Feeling stressed? Join the party. Between the pandemic, the recession, and the election, it feels like a good time to take a moment and breathe. The Grabbits are all about reducing stress and boosting resilience. So, here’s a meditation aid to help everyone find a little calm in the current storm.

This aid is designed for people aren’t necessarily into meditation. If you find your attention drifts when you try to meditate or you fall asleep (yep!), this aid can help you focus by engaging your hands and eyes as you direct your attention to positive stuff you’d like to cultivate in your life and share with others.

To use, print the free download below and cut out the circle. If you’d like to make it smaller to carry, fold the circle on the white lines to create a little booklet of wedges.

For the meditation, start on Peace and coordinate your breathing so that you breathe in the outer intention and breathe out the inner intention. For example, think to yourself: Breathe in Peace, breathe out Hope. Then, slide to the right and repeat with each wedge of intentions. When you get back to Peace, see how you feel. Sometimes just one cycle can be enough to feel a shift to a more positive mindset. And, sometimes it feels good to take two or three trips around the wheel.

Like everything at Grabbits HQ, this free tool is meant to offer a way to shift perspective. Feelings often build off of each other, making it hard to break out of a negative emotional cycle, especially when the circumstances that caused the bad feelings haven’t changed. We’ve all been there. The goal here is to prime the nervous system with positive thoughts and intentions in order to break free from a negative frame of mind. This isn’t to deny or ignore the problems at hand, but to recharge and reframe so the brain has the energy and freedom to stabilize, cope, and (hopefully) see new ways to make things better.

Grab the free printable below, and please feel free to share it with anyone who could use it.

If need you more than a meditation aid, please don’t hesitate to seek additional support. Here’s a site with several free hotlines to talk it out. If you’re in New York, check out the impressive offering of free resources at Project Hope.

Life is hard. Times are tough. Take care of yourself.