About This Lesson
The easiest ways to relax in almost any situation is to use your five senses to connect to feelings to peaceful calm. When you are a college student, you can do this with a simple basket filled with your favorite smells, sights, sounds, tastes and textures. Simply find your favorite items to appeal to each of your senses and keep them in a handy place. This can be a basket on your desk for after homework, in your backpack for between classes or even in your car.
Smell
There are all kinds of smells to college life, from the laundry which can pile up to the cookies your roommate is cooking, and not all of them will be relaxing. A good way to set the mood everyday is with a diffuser. Not every dorm room will have an oven to bake cookies in or allow scented candles to be lit, but a diffuser is a safe and effective way to adjust the scents in your space. A few drops of copaiba oil or your favorite essential oil blend and you can be on your way to a peaceful meditation.
Sight
Decorating your dorm room or your relaxation basket with pictures, colors and designs that you find relaxing can be one of the biggest helps you find in college. Sometimes just having your family picture book or an album from your extracurricular high school activities can bring a smile to your face and let your stress melt away. You can even find an adult coloring book with patterns that you like and your favorite scented crayons, markers or pens to color it in. Activities which invoke multiple senses, like the sight and feel of the coloring, the smell of crayons and music in the background, can be the most relaxing of all.
Sound
Life is noisy and sometimes that noise can leave you feeling relaxed and refreshed. Take a night in with your friends for example. You can gather around your favorite movie, television show or music playlist and let the air filled with the sound of your laughter. You can fill your basket with your MP3 player, favorite relaxation CD or an audiobook that soothes you.
Taste
Your favorite tastes can help bring you back to a good childhood memory or even spark a chemical reaction in your brain to inspire peace and calm. There are many ways to do this such as cooking a meal or heading to your favorite restaurant, keeping a secret stash of candy or even by drinking green tea on your way to class. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that this relaxing technique will work best when you listen to what you want to taste in the given moment. For your relaxation basket, it is a good idea to include some tea bags or your favorite candy bar.
Touch
Your sense of touch can be one of the easiest ways to relax on the go. Not only can your clothing provide you with comforting textures, but so can your favorite pillow or blanket on your bed. For a more travel-ready fix, you can add a scarf or handkerchief sized piece of your favorite fabric texture to your relaxation basket, backpack or glove compartment. Touch can involve movement as well, some people find that working out, fidget toys or handicrafts can provide relaxation.
Finding the best way to appeal to your five senses for relaxation can be a big bonus during stressful semesters at college. You can assemble a basket of your favorite things to keep on your desk and remind yourself to relax every day. It is a good idea to put a coloring book in the basket and if you find the right scented crayons or markers, a bag of your favorite healthy snack and a good music playlist, you can have everything you need right there for a relaxing moment or a night in.
