Natural Ways to Calm Anxiety: Start Your Own Nervous System Reset Today
If you've ever felt like your body is buzzing, like you can’t quite catch your breath even though you're technically breathing — you’re not alone. I’ve been there. Anxiety, stress and overall panic has become a staple in today’s fast pace lifestyle. So much so that sometimes we don’t even realize we’re on overdrive until we actually have to slow down. Or worse yet, our body forces us to slow down through injury, illness or serious panic attacks.
For my entire life I’ve been no stranger to anxiety. In fact I can remember being a child and feeling myself float outside of my body, like I was watching a movie, life continuing on, but me, stuck, watching from the outside of my own life. Later and when I was much older, I discovered this to be a form of dissociation that happens when you’re stressed and don’t have the tools to understand or process the feelings happening in your mind and body. Quiet in some seasons, loud and unrelenting in others. Anxiety was by my side, like a side-kick I didn’t really want there. Like Donkey, in Shrek haha. No matter how much I would tell it to go away, there it was. As I grew, I found ways to manage and was able to heal through healthy habits + by using physical fitness as an outlet. Running, weights, anything fast and hard. But later in life, after a few challenging seasons, loss, grief and unexpected health issues (life just happens ya-know?) , the panic attacks began to strike out of nowhere — I thought I was past this part of my life, but spiral back they did, and with a VENGENCE. Panic attacks, waking in the middle of the night, crazy nightmares! I didn’t quite understand what was happening in my body, but I knew I needed to find another way.
What I found was this: your nervous system isn’t something you “fix” — it’s something you learn to tend to. Like a garden. And through yoga, breath—work, nature, and a lot of self-compassion, I’ve moved from panic to peace. This isn’t a one time fix, it’s a lifelong care-taking of the human that is you. It’s seeing yourself for all that you are and making time for the things that connect you to the here and now. Grounding, nurturing + compassionate. A realizing when you’ve tipped off-kilter and the bravery to step back and adjust. Anxiety may always be a part of my life but it doesn’t have to RUN the show.
Now, inside my online yoga studio-The Recipe, I share these tools with others who are seeking the same kind of healing — not just physical strength, but nervous system resilience and emotional calm. Whether you're here with anxiety, burnout, or just need a place to land, this post is for you.
In the sections ahead, I’ll walk you through natural, research-backed ways to calm your nervous system — including the exact practices that helped me move from panic to peace.
🧠 What Is the Nervous System and Why It Matters
Your nervous system is like the control center of your entire body. It decides whether you feel calm, anxious, alert, sleepy, grounded, or completely overwhelmed — often without you even realizing it.
At the core of this system are two key states:
Fight or Flight (sympathetic nervous system): This is your body’s stress response. It’s useful when you’re in danger — but many of us live here 24/7, even when nothing’s wrong.
Rest and Digest (parasympathetic nervous system): This is where healing happens. Your heart rate slows, your digestion kicks in, and your body feels safe enough to exhale.
When you're constantly stuck in fight-or-flight mode — thanks to stress, overstimulation, trauma, or just modern life — your nervous system gets dysregulated. You might feel anxious, tense, exhausted, wired-but-tired, be stuck in a freeze mode, wake up in the middle of the night, experience crazy intense nightmares, or like you’re running on fumes. Sound familiar?
The good news? You can gently guide your body back toward regulation. Through nervous system-friendly practices like restorative yoga, breath-work, meditation, and time in nature, you can shift out of stress mode and into safety. You can re-teach your body how to settle. You can begin to create safety.
And when you do? Everything changes — your sleep, your digestion, your energy, your mood, even your relationships. It's not magic. It's nervous system regulation. And it's learnable.
Tools to reset your nervous system
🧘♀️ Restorative Yoga: A Nervous System Reset in Every Pose
If there’s one practice that completely changed my relationship with anxiety, it’s restorative yoga.
This isn’t the kind of yoga that leaves you dripping in sweat or pushing to your max (although there’s a time and place for challenging practices as well). Restorative yoga is slow, still, and deeply nurturing. It’s about creating safety in your body through gentle, supported poses that give your nervous system permission to downshift. In fact the entire point is supporting your body SO MUCH so that you can completely release any gripping or holding through your muscular system and in the mental load you carry. We all carry residual tension in our physical bodies, some of us are aware of it and some of us not so much. Either way, it’s there. Restorative yoga helps us create a pod of safety where we no longer have to “strive” or “succeed” we can just be, we can DO LESS. The goal in fact is to do as little as possible! Let me tell you, if you’re used to go-go-go this is harder than you think!
Each pose is typically held for 5–10 minutes, using props like bolsters, blankets, and blocks to fully support you (Check out my yoga prop essentials HERE). There’s no stretching, no effort, and definitely no striving. Just soft breath, stillness, and a sweet unraveling of tension.
How Restorative Yoga Helps the Nervous System
When your body feels fully supported and your breath slows down, your parasympathetic nervous system (aka rest-and-digest mode) kicks in. This is where the magic happens:
Your heart rate lowers
Allowing stress levels to lower
Cortisol (your stress hormone) begins to drop
Meaning better sleep and less panic
Muscles soften and let go
Less tension headaches, neck tightness etc.
Digestion can improve (this is a huge benefit for me personally)
More regular bowel movements - more frequent if you tend to be backed up
The mind starts to quiet down
Racing and anxious thoughts become quieter and decisions become clearer. You’re more able to hear your truth instead of the outside noise of the world.
For people with anxiety or chronic stress, this style of yoga can feel like a deep exhale you didn’t even know you were holding. A restorative yoga session can mimic your REM sleep. It’s not un-common for you to leave a restorative yoga session feeling like you just woke up from the best sleep of your life! If you like to POWER UP in your workouts and trust me I am with you, then restorative yoga is most likely the balance you don’t even realize you’re missing.
A Few of My Go-To Nervous System-Supporting Poses:
Legs-Up-the-Wall (Viparita Karani): Instantly calming. Helps lower blood pressure and soothe a racing mind. Great before bed.
Supported Child’s Pose: Gently reconnects you to a sense of groundedness and safety.
Reclined Bound Angle (Supta Baddha Konasana): Opens the chest and hips while signaling your body to relax. (honestly extremely healing for our emotional body as well, this can help us feel more open + connected in our heart center)
Even just one of these poses held for 5–10 minutes can make a noticeable difference in how you feel. See a visual example of these poses below.
My FAVORITE Restorative Poses for Calming Down Anxiety.
Want Help Getting Started?
💫 Inside my online yoga studio, I’ve created a full 7-Day Nervous System Reset program featuring restorative yoga classes, calming breath-work, and guided meditations — designed to help you gently regulate your nervous system and find your way back to calm.
Whether you're brand new to yoga or returning to your mat after burnout, this reset is a soft, supportive place to begin. Try it HERE 💫
🌬️ Breath-work: Your Built-In Calm Button
If yoga is the reset, then breath-work or pranayama is the remote control — always available, always powerful, and often overlooked. Your breath is one of the fastest, most direct ways to shift your nervous system from fight-or-flight into rest-and-digest. It’s like sending a love note straight to your brain: “Hey, we’re safe now.” When you’re anxious or overwhelmed, your breathing often becomes shallow, rapid, or stuck in your chest. Breath-work teaches your body to do the opposite — to breathe slow, low, and with intention.
My Go-To Breathwork + pranayama Practices for Nervous System Support
1. Box Breathing
Inhale for 4… hold for 4… exhale for 4… hold for 4.
This technique is deeply regulating and gives your mind something to anchor to. It’s great for anxiety in the moment or before sleep. Box Breathing is SIMPLE. If you are in a state of panic or feeling overwhelmed, this is an easy tool to pull out.
4. Nadi Shodhana (Alternate Nostril Breathing)
Using your fingers to gently alternate breathing through one nostril at a time, this practice balances the left and right hemispheres of the brain, calms the mind, and brings an immediate sense of inner stillness. It’s especially helpful when you're feeling mentally scattered or energetically off-center.
How to practice Nadi Shodhana
You can practice this seated comfortably with your spine tall and shoulders relaxed. No need to be fancy — cross-legged on the floor or seated in a chair is perfect.
Here’s how to do it:
Bring your right hand up and gently place your pointer and middle finger between your eyebrows. You’ll use your thumb and ring finger to control your nostrils.
Close your right nostril with your thumb, and inhale slowly through your left nostril.
Close your left nostril with your ring finger, open your right nostril, and exhale slowly through the right.
Inhale through the right nostril, close it with your thumb, and exhale through the left nostril.
That’s one full round. Repeat for 5–10 rounds, moving slowly and keeping the breath smooth and effortless.
You may notice a gentle sense of balance, calm, and clarity after just a few rounds — almost like your brain and breath are humming in harmony. At first, just 5-10 rounds may be enough, you may, overtime, build up to practicing this pranayama longer.
Even just 2–3 minutes of breathwork a day can start to shift how your nervous system functions — it’s that powerful.
Want to Be Guided Through These Practices?
Inside my online studio, you’ll find guided breath-work and pranayama sessions woven into yoga classes and offered as stand-alone practices — so you don’t have to remember the counts or do it alone. I also offer Nadhi Shodhana on my YouTube Channel HERE.
👉 These same breath techniques are featured in my 7-Day Nervous System Reset, and they’re designed to meet you exactly where you are — overwhelmed, anxious, or just needing space to breathe again.
🧘♀️ Meditation: A Daily Reset for the Mind
When you’re feeling anxious, sitting still with your thoughts can feel intimidating — even impossible. I know that feeling deeply. But meditation doesn’t have to mean clearing your mind or sitting in silence for hours. It’s about creating space.
Space between you and your thoughts.
Space between feelings and response.
Space for your nervous system to soften.
Meditation gives your body and mind a pause — and in that pause, healing happens. OH AND, this can be in only 5 minutes.
Meditation Styles That Helped Me Regulate
1. Body Scan Meditation
Bringing awareness to each part of the body, from head to toe, helps pull you out of racing thoughts and into presence. I love this one before bed.
2. Heart-Centered Breathing
Placing a hand on your heart, you gently focus your breath and attention there. This helps build a felt sense of safety — especially helpful after anxiety or panic, or during a panic episode to being you back to center.
3. Loving-Kindness (Metta)
Repeating soft, compassionate phrases like “May I be safe. May I be calm. May I feel peace.” This practice helped me change how I spoke to myself during anxious spirals.
Even 5–10 minutes a day can help regulate your nervous system, increase emotional resilience, and create a deeper sense of inner safety. Your practices do not have to be long, intense or complicated, they just have to be consistent!
✨ Want Support with Your Meditation Practice?
Inside my online yoga studio, you’ll find guided meditations designed to meet you where you are — whether that’s anxious, overwhelmed, or just needing stillness. We use these same meditations in the 7-Day Nervous System Reset to help you reconnect to calm, one breath at a time.
🌿 Other Natural Ways to Calm Your Nervous System
While yoga, breath-work, and meditation are powerful tools, calming your nervous system also happens when you slow down and reconnect with the world around you. Here are some simple, natural practices I’ve found incredibly grounding — both in my own journey and with students in my online yoga studio:
Spend Time in Nature
There’s a reason the phrase “forest bathing” exists. Being outside — whether it’s walking barefoot on grass, feeling sunlight on your skin, or simply sitting under a tree. Nature helps us regulate our nervous system naturally. Nature reminds us to slow down and breathe deeply, syncing our rhythm with the earth’s calming pulse. When we can absorb the vast and powerful energy of the world around us, we can realize we are just one small creature in the care of our great mother earth, We are part of a much more intricate system and nature NEVER hurries, yet she accomplishes everything. You can too.
Prioritize Restful Sleep
Your nervous system rebuilds and recharges while you sleep. Creating a soothing bedtime routine — dim lights, gentle music, no screens — can make a huge difference in your ability to calm anxiety and stress. I like to practice gua sha (facial massage with a jade stone) and a simple skincare routine every night before bed. I look forward to this every-night, it’s a time I get to care for myself and it helps me start to power-down before getting into my bed. Also if you’ve never tried gua sha…it is life changing!! Highly recommend!
Reduce Stimulants and Screen Time
Caffeine, sugar, and excessive screen time can all rev up your nervous system unnecessarily. Try to notice when these habits spike your anxiety, and experiment with gentle reductions. Swapping a late afternoon coffee for herbal tea or a short walk can help your nervous system relax.
Journaling and Mindful Reflection
Taking a few minutes each day to jot down your thoughts or practice gratitude helps you create mental space and reduce overwhelm. I often combine journaling with a short meditation or breathwork practice for added nervous system benefits. See my YouTube Channel for some free meditations + pranayama practices.
Slow Down with Soothing Rituals
Warm baths, calming essential oils, or even just sitting quietly with a cup of tea can signal to your nervous system that it’s safe to relax.
Remember: calming your nervous system isn’t about doing all the things perfectly. It’s about gently inviting more ease and presence into your daily life.
Try My 7-Day Nervous System Reset Program
After years of navigating anxiety and searching for tools that actually worked, I created a program I wish I’d had during those spiraling, sleepless, overstimulated seasons of life.
The 7-Day Nervous System Reset is a gentle, supportive online program designed to help you feel calmer, safer, and more grounded — without needing to push, perform, or be “good” at yoga.
What’s Inside:
Restorative yoga classes (short + beginner-friendly)
Guided breath-work practices to calm your body
Soothing meditations for emotional balance
Affirmations + gentle mindset support
All practices are 30 minutes or less — perfect for busy, sensitive, or burnt-out nervous systems.
This reset is part of my online yoga studio membership, which means you’ll also get access to a full library of restorative yoga, slow flows, meditations, and nervous system-friendly classes.
Whether you’re new to yoga, returning after burnout, or just craving more softness in your life — this program is here for you. You don’t have to go it alone.
👉 [Click here to join the studio and start your 7-Day Nervous System Reset today.]
Final Thoughts: You Deserve to Feel Safe in Your Body
If you’ve been living with anxiety, panic, or chronic stress — you’re not broken. Your nervous system has simply been trying to protect you. It’s been doing its best to keep you safe. But now it’s time for a new message:
You are safe. You can slow down. You can soften. You can come home to yourself.
Through yoga, breath, meditation, nature, and simple everyday practices, you can begin to shift. Gently. Sustainably. And with so much self-compassion. If you’re ready to start that journey, I’d love to walk with you inside my online yoga studio. The 7-Day Nervous System Reset is waiting — and it’s truly a soft place to land.
Click here to join now and begin your reset.
You don’t have to heal alone.
I’m right here with you — every breath of the way. 🤍
With love,
Jess
Your recipe for strength, flexibility, breath + inner connection. Get anytime access to our growing collection of over 100 classes, ALL programs, and exclusive content. Yoga, meditation, strength + more.
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