voiced by high achievers is how to fit in time for mental and physical rejuvenation with such busy schedules.

In past PT posts, I've strongly encouraged scheduling stress reduction activities directly into your calendar to prevent the harmful effects of chronic stress and eventual burnout. While I continue to encourage these very important career- and life-saving strategies, there also are effective stress-relieving exercises that you can do during a quick break or even while at your desk to reduce mental and physical tension and give you the extra boost you need to get you through a hectic, stress-filled day.

Here are three uniquely colorful ones...

For each of these exercises:

• Find a comfortable place to sit, preferably with your back supported by a chair or wall.
• Close your eyes, or if you prefer, focus on a spot across from or below you.
• Relax and release any obvious tension you feel in your body.
• Take three deep breaths, drawing air in through your nose to fill your lungs and releasing it through your mouth, before starting the visualization.

Source: Alexander Grey/Pexels

Color Me Calm

The visualization of colors has been found to help calm the mind and body without necessarily eliciting any associated, distracting thoughts (Professional Quality of Life). This simple visualization exercise begins with red and moves through the color spectrum. However, if a particular color is a trigger or unsettling to you, simply skip that color. On the other hand, if you find a specific color especially calming, you may want to spend more time with it.

Begin by visualizing the color red. Once you get that image settled into your mind, transition to the many different shades of red (dark, light, bright, pale); then choose your favorite shade and allow it to circulate through your mind until your mind is completely immersed in it. Slowly transition from red to orange, again visualizing it in its many hues, then settle on your favorite shade and let it fill your mind. Continue this exercise in the same manner, moving from orange, to yellow, to green, to blue, to purple, then slowly allow the purple to fade to a clean white. As you continue to breathe deeply, visualize the white spreading throughout your entire body, giving it the power to cleanse away any lingering tension or negativity and replace it with calm, positive energy. When you're ready, finish with three deep breaths, open your eyes (or end your focal point), and give yourself a moment to reorient to your actual space while maintaining a relaxed vibe for the remainder of your day.

Source: Nad Eb/Pexels

Light, Bright, and White

Often called white light or protective light visualization, this visualization is used as a tension-reducing shield, often against feelings of vulnerability, fear, pain, or even trauma. Different guides for this visualization provide different starting points on the body, including the head, feet, or stomach.

Wherever you choose to start (I'll use the feet for this example), begin by imagining a white light of strong, positive energy beginning in the arches of your feet. With each deep breath, imagine the light spreading through your toes, circulating back up through your feet, into your ankles, and up your legs, removing all of the negative energy as it moves through your body. As the light moves into your upper body, imagine breathing in the light, allowing it to grow and strengthen as it moves into your upper chest, neck, face, then head. When it enters your head, imagine the energized light washing through your mind, cleansing it of negative thoughts and energy. When that's done, visualize that clean white light leaving through the top of your head and creating an impenetrable, protective shield that surrounds your entire body, creating a barrier to negative energy and providing you with a bubble in which you can breathe in and enjoy the peaceful, calm, and powerful energy you've created. When ready, take three deep breaths, open your eyes (or end your focal point), and keep this imagined shield as your protection from negative energy throughout the rest of your day.

Source: Simon Maltaire/Pixabay

Take a Walk on the Wild Side

This visualization is a good way to refresh and reinvigorate a depleted body and mind. Start by choosing a visual location that you find to be especially peaceful, beautiful, or calming. The selection of this location is uniquely personal. For some, it may be a body of water; for others, it may be the mountains or a forest; or it may be a visual memory of a place that has meaning only to you. However, to get the full benefit of this exercise, it should be a peace-inducing place that you can mentally move around and explore.

Once you select the location, imagine yourself in that place. Use all of your senses to experience it. If it's a place in nature, experience how the earth feels under your feet. What sounds do your feet make as you walk across it? What other sounds do you hear? Birds singing, waves crashing on the shoreline, wind passing through leaves on the trees? If it's sunny, imagine the sunshine gently warming your skin; if it's dark, feel the pleasant coolness on your skin. As you breathe in, focus on the smells surrounding you, whether it's the fresh clean air of the mountains; the scent of rain in a forest; or the smell of something delicious baking in the oven. Do you have any particular tastes in your mouth, such as salt from the ocean or the familiar scent of someone you love? As you slowly move through the visual with all of your senses, focus on the peacefulness of the setting, then visualize your worries, tension, and stress falling behind you and allow yourself to experience the lightness of that feeling. Then focus on the beautiful mixtures of colors and textures surrounding you—the sky, earth, rocks, plants, leaves, water, animals—bringing all of these sensory experiences together so that you feel fully supported and at peace in this location. Then locate the specific place or thing that you love most about the space and sit next to it, using all of your senses to notice every detail you can about it. Stay as long as you want in this safe and protected space, then when you're ready, take three deep breaths, slowly open your eyes (or end your focal point), and give yourself a moment to orient back to your actual location while keeping that sense of safety and peacefulness with you throughout the remainder of your day.

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While the three visualizations I selected for this post were purposefully chosen to be colorful, any type of calming visualization exercise should do the trick because the purpose of visualization is to break the vicious cycle of tension in our bodies leading to that tension being received by our brains and experienced as mental stress

Because visualization exercises give us respite from a stressful environment, they can be especially effective when our physical surroundings are contributing to our feelings of stress. So the next time you're feeling the pressure of your high-achieving spaces and places, try these quick and easy tension reducers to get you through the challenges that often lead to high stress levels and eventual burnout.