3 Simple Daily Tools to Regulate Your Nervous System and Ease Anxiety

When anxiety feels like a constant companion, regulating your nervous system can help you feel more grounded, clear, and in control. For women juggling busy lives, careers, relationships, and expectations, these small but powerful practices can make a real difference. Here are three simple tools to calm your body and mind—no matter how hectic life gets.

1. Orienting: Let Your Eyes Find Safety

This is a quick and effective technique often used in somatic therapy. It’s based on the idea that scanning your environment with your eyes—slowly and with curiosity—helps your brain register safety in the present moment.

How to do it:

• Sit or stand comfortably and slowly look around your space.

• Let your eyes land on things that feel pleasant, neutral, or interesting (like a plant, a piece of art, or a warm light).

• Name them silently: “I see the window. I see the bookshelf. I see the candle.”

• Let your breath follow naturally as your body begins to settle.

This technique gently pulls your attention out of anxious thoughts and into the safety of the here and now.

2. Cold Water or Ice Trick

Activating your vagus nerve with cold is a powerful way to interrupt anxiety. A quick burst of cold signals your body to shift out of fight-or-flight mode.

Try this:

• Splash cold water on your face

• Hold an ice cube in your palm or on your neck

• Drink a glass of ice-cold water slowly and intentionally

These small actions trigger a calming effect that can reduce physical symptoms of anxiety like racing heart or shallow breathing.

3. Barefoot Grounding (or Sensory Grounding)

Connecting with nature—or simply your senses—helps regulate your nervous system and restore a sense of calm.

Ways to try it:

• Stand barefoot on grass, sand, or soil for 5–10 minutes

• If that’s not possible, try sensory grounding:

  • Notice 5 things you can see

  • 4 things you can feel

  • 3 things you can hear

  • 2 things you can smell

  • 1 thing you can taste or imagine tasting

This practice helps you shift from anxious thoughts to body-based awareness.

Final Thought:
Daily nervous system support doesn’t have to be complicated. These short, intentional moments—like pausing to orient, holding something cold, or connecting with the ground—can anchor you in calm and help ease anxiety before it builds.