Published in 2024
8 hours and 15 minutes
Megy Karydes helps people overcome feeling busy all the time and like their body and mind just cannot sit still.
Writing 50 Ways to More Calm, Less Stress: Scientifically Proven Ways to Relieve Anxiety and Boost Your Mental Health Using Your Five Senses, gave Megy permission to seek out alternative ways to help calm her own mind and body when well-meaning friends and healthcare practitioners joked she should “just try yoga” or meditate or whatever was working for them at the time. Each tip is backed by science or research and designed to help us find what works for us at any given time, whether we need to get out of a rut, change things up, or find something that helps ground us and be present.
Megy has written for national publications such as USA Today, The Atlantic, National Geographic, Architectural Digest, Eating Well, Fortune.com, Natural Awakenings, Chicago Health and more. She’s presented at national conferences including Museum Store Association, American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), and Garden Communications International.
A communicator at heart, she loves meeting people. She welcomes the opportunity to connect and learn from each other how we can become better neighbors, friends, family, caregivers, colleagues or whatever way we want to be present.
What is this book about?
Touch, taste, smell, hear, and see your way to better self-care and mental well-being.
Let’s face it: We all feel stress. Deep breathing, meditation, and yoga only go so far, and not being able to sit still and be alone with our thoughts isn’t that unusual. The mind is designed to engage with the world around us, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to finding what calms us because we are so unique in our circumstances, our lifestyles, our finances, and our interests.
50 Ways to More Calm, Less Stress explores different ways each of our five senses can help bring more calm and less stress into our lives. Whether through touch, sight, taste, smell, or sound, each activity includes research or science-backed studies that support why it offers health and wellness benefits as well as ways you can incorporate them into your own life. The best part—most of the activities are either low or no cost and can be done inside your own home or right outside your door.
Activities include: the magic of gardening; losing yourself while doodling; culinary therapy; the nostalgic power of perfume; nature therapy; bathing in sound; capturing a memory; and slow reading.
