For years, Laura Rhodes-Levin, a licensed marriage and family therapist, has been trying to get the message out that engaging your five senses can help you lower your work stress. “I am always telling my patients: ‘Come to your senses,’” she said.
As the founder of the Missing Peace Center for Anxiety in Agoura Hills, Calif., she wishes mindfulness were called “bodyfulness.”
“It’s about getting into your body, and your five senses are the best way to do it, said Rhodes-Levin. “The last thing our stress needs is to think about itself.”
Dr. Heather Stevenson, a licensed clinical psychologist in New York City, explained that you can use your five senses to help shift the sensory input your body is receiving, which activates your nervous system, telling your body it’s safe to relax and slow down. This is the body’s physiological way of responding to both stress and positive stimuli.
“When your body is stressed, it’s like your internal system is set off by alarm bells triggering an alert that starts to impact how your brain and body react by increasing cortisol,” said Stevenson. “The practice of using your five senses to help reduce stress and down-regulate your nervous system is part of both mindfulness and somatic therapy exercises.”
Having learned and practiced many of these techniques for herself, she now teaches them to clients as part of her therapy practice.
But, you’re a hassled and ever-harried New Yorker. How can you tap into your corporeal form and snap out of a bout of major work stress? Ahead, therapy pros share easy techniques to beat work stress via your five senses.
Smell or taste something pleasantly pungent
For the past few months, my husband has had something called a “boom.boom nasal stick” on his work desk (well, dining room table, but remedying cramped WFH spaces in NYC is a story for another day).
He uncaps the mint, wintergreen or tropical scented aromatherapy inhaler, puts it under each nostril and inhales deeply for a few seconds.
Research from Toho University in Japan seems to indicate Stevenson and my husband are onto something. That’s because “lowering stress by engaging your five senses is all about shifting your internal state and activating your autonomic and parasympathetic nervous system in different ways to get your body to slow down and regulate,” says Stevenson.
With scent, for example, Stevenson said smelling a citrus fruit, like orange or grapefruit, or an essential oil like peppermint, rosemary or lavender for several seconds at a time has been shown to reduce stress, lower cortisol and may even lower blood pressure.
Drinking mint or ginger tea, mindfully sucking on a mint or peeling and eating an orange or clementine slowly and consciously are all similar practices you can try to snap out of a work funk with your sense of taste.
Touch something soothing
The same calming process can be replicated with the sense of touch. Stevenson recommends spending one to several minutes touching a soft or textured fabric, like a soft blanket or silk pillow.
“Another way is with deep pressure, like you would get from using a weighted blanket or a tight hug,” she said, noting that this sends signals to your brain to help you calm down and relax.
If you’ve got a casual dress code at the office, check out the weighted Therahoodie, a plush sweatshirt weighted with premium micro-glass beads so you can “wrap yourself in calm” throughout the workday. At home, try the signature Therarobe for similar soothing effects, grounded in deep touch pressure stimulation.
Listen to thunderstorms, ocean waves and rainfall sounds
And let’s turn on the fire crackling sounds, chirping country crickets and babbling creeks for good measure, too.
“Have Alexa, Google or Siri collecting dust on a shelf somewhere in your house? It’s quite easy to ask them to play nature sounds for you and these nature sounds are scientifically proven to reduce stress,” said Dr. Solara Calderon, a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice in Encinitas, Calif.
Ask the smart speaker of your choice to play nature sounds (or search YouTube or Spotify) and feel the stress and worry start to trickle away, said Calderon.
Whenever you’re feeling particularly frazzled with work, the NYC native recommends you spend some time sitting quietly, listening intently and picturing yourself transported elsewhere as you carve out a few minutes to reground yourself. (Pro-tip: Falling asleep to nature sounds is lovely, too.)
Try a five-senses visualization
One of Stevenson’s favorite ways to help clients lower stress is to guide them through a visualization exercise that engages all five senses. You can do the same at your office (or sliver of dining room table) on your own by following Stevenson’s guidance:
Create a mental image of being somewhere pleasant, usually outside in nature; then describe what you see, feel, hear, smell and taste, getting as descriptive as possible. “This helps clients fully immerse in the picture as if they were there in the moment and can be a great exercise to practice taking a mental vacation and de-stress,” said Stevenson.
Peep at something in nature
“The reason why people love places like Hawaii or going off to the mountains is because your senses take over,” said Rhodes-Levin. “You don’t care about your taxes in Hawaii because it looks beautiful. It smells delicious. It sounds soothing. It feels good on your skin, the tastes are sumptuous. Your senses are your way out of your stress.”
But you’re not going to Hawaii during a mid-workday reset. Instead, head to a nearby park and make it your mission to see and label five to 10 examples of wildlife, plants and trees before returning to your desk.
During a particularly stressful not-so-summery Friday the other week, I walked over to the lake by Bethesda Terrace in Central Park and spied on turtles for a few minutes. I can’t say all my work woes were solved, but by the time I got home, I had already forgotten what was stressing me out in the first place.
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