Clean Air In Your Brain Or Small Habits For Mental Hygiene

Air in your lungs, the air in your brain. How can you get more Mental Hygiene with basic O2?

It’s so basic and natural, often neglected.

Clean air on your mind, metaphorically speaking or objectively speaking is all about Mental Hygiene.

Let’s make a basic parallel:

You clean your body on a daily basis
You get your house cleaned on a regular basis, in some cases daily too;
I suppose you clean your car with some consistency.

In sum, any “place” your physical being uses or inhabits: you get it cleaned.

Do you have the same conscious act about cleaning, when the subject is your mind and brain?

Of course, this isn’t supposed to be any treaty for mental illness: we’ll leave that to the specialist In that field...

But daily basic metaphors are good to get the scenario:

When you were a kid, your parents taught you how to brush your teeth to prevent dental caries, right? Nobody waited to develop a teeth disease to start cleaning.

Well, that’s how you should face mental hygiene: do it to prevent disease.

According to the World Health Organization, “health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”

Where does mental hygiene fit here? Well: is a science. Of maintaining health and preventing the development of mental disorders like psychosis, neurosis, and others…

Small curiosity: the word psyche is of Greek origin and it means soul, mind, or breath.

Psyche has everything to do with breathing.

Assuming we’re not all scientists (although some might be) we still have the responsibility to assure our own mental hygiene, while is still in our hands to do so, before professional help is needed. And if needed one, we only have to take courage and search for help, if that’s the case.

But assuming it is not: let's keep it simple.

A mental hygiene routine would the ideal.

Morning Routine (Clean air and Mental Hygiene)

You brush your teeth, you wash your face, you take a bath. Physical hygiene is done.

Do you have some kind of morning ritual to get some mental “immunity” to face the day? To face people you have to? To face scheduled situations or unexpected ones? With the less stress possible, excellence style?

You might want to consider having a routine to start the day with a clean mind…

Suggestions? For Mental Hygiene?

Here are some below.

Watch natural light so you signalize your circadian cycle to wake up and set you into awakening mode.

With all the blue light from computers and cell phones ´especially harmful at night, your circadian cycle might be a little confused about awakening/sleeping hour (it is at night that the organism receives an order to produce melatonin, the hormone you need to sleep; it’s during the night that cells regeneration occurs).

Exercise: preferably light exercise that makes you move your arms, even if it’s just stretching.

You get the feeling that you have already achieved something in the first hour of the day. Winning attitude morning shot.

Besides, you get to stretch the stiff muscles and send some more oxygen to the whole body. Including the brain.

Positive Affirmations during the bath. It will give you a small shot of self-motivation if needed.

Place intentions (what you want to happen during the day), so you can live through the day, by intention and, not by chance.

If you place your intentions in the morning, you are programing your brain to help you make choices and find solutions that align with your intentions.

5 minute morning guided meditation.

Chose the 5 min meditation the night before, so you won’t fall into the temptation to go scrolling social media first thing in the morning. It would be a waste of dopamine (reward system) without actually having achieved anything. And if you use social media to work: use it in work time.

5 Minute Meditation On Spotify

During-Day (More Clean air for Mental Hygiene)

You wash your hands when you go to the bathroom. And in these Covidean-days: every now and then you sanitize your hands …

(It’s kind of a blessing that you don’t have to shake hands with that fellow creep from the office, that particularly irritates you). But the subject stresses you…

You can leave the real reason for that irritation some other time. Right now. let’s deal with the irritation that your body translates into physical reactions/emotions.

You feel it in the stomach, the face frowns, you fake a smile and the fist closes. Mild signs of stress.

What do you do with that “dirty energy” you are accumulating in the body? Do you clean it?

You can...

…Take 3-5 long breaths.

In the inhale: imagine clean energy entering through your nose and through all your pores, and feeling the lungs filled all with new air.

In the exhale: imagine the energy coming out from the zone of your belly as you, pull it inside as you expel the air along with all unnecessary energy: energy that no longer serves.

An oxygenated brain thinks clearer, functions better.

The day continues.

You have a difficult conversation with a customer: he’s stressed, you keep it together (over the phone), clients first, no time to undermine relationships with customers… It Costs money. Levels of stress sum a bit more, but everything’s under control. You hang up the phone, you’re irritated he wasn’t understanding but you have to find a solution. Irritation is not a priority. The solution for the client is. (Stress is compounding)

What’s next? Work meeting… It’s Friday: the boss is in no good mood. He is especially unpleasant with you because your report is late, he needs it for the meeting and has no time to analyze it. He is right but you had that tough customer to deal with. You manage to calm the beast (you can handle him). But stress is quite reaching its peak. But everything’s under control.

You have lunch. You wash your hands before and after. You wash your mouth.

What do you do with that “stress-energy “, you’ve been accumulating in the body? Do you clean it?

You could…

…Take 3-5 long breaths.

In the inhale: imagine clean energy entering through your nose and through all your pores, and feeling the lungs filled all with new air.

In the exhale: imagine the energy coming out from the zone of your belly as you, pull it inside as you expel the air along with all unnecessary energy: energy that no longer serves.

An oxygenated brain thinks clearer, functions better.

Night Hygiene ( Clean air For Clean Sleep An Mental Hy-giene)

You feel the stress. Today is not a gym day. Take a bath to relax.

But still, those flashes of the day, mixed with your unsolved love situation, that gives you also some stress… Not sure how to address it. Communication is lousy: every word generates a never-ending discussion…

You take a drink. You watch your favorite TV series on Netflix, relaxing – but the annoyance remains.

You go to bed, brush your teeth, but your mind is so filled with random thoughts of today, of yesterday, of tomorrow… in between the office issues and personal issues: can’t sleep that easy, with that buzz in the ears and this morning already woke up tired.

Your mind needs mental cleaning. Decluttering. Can you do something about it?

You can…

… Breathe.

Using a breathwork technique would be fantastic if you would try to include it in some night routine.

Why should you?

Your first benefit is the cleaning of the organism.

You go on through the day accumulating stress, accumulating toxins from food, accumulating toxins from smoke if that’s your case.

Toxins might not go all out through urine, feces, or sweat (the 3 main ways the body has to expel its waste)… And when they compound within, they create inflammation. When you have inflammation you might not have disease in the next day: but then comes that weird taste on your mouth (your liver complaining), that feeling of low, that moody way of reacting because sugar levels are deregulated along with the deregulation of serotonin oxytocin and dopamine ( hormones of happiness).

You, a human being, are a complex system. Not all the problems you have come from outsiders: many times it comes from within. What you eat, how you sleep, how well the body functions with the waste it produces. And how you react to stress might be also a consequence of what you feed your body and your mind (thoughts that create emotions that create a physical response from the body)… The ecosystem within.

Breathwork

Back to breathwork and toxins elimination…

How can support your own organism to restore balance and eliminate more toxins?

You breathe.

Doing breathwork stimulates your lymphatic system, which is basically your personal body sewerage pipe system (yeh that’s right, your body is the “house” and the “house” has a sewer system where the waste goes: that’s the lymphatic system).

And doing deep breathing with abdominal movement is the way to stimulate the lymphatic system.

What does that have to do with mental hygiene? Everything. While you’re cleaning the lymphatic system your actually allowing your brain activity to self-regulate and shut off the flight-fight system (activated by stress) simply focusing on feeling the breath activity.

Here are 3 suggestions for breathwork before sleep, that take no more than 5 to 10 minutes of your pre-sleeping time:

Kapalbahti: for di-stress, activate the lymphatic system and increase the capacity of the lungs. (should not practice it if you have gastro.in
Breathwork exercise to activate Lymphatic system – already mentioned above
Breathwork activate the pineal gland, which is responsible for regulating melatonin, circadian cycle, and sleep

Avoid this practice and consult your physician if you have any specific clinical conditions such as cardiac conditions, migraine, gastric ulcers, hernias, stroke, pregnancy, epilepsy.

Otherwise: give it a try, include breathwork in your night ritual to sleep like a baby, and do mental hygiene as well as biological hygiene.