How to survive the winter in St. Petersburg?

There are more reasons for stress this year than ever. What can be done for your own peace of mind this winter and how to live until April?

We asked the founder of the St. Petersburg Welness Brand Re-Feel to Alina Chichina. For Paper , Alina told how she coped with the alarming scrolling of news tapes, which helps her adhere to awareness and which life hack always allows her to be in tone in winter.

Alina Chichina

Entrepreneur, creator of Re-Feel

Problem

- This year I often dissolved in the news stream and was engaged in thoughtless scrolling tape, especially intensified in February and March. It seems to me that we all then stuck to the telegram and could not do anything.

I had to put a restriction on the phone and pull myself from him, because I understood that he was immersing me in an absolutely destructive state. I could neither support my team, nor assisting the nearest environment.

I believe that at such moments it is just that you need to turn to yourself as much as possible, because when you leaf through the tape, then in fact you do nothing, and control over the internal state is lost.

Without this control, it is easy to fall under the influence of the situation around you - the weather or mood of people nearby. If we concentrate on purely external and, for example, give rain, dirt and puddles more and more to unwind and carry into this [depressive] experience, then in St. Petersburg you can hang yourself in winter.

And if you deal with your internal state, then in any season you can find charming. In one mood, something may seem gray and boring, and in another-romantic, cozy and enveloping.

Where to start

- Mindfulnes and Velnes is part of my work, I constantly learn about new practices and try to implement them in my routine. The simplest thing you can start is classic meditation on the scanning of the body. This can be done independently by just removing all external stimuli and noise sources, sit for ten minutes in silence and listen to sensations in the body. If you do this systematically at least two weeks, there will be a huge number of insights.

For me, the most interesting transformation was associated with a feeling of anger. I was very angry and did not know that there was fear under this anger-it was a rather popular ligament, when we begin to touch someone and glowing from anger simply because we are very afraid.

We discuss a lot of meditation with the guests of our “Re-Feel- Podcast ” that practice these techniques or even teach them. We constantly rest on the same thing: Mindfulnes is very present in the information space, everyone has so often heard about it that they even experience internal rejection. But everyone knows, but no one does, does not use these tips in life. This is the main and only problem.

Awareness is not sacred and not secret knowledge, it is just the opportunity to find time during the day, and not to occupy it with gadgets, series and correspondence.

For those who want to read about the theory and practice of awareness, I can recommend four books.

Book recommendations from Alina ↓

• “The body remembers everything: what role psychological trauma plays in a person’s life and what techniques help”, Bang der Kolk.
• “The path to conscious and full life,” Dipak Chopra.
• “Consciousness. Science and art of presence ”, Daniel Siegel.
• "Silence. Calmness in a world, full noise ”, Tit.

Solution : how to support yourself

- In 2022, I am more active than before, I follow my well -being: I work a lot with a psychotherapist, I play sports, and make practices for concentration. These practices allow you to get away from Monkey-Mind-a state in which a huge number of thoughts twist you and you lose touch with reality. So that this does not happen, you need to ground yourself, ask questions: “What is happening to me now? What do I see? How do I feel? What can I do in this situation? "

One of my favorite rituals is to make several “shutdowns” during the working day: one before lunch, the second is closer to the evening. During these windows, I will not discuss anything at work, but only sit and stick out the window, drink Re-Feel drinks and restart.

It seems to me very important to create rituals of self -care that we like to repeat and in which it makes sense for us. For example, for someone it can be an evening cocoa, a special chair and music.

It is important not to lose this when we move or find ourselves in a new context. Our excellent set , made together with the “paper” helps to create a feeling of comfort and filling, wherever you end.

Speaking of my recent discoveries - I revised the value and format of my morning. My favorite American Bio-Haucher Blogger and Stanford Lecturer Andrew Huberman claims that if a person goes outside at the first hour after waking up, he will feel much better.

So you can adjust circus rhythms, which will help to fall asleep more easily and feel more vigorous. I began to practice it because at the same time I taught my dog ​​morning roasters, and noticed that then you really return home more vigorously and more energetic. You can not even walk the dog, but just go out into the street to stand in shorts and fluffy slippers, this is a super -driving thing. Tearing yourself away from the bed is the most difficult.

This year, I very reverently appreciate the feeling of cold, because to get in frost in the morning - it raises the mood for free without any courses and meditation. And if the snow on the street is white and fluffy, then this is real happiness.

I am also an unspoken ambassador of the bath. December is my favorite month of the year, when you can gladly sit in the bathhouse, and then emerge from it in the snow and incredibly high.

The bathhouse is the most for hard -forrs who cannot sit even ten minutes in silence. During a good campaign in the bathhouse, a complete reboot occurs. The main thing is that it is not a friend of a broom to soar on the heels, but professional Parmasters knocked out everything out of you.

My favorite baths in Peterbruig are “steam for steam” and the suburban complex “Bor 812”. The first is an amazing complex on the "specific", where they managed to make a cool component in an unsightly exterior. There is a hay! And in “Bor 812”, of course, you don’t look like a week, you need a company and an occasion.

I don’t take anything to the bathhouse with me, I just drink Ivan-tea. Herbal collections go there perfectly there: you lie on the grass, you are soared by grass, sniff the grass and drink grass. Super!

Risks

- It was difficult for me to [change my lifestyle] and is still hard to do many things. But through these difficulties, I understand more and more how often we live in our vacuums, we do not know how to expand and look at situations from other points, and not just our “super -subjective look”.

Plus, I have an alarming Monkey-Mind: I am not very reinforcing, quite impulsive and [all changes]-Challeng for me. It must be understood that not everything will work out right away, and not to reproach yourself for it, but to try again.

This is a long way into life. You cannot work out for a year and then always enjoy the feeling "Well, everything, I'm the best." There is no final point: there will be rollbacks, there will be excellent discoveries.

Over the past month, I realized that everything really important can be put on my schedule. Everything rests on goal -setting and questions, why do I need it, if I want it.

You can come up with many excuses and important deeds, but you can just get up early and do the necessary - because you know why you need it, and you are waiting for this time.

From experience, I understand that if I wake up and first of all I will read telegram channels, then I’ll have breakfast and somehow go to the office, then my condition will not be the best. And if in the morning I will not pick up the phone and do something creative for myself, and then I will go to work calmly, then I will encounter exactly the same challenges and deeds, but I will react to them much more balanced.

The benefit [care for myself] is obvious: it helps me in all my projects. Therefore, I always find the time for practices and rituals in the morning and evening. If you look closely, it turns out that things and meetings can be canceled and transferred, but we often build them to a pedestal. The question is always the value of these cases for us.