Everyone needs to calm down, chill out, and take a breather sometimes. Here are some proven relaxation techniques for teenagers that will help you maintain your composure, find peace, become centered again, and have an easier time sorting out your thoughts and focusing on what you need to do.
1. Exercise
Exercise will get your heart rate up, which seems like it could be the opposite of relaxation, but when you have a lot on your mind, sitting around doing nothing can just make it harder to relax, so what you might need is to actually get up and move around a bit.
You don’t need to do a crazy amount of exercise, either. If you’re not the most active person, just going for a walk can be a great way to relax. If you’re usually pretty fit, then a hard workout can feel great when you need to relax, you’ll be familiar with that feeling of accomplishment and calm that comes after a great workout.
2. Yoga
Speaking of exercise, yoga would fall under the category of exercise but it’s unique enough that it falls somewhere in-between exercise and meditation (which both appear on this list separately as well.)
You can learn a few simple poses and hop into them when you feel the need to relax, or you can make a daily habit out of doing yoga for five, ten, or even fifteen minutes or longer.
Start with a pose or two, learn the basics, and then expand and learn new yoga poses as you go. You can find all sorts of helpful videos on YouTube, or you can attend a local class or yoga lessons, depending on how serious you want to be about it.
Either way, when you’re feeling stressed out or angry, doing some yoga is a good way to get your mind off of things, and the physical activity will leave you ever-so-slightly more capable of handling whatever’s bothering you moving forward.
3. Music as a Relaxation Technique
Music is a time-tested and proven way to relax. You don’t necessarily need to listen to “relaxation music”, either. Sometimes, the best way for some people to relax is by turning on some heavy metal and just tuning the world out.
You probably already know which types of music help to calm you and which genres get you worked up. When you’re looking to relax, listening to music is one of the best relaxation techniques for teenagers, especially if you have a playlist ready to go.
If you don’t have a relaxation playlist, start one right now! Anytime you come across a song that makes you feel good, add it to that list, and you’ll organically put together an amazing list of songs that have already proven to help you relax and feel good when you listen to them.
4. Good Communication and Conversations
If you’re having a conflict with somebody, then having a good style of communication can be super helpful of helping resolve the issue so that you can relax.
Sometimes, you’ll need to practice anger management for teenagers and calm down before continuing with a conversation to sort things out. This can cause added tension if one of the people likes to talk things out immediately and the other person likes to calm down a bit first, but knowing this and knowing how you communicate and how that interacts with other people you talk to, helps to navigate conflicts and to resolve the situations in healthy ways.
Interpersonal conflict aside, good conversations can be incredible relaxing and can help to ground people. A good chat with a good friend can be therapeutic, it can help you remember what’s important to you and really get your mind right.
Beyond that, talking to an actual therapist if you’re dealing with difficult times can be very helpful. The power of conversation and talking and communicating to help people to relax should never be overlooked!
Being at ease mentally can help open up the doors to great conversations and relaxation in general. People who like to explore nootropics and supplements can also try mushroom gummies (the legal kind) that are made from Lion’s Mane, which can help promote relaxation and calmness.
5. Breathing Techniques for Relaxation
Learning some breathing exercises for teenagers is a really good tool to have in your relaxation toolkit. There are a number of different breathing techniques so we’ll leave that up to you to research and find what works for you, but here are some breathing techniques that you can check out by the University of Michigan.
If you want to try the most simple breathing exercise, simple take a deep breath, hold it for a second or two, and then breathe out. Repeat this 10 times, and see if you feel even slightly calmer compared to before you started breathing and counting.
It’s not magic, but it can really feel like. As you learn more advanced breathing techniques, you’ll gain more and more control over your feelings and your mood by being able to harness the ability to calm yourself, to slow your heart rate down when you’re getting heated, and to avoid escalating situations that can sometimes get out of hand due to stress. Breathing exercises are an amazing relaxation technique for teenagers to learn, and something everybody should look into a bit more.
6. Posture as a Relaxation Technique for Teenagers
If you find yourself sitting at your desk feeling tense, stressed out, and frustrated, take a moment to think about how you’re sitting and your posture. Poor posture can lead to you feeling even more tense and even less relax, so if you’re already doing something stressful or that has you tense, adding bad posture on top could bring it to a breaking point where you’re not able to get your work done.
That’s just one example, better posture can help you in a ton of different situations. Do you find yourself tensing up your shoulders when you’re sitting on the bus, feeling awkward maybe? Being aware of this and learning to have a more relaxed posture can actually lead to more relaxed feelings overall.
It’s almost like a “fake it ’til you make it” sort of thing, if you’re sitting around in a tense and stressed postured, you’ll start to feel that way. On the contrary, if you start having a more relaxed and calm posture, your mood will start to match – just give it a try!
7. PMR (Progressive Muscle Relaxation)
Progressive muscle relaxation feels like a type of meditation, and shares some similarities in how it’s done. A common meditation routine is to feel each part of your body, one by one, and to feel them relax. PMR is similar, it involves tensing these muscles in your body, one by one, and then relaxing them and being mindful of the difference. It’s common used by people living with anxiety, and you can learn more about PMR here.
These types of things (PMR, meditation, breathing exercises, yoga) give you the opportunity to re-center and connect the mind and the body together. Understanding the body and mind coming together can help you use your body to calm your mind, and your mind to help your body feel more relaxed, too. It can be super powerful, and you don’t have to get into all of the spiritual sides that sometimes come along with this, these techniques stand on their own as useful ways to reduce stress and to improve relaxation.
8. Meditation for Teens
Meditation for teens can be a great way for one to learn their body on a deeper level, to gain new control over their bodies and breathing (which also ties into muscle relaxation and breathing exercises, featured elsewhere on this post).
Meditation is widely used as a relaxation technique that also helps people feel more agile, limber, and healthy. It helps with physical well being as well as mental well being, making yoga a very worthwhile way to spend some time, especially for teens who are looking for ways to relax and calm themselves. Yoga is a great way to calm yourself and to find peace within.
Some people also like to use drinks that can help with relaxation, for example you may have noticed there’s been a mushroom revival in recent years, where healthy mushrooms such as Lion’s Mane are being used to create drink mixes. The practice of meditation also goes hand-in-hand with a healthy lifestyle, so toss aside the soda and explore some healthier options.
9. Aromatherapy
Whether or not you believe that essential oils have some sort of magical healing powers and properties, at the very least, a nice smell can help you feel more calm and relaxed, so I’m including aromatherapy as one of the best relaxation techniques for teenagers.
Whether you have an oil diffuser, candles, wax melts, incense, or some other form of scent that you enjoy, just breathing it in and taking a few deep breaths and closing your eyes can bring on almost instantaneous relaxation.
Better yet, you can combine this aromatherapy with most – if not all – of the other relaxation techniques for teens that we’ve gathered in this article. Yoga with your favorite smells in the background, you’ve got to love it! The same goes for meditation, listening to music, and more – all of these things are better with calming and relaxing scents in the background.
Final Thoughts on Relaxation Techniques for Teenagers
Hopefully, you will find some of these relaxation techniques for teens to be useful and something that you’ll be able to apply to your own life.
Remember, it’s not about biting off more than you can chew or trying to do all of these things, it’s about finding one or two that you can turn into a habit. If you try to master all of the relaxation techniques for teenagers at once, it can be overwhelming and can actually become a new source of stress – and that’s counterproductive!
