In this video Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal, Nourish, Grow, introduces Day 23 of the 30‑Day Healthy Habits Challenge: a brief, repeatable stress‑release ritual that can be either a breathing practice (about 60 seconds) or a movement routine (about 2 minutes). She explains that the goal is to lower heart rate, blood pressure, and overall physiological arousal by activating the parasympathetic nervous system, which over time builds resilience and improves mental responses to stress. The ritual is positioned as a “minimum‑effort” habit that can be used whenever a trigger occurs—before meals, after a stressful email, or any moment of anxiety—to help the practitioner respond rather than react, leading to better decision‑making and interpersonal interactions. Cheryl offers concrete examples: a longer version of the 3‑breath reset, box breathing, a quick walk, wall push‑ups, or a short stretching routine, and invites viewers to share their own ideas. She also warns that some people experience anxiety during breath work if they habitually take shallow chest breaths; she advises diaphragmatic breathing with a slow, low exhale, feeling the belly expand. Links to research on meditation, breathing, and stress reduction are provided in the video notes, along with an optional journaling prompt to reflect on the practice. The video ends with encouragement to start the ritual and a reminder to return for the next day’s challenge.
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Hey everyone. I'm Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal, Nourish, Grow, and welcome to day 23 of your 30 Days of Healthy Habits Challenge. Today's challenge is to create a stress release ritual. This is either going to be movement or breath, and this is just going to be something simple. It's something easy and that you can repeat, and it's about 60 seconds of breath if you're choosing breath or 2 minutes of movement. And we've had some of this in the challenge already. You've tried different types of movement. You challenge yourself to move in a different way. On some of the days. And so maybe if there was something that you tried and you noticed like, hey, that, that's really good for me. And it does relieve stress. Maybe it's that, maybe it's if you tried any of the mobility exercises we talked about or stretching or something like that to release stress, or if it's 60 seconds of a breath practice, one of the previous days we mentioned the 3, just 3 deep breaths, something that simple, 60 seconds is gonna take longer. So it might be like 5 deep breaths, 10 deep breaths, but you're just doing something that's more extended amount of time. That was like a quick stress release in the moment. This is something that is more focused on bringing your heart rate down, just, you know, bringing your stress in your body, your heart, your blood pressure, that kind of thing. It's like reducing all of those. So really getting the parasympathetic system, nervous system to come into play on this so that it relieves your body and your mind of stress. So we're just doing the minimum, the minimum, the minimum today. We're just doing the minimum today on this. And this short stress ritual is good for a couple reasons. It can reduce physiological stress. So your body stress and build resistance over time. And then it can also reduce mental stress. So if you do this consistently, as a reset, it'll help you to respond rather than react in the moment. It's gonna make, you know, that makes for better discipline, better decision-making. If you're not just flying off the handle at a moment's notice, it also helps with your interactions with people. If you happen to notice when you get stressed that you might snap at people a little more often or respond in a way that is not professional or calm, having this little ritual will give you a way to kind of downshift. And the more that you train yourself on this, You know, you might notice anytime that you take some deep breaths, it helps. But when you train this every single day as a habit, it is a response that trains your brain to automatically go into that more relaxed state just by the act of you starting to do it. So it'll become more effective and act more quickly every single time. So here's some examples. If you're having trouble thinking of one to do, we can go back to that 3 breath reset, but you might do it for longer. Just set your timer for 1 minute and inhale, exhale, slightly longer exhale to really bring in that parasympathetic nervous system response. You could try box breathing. You could do a quick walk. You could do wall push-ups, or you could do the stretching routine. Those are all good ones. And if you have something else outside of that that you think of to do, I would love to hear about it in the comments so that we can share that with others. And then, you know, one of the times you want to try it is any time during the day where you're feeling a trigger or something that's making you nervous or anxious— angry or anxious. And so maybe it's like you got an email from your boss and it's automatically creating stress in your body. That's a great time to do this stress release routine. Or if you are getting ready to sit down for a meal and you've been running around all day, before you try to start eating, maybe calm your body. It's just going to promote better digestion and better, you know, mindfulness of your chewing and experiencing your food. So again, it's just to be repeatable. It doesn't need to be really complex or long or drawn out. Like I said, just 60 minutes for breath practice, 2 minutes for a movement practice. Some people might notice, and I did notice this when I was teaching yoga a lot, is that for some people, a breathing practice can kind of create anxiety. And usually if that's the case, it might be that you have— your body is kind of trained to take very shallow breaths and not expand the diaphragm. So really thinking about when you're breathing to let your abdomen and belly expand as you're breathing. So if you were to lay on the ground and put your hand on your stomach, you want your belly to be expanding up as you're breathing. So that's really feel— filling all of your lungs, not just the top of your lungs, but your lungs are going like all the way down almost to your waist. So you wanna expand your lungs as fully as possible. And again, that slightly longer exhale, that's going to really calm any feelings of anxiety. So if you notice that you're trying to do the breathing, but it's causing some anxiety for you for some reason, I'm gonna guess it's because you're kind of habitually a shallow breather and you're kind of just breathing almost in the upper chest. So try that low, slow breathing that expands your belly and see if that doesn't help. So that's about it for today. Start this stress release practice, whatever that looks like for you. As always, the links to the research are in the notes. And oh my gosh, there is so much good data on meditation and breathing and things like that for relieving stress and anxiety and just doing a whole lot of great things for your physiology as well as your mental state. So definitely check that out if you have time, and then optional journal prompt for you there too. So anyway, that is it for today, and I will see you again tomorrow.
