This wellness challenge is about reducing or alleviating feelings of overwhelm in one or more areas of your life.

You can meet this challenge in one of two ways: either scale back what you are asking of yourself or expand your capacity to handle the situation. Either solution will help you reduce the stress of the situation so you can get unstuck and back in the flow.

If you already know what needs to happen for you to meet this challenge, then go for it.

If not, you may want to give the following energy flow technique a try. This meditative method helps you access your subconscious mind body connection through your intuition and heart intelligence.

Here are the steps:

1.Take a few deep breaths and invite your body and mind to relax. Drop you attention out of your ‘monkey mind’ and into your body. You might find it helpful to put your attention on your heart or abdomen. Focus on your breath.

2. When you feel relaxed, ask yourself which one area is causing you the most stress or overwhelm. Accept the answer in whatever form it comes. What specifically about this is overwhelming?

3. Notice the feelings in your body that manifest with these questions. Honor those feelings by gently and lovingly giving them your focused attention for 30 seconds or so.

4. Ask what one thing you need to do to feel better. You may be surprised at what you get for an answer. It may be something amazingly simple like drinking more water. Do not fear the answer. You always have the choice of following through or not. If your answer is something you can do right away, then do it.

5. Finish the exercise by thanking your mind, body and spirit for sharing this information.

Do this exercise as often as you like. There are many different questions you could ask. Imagine what your days would be like if you took a few minutes each morning to check in with your inner wisdom and asked, “How am I feeling today?” What do I need to feel better?”

Sometimes, there are things we decide we have to deal with, even though we feel overwhelmed and stressed out by them. If that is true for you, it is even more important than usual to make self-care of your mind and body a top priority. Find ways to reduce stress in other areas of your life.

At times like these a high level of self-care may seem ‘frivolous’. This is not the case. Taking care of yourself first will help you expand your capacity to cope with greater ease while preserving your health and well-being. As they say at the airlines, put your oxygen mask on first.

Now it is your turn to share: How are you feeling overwhelmed? What can you do for yourself to alleviate those feelings and get back in the flow? Tell us about it in the comments below.

Credit: I learned this heart intelligence method from a Christian Pankhurst video. This is my interpretation of it which I adapted for overwhelm.