Do you need to relax right now? If you do, you probably don’t have the kind of bandwidth left that means you can go for a walk or call a family member and have a present conversation. You need something simple to do that’s going to help you right now!
Whether you’ve had a long working week or you’ve been dealing with a big family crisis, you’ve now got little energy left, and you definitely don’t have the patience or capacity to cook a nutritious meal or cover the bathroom in candles and incense either!
But seeing as we all relax in our own ways, it’s good to have a long list of potential ideas for simple relaxation methods. This way you can try out a few things that won’t take much effort at all, meaning you can end your day in a comfortable and supportive way.
Let’s make that easier as well. Here’s a little list of simple ways to relax that could work for you.
Have a Hot Drink Under a Blanket
It’s the simplest and most easy thing to do, but if you’ve got some hot chocolate or cocoa in the cupboard, pop it in a pan and make yourself a good hot drink to sip on. Then grab your favorite blanket and cozy up under it. Whether on your bed or on the sofa, as long as you’re somewhere comfortable and you don’t feel the need to get up again, you’re in the right place. After all, now you’re in the perfect position to have an easily relaxing evening!
Once you’re in position, you can get up to all the other de-stressing ideas down below. For the meantime, make sure you’ve got a big cup to get through and the blanket you’re under is super fluffy and warm!
Put Some Music on
Changing your environment can have a strong impact on your mental health.
Play a Game You Don’t Have to Focus on
Games are meant to be fun, and if you’re already a fan of video gaming in your spare time, loading up one you don’t have to focus on is a good way to replenish your energy. This is likely to be a simple game such as minesweeper or an old game you know well that you’ve already sunk hundreds of hours into.
Load it up, spend at least half an hour on it, and let yourself relax and have some fun without thinking about the world outside. Instead, spend some time in another world, and get involved in character problems that aren’t real and don’t require much thinking or effort from you.
And gaming has been proven to be a very relaxing activity to try out. If you’ve got a free evening to yourself and you really need to recharge your batteries for a while, use this hobby to disengage from reality at hand and take things at your own pace.
Have a Nap
If it’s been a very long day and you just need to shut your eyes right now, feel free to take a nap! It doesn’t even need to be only 20 minutes long – you can sleep for upwards of an hour if your brain and body needs it. Let your body guide you in this moment; not listening to it is what leads to draining days like these happening a little too often!
Curl up somewhere comfortable and take a nap; sometimes it really is the only reliable way to recharge, especially when your energy has been completely drained from you and you feel you couldn’t even take another step!
So, if you’re a bit zombified right now, get some sleep. Or if you feel you’re going to be napping for a long time, just head to bed early and have a very good night. It’s perfectly OK to be in bed by 7pm some nights!
Tense and Release
A form of mindfulness, tensing your muscles for around 10 seconds (or just as hard as you can tense them) and then releasing and letting the tension out can bring you into the moment. It’s a good grounding technique that helps your muscles to let go of that last bit of rigidness that was making you feel on edge.
When you tense and release each muscle in turn, going down your body from your head to neck to your shoulders and so on, each muscle group is going to get its turn. This will ensure you let out tension all the way across your body and you’re not holding onto anything without realising it.
Background Noise and Deep Breathing
If you don’t tend to practice deep, diaphragm breathing from time to time, let your lungs fill as much as you can and make sure you breathe from your belly (and not your chest!). The more you breathe like this, the easier breathing is going to feel, the less pain you’re going to carry in your body, and the less tension you’re going to feel across your shoulders.
Try to keep your feet on the ground as you breathe like this, and then put some background noise on that you can zone out to as you practice. This is a good way to ground yourself and clear your mind from the worst of the thought cycles that are going round it.
The background noise you’re using should be a sound you really enjoy, such as whale song, or a rainy forest, or even ambience from a coffee shop. If you like it, it’s going to be a lot easier to be present with yourself and not your worries.
Take your time trying out deep breathing, as you’re not going to feel immediately relaxed after only a couple ins and outs. It’s even recommended that you should get your breaths down to only six per minute
, which can help to regulate the inner cogs and clocks that rule your body and the way it behaves.
Put Something You Love on TV
If there’s a TV show or a movie you’ve always loved to watch, and it doesn’t matter how many times you put it on – you still have fun with it – put it on right now. Having something beloved to watch during low energy periods when you need to recharge can help bring you back to a peaceful peace where it feels easy to breathe.
So put something you love on the screen and lose yourself to it for a little while. If you can clear your mind and end up feeling a bit stronger as a result, that’s a good thing. At the very least watching something relaxing can help you get to bed and get a good night’s rest.
Unwinding before bed is the best way to lull yourself into a comfortable sleep, even if you need to stare at a screen for a bit! And if you happen to fall asleep as you’re watching, that’s perfectly fine too. After all, it only happens every now and then.
If You’ve Got Low Energy, Don’t Push Yourself!
Keep it simple instead! That makes relaxing when you’ve got no energy to do anything else perfectly possible. You can kick back with your feet up and sip a warm drink, tensing and releasing your muscles as you recline, with some warming music or something funny you love on the TV in front of you. What could make for a better evening after you’ve had a hectic and stressful day?