30 Days of Calm

Welcome to 30 Days of Calm.  This is your 30 days guide to promote calm in your day; a yoga stretch, a guided meditation, or a breathing exercise.  Please enjoy and I hope that if you follow this guide every day, you will be uplifted, find meaningful moments, and be calm.

30 Days of Calm- Breathwork, Guided Meditation, and Gentle Yoga

Day 1- Breath Retention Practice for Stress

This video is a Yoga breathing practice designed to regain a sense of control by controlling one thing- the breath.

Day 2- Forward Bends

Forward bends calm the mind, reduce stress, and reduce blood pressure.  They also stimulate the live and kidneys while enhancing digestion.

Try paschimottonasana pose.

1. Sit on the floor with your legs extended, knees straight, and a tall back.
2. Take a deep inhale, reach for your toes.
3. If you cannot grab your toes, place a yoga strap or hand towel around your feet.
4. Fold forward and exhale.
5. Stay in the pose for 10 slow inhales and exhales
6. Notice if you are able to deepen after the 10 breaths
7. Inhale and sit up, exhale release

Day 3- Meditation: Finding the Breath

For Day 3, please enjoy a meditation, Finding the Breath.  This guided meditation will help you find the breath that will lead you through a calm experience.

Day 4- Janu Sirsasana

An area that holds stress is the hips- emotional and physical stress can be trapped there.  This is why Janu Sirsasana is such a powerful stretch, targeting the hips, hamstrings, and low back. 

1. Bring your right foot along the left leg with the knee open to the side.
2. Inhale to sit tall
3. Exhale to reach forward for the extended left leg
4. Keep you left leg straight to feel the hamstring stretch
5. If you cannot reach your toe, use a yoga strap (paid link) around your foot.
6. Hold for ten slow breaths
7. Repeat on the left side

Day 5- Meditation for Releasing Grief

Today we have a deep yogic practice.  This is a Yoga Nidra guided practice, a form of yogic sleep or meditation. It will help you release grief as you connect with the ground for grounding.

Day 6- Legs up the Wall

Try this very deep and relaxing pose- Legs up the Wall!  You will gain deep relaxation, stress relief, and knee pain reduction.

This pose also:

• Alleviates tired legs.
• Calms your mind.
• Relieves leg and feet cramps.
• Helps with backaches.
• Softly opens the backs of your legs.

1. Scoot your hips against the wall and extend your legs
2. If your hamstrings are very tight, place a yoga block (paid link) under your hips to elevate and release strain.

Day 7- Meditation for a Powerful Mind

Today, enjoy a meditation to get in sync with your mind. This guided meditation will help you to harness the power of your mind.

Day 8- Yoga Breath Tutorial

When we practice yoga, we have a very specific way of breathing.  This tutorial will help you Learn how to feel the powerful yoga breath, ujjayi breath.

Day 9- Pigeon Pose

Remember we talked about our hips a few days ago and how they hold emotions?  The second chakra is the sacral chakra and we learn that if we do not release emotions, those feelings get stored in tight hips.  Pigeon Pose can help stretch the over emotional hips!

Tips for Pigeon Pose:

• Bring your bent leg to a right angle with the top of your mat
• If you cannot sit flat across your hips, place a block under the hip of the bent leg.
• Extend the opposite leg straight back from the hip.  
• Place hands on the floor, elbows, or lay over bent leg.
• Hold and breathe for 10 breaths
• Don’t forget to do the other side!

Day 10- Meditation for Kind Thoughts

Want kinder thoughts?  Kinder to others and kinder to ourselves?  Replace negative self talk with this guided meditation.  Learn to control your negative thoughts and change them for kind ones.

Day 11- Supine Twist with a Bolster

Time to enjoy a supine twist.  Twists are so relaxing to the low back and hips which can be areas of strain and stress on our bodies.  And when we add a bolster (paid link), we can truly let tension go.  

• Lay on the floor with a bolster by the left hip.
• Shift on the left hip as you pull the right leg over to rest on the bolster.
• Extend the arms and turn the head to the right side for a neck twist.
• Let your body fully relax as you hold the pose for 10 breaths.
• Repeat on the other side

Day 12- Meditation to Calm the Body

Combat stress today with this meditation: Calm the Body.  Calm the body and the mind with this guided meditation.

Day 13- Child’s Pose

Another hip opening pose today- sensing a pattern?  Let’s try Child’s Pose.  In this pose you will: 

• Releases tension in the back, shoulders and chest.
• Alleviate stress and anxiety.
• Flex the body’s internal organs and keeps them supple.
• Lengthen and stretch the spine.

Sit on your knees and shift back into your hips.  Don’t worry if you can’t release the hips all the way to the heels.  Try spreading your knees wide to release low back pressure at the sacrum.  Enjoy!

Day 14: Meditation Body Awareness

This Body Awareness meditation will help you to become aware of your body and the stresses that may be there. Learn to let go and find calm!

Day 15- Counted Breathing Exercise

Today, try a Counted Breathing Exercise.  This is one of my favorite ways to feel a sense of control over a quickly spinning world.  As you count and hold your breaths, you will feel your power returning.  This counted breathing exercise combines Yoga breathing to help increase the length of the breath and release stress and anxiety.

Day 16- Down Dog

Today, let’s spend a little time in Adho Muhka Svanasana, down dog.  There is a reason that down dog is one of the key yoga poses and the pose that is most often pictured when thinking of yoga.  The benefits of down dog are impressive:

• The stabilizing position of downward dog strengthens muscles in the arms, upper back and shoulders
• Elongates the spine
• Improves circulation
• Relieves tension and stress

If you have a lot of hamstring tension, try this pose with bent knees.  Bending the knees will also take tension off the wrists and shoulders.  It is worthwhile practicing this pose a few times a day to build up physical strength and feel the benefits.

Day 17- Count Your Breaths

Today’s meditation will help you learn how to count your breaths in order to calm down the parasympathetic nervous system.  This is an automatic stress release!

Day 18- Ardha Matsyendrasana

Why are yoga twists so beneficial?  Physically they relieve low back and hip pain by manipulating the spine.  Energetically they squeeze vital organs in the twist to detoxify the body.  Both of these benefits working together are stimulating and relaxing.

To practice Ardha Matsyendrasana: 

• Cross the right leg over the left and tuck the left leg under
• Extend the left arm on an inhale and tuck the elbow on the right knee on the exhale
• Hold the twist by lifting the center of the body and slowly breathing
• Switch legs and arms to do the other side

Day 19- Every Breath Counts

Every breath counts when you are trying to calm down.  Try this calming guided meditation today and learn how to make every breath count.

Day 20- Savasana

How long has it been since you have given yourself a good dedicated rest?  Are you the kind of person that has a hard time settling into relaxation?  Well, today that will change.

Set a timer for 10 min if you feel you will run the risk of not waking up.  Grab a pillow or bolster (paid link) to elevate your knees for back relaxation.  

Lay on your back, place your palms to the sky to roll your shoulders back, and take deep grateful breaths until you feel your body relax.  This is Savasana.  Ahhhhh…….

Day 21- Finger Breathing Meditation

Breathe through your fingers? Amazingly, this helps with stress and anxiety. Learn the technique in this meditation!

Day 22- Supta Baddha Konasana

Let’s use a bolster (paid link) again to find some relaxation for the body and the mind! Today try Supta Baddha Konasana.  This pose will support your lower back, open your hips, and expand your chest.  Three areas that can get tight from physical stress and manifest in the body.

• Place the bolster a the small of your back and hips
• Bring your feet together, knees open to the side
• Lay back on the bolster and let your arms drop of the sides
• Take slow deep breaths and stay here as long as you wish!

Day 23- Resting the Mind

It is time today to rest the mind.  This guided meditation will help you rest the mind so that you can release stress and anxiety. Find calm in the rest.

Day 24- Surya Namaskara

Positive movement, stretching, bending, strengthening, and joint loosing, can feel so good on a stressed body and mind.  Movement is a way to calm the body’s stress. Try this sequence, Surya Namaskara A.  It will teach you how to link your breath with each movement and will help you to feel alive in your own body.  

This video will show you how to modify the sequence in three different ways so that you can find a comfortable flow for your body’s needs.

Day 25- Breathing to Relieve Headaches

Today we try Alternate Nostril Breathing which can help to relieve headaches, open the hemispheres of the brain, clear your mind, and give you a burst of energy in the middle of the day.

Day 26- Observe Your Inhalations and Exhalations

How we breathe can say a lot about how we are feeling and dealing with stress and anxiety. With this guided meditation, you will observe your inhales and exhales for stress relief and calm.

Day 27- Virabhadrasana B

Today let’s build strength and open the chest space with our movement.  Virabhadrasana B builds strength in the hips and internal rotators.  If we take a variation of a bind, we can also open the chest space and relieve shoulder aches.

• Set wide and line the heel to arch
• Bend your right knee and place your forearm on the thigh
• Reach the right arm under the right leg and pull the left arm behind the back
• Grasp fingertips if possible
• Hold and breathe.  Feel the strength in your body!
• Reverse on the other side.

Day 28- Scanning the Body

Use this meditation to scan the body. Scanning the body can be a way that we recognize stressed areas and this meditation will help you learn how to release that stress.   Feel calm and work toward release!

Day 29- Vrkasana

Today let’s try a balancing pose.  You might say, “balancing is difficult!”  Yes, it can be. But balancing on one leg can do some powerful things for our body and mind.

Balancing on one foot strengthens the core, ankles, and calves.  

Balancing focuses our mind on one point. In yoga, we call this Drishti.  Drishti can relieve an anxious mind by focusing it to one point. It can help them mind to become calm.

Try Vrkasana

• Shift your weight to the right leg and draw your left foot up the leg to whatever height you can handle physically.
• Feel rooted to the floor and lifted through the rest of your body
• Settle your gaze on one point to focus the mind
• Breathe deeply and extend the arms overhead if you feel stable
• After 10 breaths, shift to the other side

Day 30- What is This Emotion?

Today, on our final day of 30 Days of Calm, we will practice a meditation to help us understand our complicated emotions.

Thank you for following this guide, 30 Days of Calm. To continue the calm and healing in your life, check out Yoga for Trauma Relief.