There are moments happening in your life right now, but your anxious mind is walking
straight past.
Tiny moments, warm ones, the kind that don't announce themselves, they just exist quietly
in the background of your day, waiting to be noticed.
Psychologists call them glimmers and the science is clear.
The more you train yourself to find them, the more your nervous system shifts out of
threat mode, not because your problems have gone away, but because your brain has been
shown there is more to the story than the difficult parts.
That's what the next ten minutes have formed.
Welcome to calming anxiety, I'm Martin, clinical hypnotherapist and former frontline
paramedic and this is your daily ten minutes of genuine stillness.
Every episode just for you and I'm grateful you're here.
If you'd like to support the show, just subscribe, tell your friends about it, post a session
on your social media, that's all I ask.
Now let's find your glimmers.
Find your quiet place now to sit all I down whatever feels right just now.
Let your hands rest open, palms up or down, whichever feels natural.
And if it's safe, close your eye.
Before we do anything, I want you to take a moment and just arrive.
You've come from somewhere, a busy morning, a difficult commute, a full inbox, a head full
of thoughts, let all of that be where it is.
We're not solving any of it right now, we're just landing here.
Take a breath in, ordinary, no effort just through the nose.
And let it go.
Just release, like the end of a long sigh.
Again, in gently and out slowly, all the way to empty.
There's something important happening in that out breath.
I've learnt that the long exhale is where the body switches from alert to recovery.
It's not magic, it's biology.
The long, slow-out breath activates the vagus nerve, the same nerve that governs your sense
of safety, connection and calm.
So every time you let that breath fall away slowly, you are
literally signaling to your nervous system.
I am safe.
I can rest.
In again, easy and out, longer than the in, but no rush.
Let your jaw go soft.
Let the muscles around your eyes release.
Feel the weight of your body, settled, supported, held, one more breath in.
And on the out breath, I want you to imagine the noise of the day moving back a few feet,
not gone, just further away.
You're still aware of it, but it no longer has its hands on you.
From this quieter place, we go looking.
I'd like to take you on a gentle walk through an ordinary day, not a perfect day, not a holiday,
just a day, like the ones we actually live.
But because glimmers live in the ordinary days, in fact, almost the only place they live.
So stay with your breath as I describe them.
And if any of these land for you, if one of them produces even the faintest warmth in your
chest, let it.
Don't analyse it.
Just receive it.
The moment just before you're fully awake, when the world hasn't reached you yet, when
the bed is still warm, and there's a quiet that belongs entirely to you.
That pause, that softness, that is a glimmer.
The first sip of something hot in the morning, the warmth moving through your hands, the steam,
the aroma, for a moment, nothing else exists, that is a glimmer.
Stepping outside, and the air touching your face, cool, warm, or sharp, your body registers
it before your mind.
That involuntary second of just being a creature alive in the world, that is a glimmer.
A song that finds you, when you didn't know you needed, a shaft of light falling at an
angle you didn't expect.
The particular colour of the sky, at a particular time of day, that somehow you happen to see.
A dog looking up at you for no reason, the sound of the laughter in the next room.
These moments don't shout, they don't compete with the noise, they simply exist quietly,
in every single day that you live.
Waiting.
Your anxious mind has been scanning for threats, that's what anxiety does.
It's a survival system, and it's very good at its job.
But right now, we are re-tuning the scanner, we are pointing it towards warmth instead of
danger.
The extraordinary thing, the thing that makes this more than just an ice idea, is that every
time you consciously notice a glimmer, you are building a new neural pathway, you are physically
rewiring your brain to find safety more easily.
This is not wishful thinking, this is neuroscience.
So now in the warmth of your own breath, allow these words to land.
I notice what is warm, I notice what is good.
My day contains more light than my anxiety tells me.
I am becoming someone who hunts the glimmers, not threats.
I deserve to feel a quiet beauty that already surrounds me.
For good moments are real, they count, I allow them in.
I am grateful, I am present, I am here.
Your scanner has been re-tuned, it knows what to look for now.
So take with you these three daily caring tips.
One, the one glimmer rule, before you check your phone today, before the notifications,
the news, the messages, find one glimmer first.
One thing that is physically present right now, a sound, a texture, a temperature, you
don't have to feel grateful for it, just notice it.
Two, pass one on.
At some point today, tell someone about a glimmer that you found, not a grand gesture, just
one sentence.
The light looked amazing this morning.
I heard something that made me smile, sharing a glimmer multiplies it.
It shifts to nervous systems at once.
And three, the evening collect.
Tonight, before sleep, ask yourself one question, what was my glimmer today?
Just one, it doesn't need to be profound, it just needs to be real.
Over time, this single habit does more for anxiety than almost anything else I know.
You're training your brain, one glimmer at a time.
When you're ready, take a long breath in and on the out breath wiggle your fingers and
toes, then let your awareness come back into the room.
Open your eyes when it feels right, softly, like the morning.
You've just given your nervous system a gift or carry through the rest of the day.
You find your glimmers, they're everywhere, they always were.
If this helps you today, please share it with a friend or family member, someone who needs
a reminding that there are good moments still out there.
This is how the show reaches the people who need it the most.
You'll find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and within the Anker app.
Thank you.
If you want to go deeper, please try the calming anxiety circuit breaker course.
It's at calminganxiety.fm.
It's only $67.
It's five guided hypnotherapy sessions by me.
Have a lovely day, my friend.
Smile always.
Positivety when you can.
To your soul.
Be kind.