We have all heard about taking a deep breath when we are feeling stressed. It’s true that deepening your breath into fuller, belly breaths can help activate a calming response but being told to “take a deep breath” when you are stressed can be downright annoying.

Understanding that stress shifts your breathing helps us recognize that you can use breathing or the area of your nose to shift stress. Breathing bypasses the stressful thoughts swirling around in your head and impacts the body directly.

Touch.

Most of us take our sense of touch for granted. Our hands for example, an appendage we use on a daily basis to conduct our lives — to cook, clean, work, show affection, play, text, channel surf, eat and more — are often not give a second thought.

Sure, you could summon a feeling of gratitude for your hands or sense of touch in the moment that could result in shifting your stress response. But today, I am going to share less cognitive ways to use your hands and sense of touch to calm yourself when you are activated in a stress response.