Mental Expansion Exercises to Do at Home

When you're at home during times of peace and quiet, you can perform some effective mental expansion exercises that can help to improve your mental capabilities and also help to reduce stress.

A day at work can be both difficult and stressful, and when you get home often there is nothing you want more than to relax and de-stress. Some of the most effective methods of relaxing can be done easily within the home, and many are entirely mental.

Many people may find this surprising, but in fact, the body and mind are strongly linked and relaxing the mind results in a significant release of tension in the body, making the person feel calmer and more in control. In fact, evidence suggests that the constant low-level stress that people are exposed to in day-to-day living can result in substantial tension and potentially decrease longevity.

Meditation, breathing exercises and visualization are all mind exercises that can be done at home, which are relaxing and can decrease stress levels.

Meditation

Meditation is perhaps the most well known mind exercise, and it is often misunderstood. It is commonly associated with monks and religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism; however, meditation itself does not need to have any religious basis.

Many people perceive mediation as the process of sitting still and not thinking, however, anyone who has tried forcing the mind not to think knows that this is very counterproductive. The more you try not to think, the more thoughts enter your mind.

A very effective means of mediation that helps you to calm your mind is to remain still and quiet and to essentially observe your thoughts. This means that you do not make any efforts to control your thoughts, rather they simply drift at will.

This is a technique that is often practised by practitioners of the Law of Attraction and personal development gurus. It is helpful for intensifying the connection with Infinite Intelligence and obtaining the ideas and solutions you desire.

The longer you are able to stay in this relaxed, meditative state, the more effective it will be.

Breathing Exercises

Breathing exercises and controlled breathing is often used as a means of relaxation, and it can take a very short amount of time and can be done anywhere. If you examine your breathing pattern during the day, one thing that you notice is that your breathing tends to be short and shallow.

Breathing exercises take the opposite approach. Here, you force your body and mind to calm down by dramatically slowing down your breathing and by increasing the amount of air that you breathe in and out.

The technique is incredibly relaxing after only the first breath and continuing this for a while can be extremely beneficial. You may notice that the first few times you try this you become light headed.

This occurs because your brain is not used to that amount of oxygen and needs to adjust, but after a few exercises this side effect subsides.

Visualization

Visualization is an effective means of quickly changing your mood from being stressed to being relaxed and calmed. This works the best if you are good at visualizing, so a good step to get you started is to practice visualizing physical objects that you can see, until you are able to see them perfectly in your mind.

Once you have mastered this, move to visualizing imaginary scenes. Initially, you can use books or music as inspiration for the environment to visualize, but eventually you want to be able to imagine environments that come entirely from within your own head.

Each of the techniques discussed here has numerous variations and can be adjusted in many ways to suit your individual preferences and requirements. All of these techniques can be used with great success both for a very short time and for longer periods.

For example, meditating for 20-30 minutes a day is often recommended as a way of relieving your body of stress, especially after a long day of work. Do not discount mind exercises as means of reducing stress or relaxing, they can be extremely effective for a relatively low time investment.

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