Calm & Clarity:
Managing Anxiety and Stress
Breathing exercises, guided meditations, and cognitive-behavioural strategies to alleviate anxiety and manage stress.
Anxiety and stress aren’t just felt in the mind—they show up in your entire body.
From a racing heart and tight chest to brain fog, numb limbs, and short, shallow breaths, the physical symptoms are often the first signals that something is out of balance. This section of our wellbeing hub is here to help you gently restore that balance—through the breath, the body, and the mind.
Calm & Clarity brings together science-backed tools and calming practices like breathwork, mindfulness, and somatic movement to help you reconnect with yourself, reduce stress, and build emotional resilience. Whether you’re experiencing chronic anxiety, situational overwhelm, or just need to hit pause, this space is designed to guide you home to yourself—one breath, one moment at a time.
What You’ll Find in This Section:
Audio-guided breathing sessions to practice anytime, anywhere.
Mindful meditations to help you reconnect with your body and thoughts.
Educational blogs and videos explaining the science of anxiety and practical tools for navigating it.
Somatic yoga and movement sessions to reconnect you to your body
Practical tools rooted in MBSR and nervous system science
Each resource is here to help you slow down, tune in, and find your own sense of calm—one breath at a time.
Whether you're here to manage daily stress or deepen your emotional resilience, Calm & Clarity offers a compassionate space to pause, reflect, and reset. Let’s inhale clarity, exhale chaos, and begin again—with presence, purpose, and compassion.
Understanding Anxiety & the Mind-Body Connection
Anxiety is not just a mental experience—it’s a full-body reaction. It’s fear-based, often irrational, and rapid in its intensity, triggering the “fight, flight, or freeze” response in your nervous system. When this happens, you may feel disconnected from your sense of calm and safety in the present moment. The physical symptoms—tightness in the chest, racing heart, shallow breath, brain fog—are all signals that your body is out of balance and in high-alert mode.
The mind and body are deeply connected. While it’s hard to think your way out of anxiety, you can use your breath, movement, and awareness to shift out of the fight-or-flight response. Practices like mindfulness and somatic techniques help you recognise when your body is in stress mode and offer tools to bring you back to a grounded, balanced state.
By focusing on the present and feeling into your body, you can reset your nervous system, calm your physical reactions, and restore a sense of safety and clarity. These practices support you in moving through anxiety with greater ease, helping you stay grounded no matter what life brings.
Anxiety is fear-based, often irrational, and usually fast-moving. It’s the “fight, flight, or freeze” response activated in your nervous system, and it disconnects you from your sense of calm and safety in the present moment. The problem? You can’t think your way out of anxiety—but you can breathe through it, feel into it, and gently move it through your body.
That’s where these practices come in.
Reflective Journal Prompts for Emotional Awareness
Before you explore the practices below, take your time to sit with these prompts. They’re here to help you gain insight, clarity, and a deeper connection to your emotional landscape.
What thoughts are moving through my mind right now? Are they loud, quiet, persistent, or fleeting?
What sensations do I notice in my body? Is there tension, warmth, heaviness, lightness, or numbness?
What emotions are present in me right now? Can I name them without needing to fix or change them?
What moments or experiences came before this feeling? Is there a trigger or a story behind it?
How can I offer care or comfort to myself in this moment? What do I need — rest, movement, connection, stillness?
Bringing Balance To Your Nervous System
“To chill out, breathe it out”
Your breath is a built-in tool for regulating stress and calming your nervous system. In moments of anxiety, it’s common for our breath to become rapid and shallow, which triggers the fight-or-flight response. This can leave you feeling overstimulated and disconnected, as your body floods with oxygen while your mind races.
By slowing your breath and extending your exhale, you signal to your body that it's safe to relax. The longer exhale activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps calm your heart rate, steady your thoughts, and shift your body out of high-alert mode.
Breathing deeply and intentionally engages your diaphragm—the “wonder muscle”—to promote deep, full breaths that ground you in the present moment. Scientific research supports the power of breathwork: studies show it can reduce stress hormones, improve emotional regulation, and enhance mental clarity. For instance, HeartMath research has demonstrated that regulating your breath can create harmony between the heart and brain, improving focus and emotional balance.
When you're feeling overwhelmed, focus on your breath. It’s one of the quickest, most accessible ways to regain a sense of calm and reconnect with your body and the present moment.
Breathwork practices to explore.
Reset Your Breath
What it is: The one to help you self-regulate and feel grounded. Use it when you need to take a moment and recentre yourself.
How it helps: This helps to bring your nervous system back into balance by calming you and helping you to focus. This is a gentle way to reset when you’re angry, stressed, or upset.
How to practice it: Inhale to the count of three, gently hold your breath for three, before slowly releasing to the count of three. Follow the triangle in your mind as you breathe, as many times as you need.
The Wave
What it is: The one to help you relax and feel calm. Use it when you need to take a moment, when feel anxious or stressed, or at the end of the workday to wind-down.
How it helps: This helps to gently down-regulate your system naturally guiding you into your rest/digest state.
How to practice it: Let your palms rest on your chest and belly. Slowly inhale to the count of four and gently lengthen your exhale as you count down from six.
Mindfulness: Presence with Compassionate Curiosity
Mindfulness is the art of paying attention to the present moment with curiosity and compassion. It has deep roots in Eastern tradition, but its benefits are now backed by a strong body of Western science. Evidence-based programmes like Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) have been shown in clinical trials to reduce anxiety, depression, and stress, while improving quality of life, sleep, and emotional regulation.
Mindfulness helps you slow down, tune in, and meet each moment with awareness. When stress or anxiety takes over, it’s easy to feel scattered and disconnected—like your thoughts are spiralling. This is where grounding comes in.
Grounding is the practice of reconnecting with your body and environment. It helps settle the nervous system, calm intense emotions, and bring you back to the present. Simply feeling your feet on the floor, noticing your breath, or naming things around you can shift your attention from chaos to calm.
Mindfulness practices offered here include guided meditations, breath awareness, and simple everyday strategies to shift from reactivity to presence. You'll learn how to observe your thoughts without being overwhelmed by them—and gently return to the here and now, again and again. To be grounded is to feel calm, clear, and connected—even when life feels uncertain.
Mindfulness to explore.
Seated Grounding
This seated grounding practice offers a space to pause, breathe, and reconnect with your body just as it is. Designed to support presence and self-awareness, this gentle somatic practice guides your attention inward — helping you shift from mental noise to embodied awareness. It’s a simple tool you can return to any time you feel off-centre, unsettled, or in need of a moment of stillness.
Calm & Connected Meditation
This meditation is a supportive daily practice to help you cultivate calm and focus—perfect for grounding yourself before a busy day or as you prepare for work. It’s here to help you reconnect, rebalance, and move into your day feeling centered and steady. Close the door to distractions, get comfortable, and take this time to fully connect with yourself.
Somatic Practices: Movement That Grounds You
“Soma” means body, and somatic practices invite you to feel more and force less. Through slow, mindful movement, you begin to notice the messages your body is sending—whether that’s tension, fatigue, or emotional tightness—and respond with care. Somatic yoga and movement sequences offered here are designed to reconnect you to your body, improve sleep, calm your nervous system, and help you process and release stress through embodied awareness.
This is movement for healing, not performance. Through a blend of breathwork, somatic awareness, and mindful motion, you’ll learn how to create space in the body, soften internal noise, and shift out of overwhelm. These practices activate your parasympathetic nervous system, helping to reduce stress hormones and restore balance to your body’s natural rhythms. By engaging with your body in a compassionate way, you’ll develop resilience, emotional clarity, and a greater sense of calm.
Somatic practices support emotional regulation by helping you tune in to the present moment, release built-up tension, and respond to stress with greater ease and self-compassion. Over time, these practices teach you how to reconnect with your body’s wisdom, allowing you to stay grounded and centered, no matter what life brings.
Somatic practices to explore.
A Somatic Breath Meditation
This guided somatic practice combines mindful breathing, MBSR-inspired techniques, and positive affirmations to support a calmer, more grounded state of being. Through simple breathwork and gentle awareness, you’ll be guided to ease tension in the body and quiet the mind. The affirmations woven throughout help to shift your inner dialogue and bring a sense of reassurance and emotional balance — offering a moment of calm amidst the noise.
Somatic Slow Flow (20-minutes)
This 20-minute soothing somatic sequence will guide you to a state of homeostasis; feeling calm, safe and "at home" in your body. Expect a body-mindful flow of rhythmic movements to create space in your body and soothe your tired soul. Perfect for any time of day but especially delicious at the start of your cycle, when you've not been getting enough sleep, and after a "bad day in the office."
The Self-Hug (5-minutes)
This soothing 5-minute practice of self-holding is a somatic technique designed to help you reconnect with your body and create a sense of inner safety and support. Grounding practices like this one gently draw your awareness back to the present moment—away from spiraling thoughts of the past or future—so you can feel more calm, centered, and at home in yourself.
