What Actually Helps My Mental Health

Real reflections from everyday life – beyond trends, performance and hacks

Mental Health Awareness Week (in May) often brings a flood of advice, tips and slogans. Coupled with social media and the constant advice we get there, it can get overwhelming – ironically!

What I’ve learned over the years is this: none of us are experts on another person’s inner life. No one knows the texture of your mind, your history, your stresses or your strengths more deeply than you do.

But…

Sometimes simply by sharing honestly what helps us stay steady in difficult or pressured times can be of benefit to someone else.

So here are five real things that support my mental health. These have become steady companions through my life.

 

1. Less Rushing Around

One thing I increasingly notice is how much rushing affects the mind and nervous system.

When I rush constantly, I am more likely to:

  • make mistakes
  • overlook important things
  • become reactive
  • feel disconnected from myself
  • lose perspective

Of course, modern life often demands speed. Some days are genuinely full. Responsibilities need meeting. Deadlines exist.

But where possible, I try to reduce unnecessary rushing. If a day becomes overloaded, I ask:

  • What is actually essential today?
  • What can wait?
  • What can be simplified?

Less rushing does not mean laziness or lack of ambition. Often it creates clearer thinking, steadier decisions and a calmer body.

 

2. Relax the Face, Shoulders and Belly

Another thing that quietly helps me is softening physical tension points throughout the day. Especially during pressure or busyness, I try to remember to:

  • relax around the eyes
  • drop the shoulders
  • soften the belly

The body and mind are not separate systems. What happens physically affects us emotionally and mentally too.

Softening the eyes can interrupt the intense “narrow focus” state the brain enters during stress. Dropping the shoulders sends a signal – however brief – that we are no longer carrying the whole world alone. Softening the belly helps regulate the nervous system and breathing.

None of this magically removes life’s difficulties. But a few seconds of physical softening can interrupt a spiral of tension before it deepens, and bring us back to a remembering of what less tension feels like.

 

3. Old Wisdom and Nature

One of the deepest sources of support in my life has been ancient wisdom coupled with nature.

Nature alone can help mental health enormously. Most of us feel this instinctively. But for me, there is something even more healing in recognising the wisdom nature carries.

Near where I now live in Sussex is a large park with old trees, open spaces and quiet memorials dedicated not to a specific religion, but to peace, reflection and the wisdom of the natural world itself.

Some of the trees there have stood for hundreds of years. There is something profoundly reassuring in being near what has endured beyond trends, headlines, social media cycles and human dramas.

I also find comfort in old texts and teachings that have survived centuries because they speak to something enduring in human life: suffering, love, fear, change, meaning, compassion and peace.

In a world where everything moves quickly and attention is constantly pulled elsewhere, old wisdom reminds me that not everything important is new.

Wisdom – when true and timeless – is a form of emotional shelter.

 

4. Compassion

If I had to name one thing that has helped me through difficult periods of life, it would be compassion.

Not pity.
Not self-pity.
Not victimhood.
Not avoidance.

Compassion, to me, is honest understanding.

It means recognising:

  • what we are feeling
  • what pressures or experiences may have contributed to that
  • and responding without harsh judgement

Compassion does not remove the need for practical action, boundaries or resilience. But it creates a calmer foundation from which to respond wisely.

Without compassion, many people simply stay in cycles of self-criticism while trying to “fix” themselves.

With compassion, there is at some ground beneath our feet.

5. Non-Performative Yoga

I first wandered into a Yoga class in 1999 while working as a news journalist. What drew me in then is still what draws me now:

  • refuge
  • calm
  • presence
  • less self-absorption
  • a temporary freedom from constant mental noise

Yoga, at its heart, is not performance. It is not branding. It is not aesthetics. It is not external validation.

And honestly, much of modern “wellness culture” can sometimes obscure what Yoga actually offers.

Real Yoga – at least in the way I have experienced and practised it over the years – supports steadiness, humility, awareness and inner balance. It helps us come back into relationship with breath, body, attention and life itself.

That does not mean everyone needs to practise Yoga. Nor does Yoga solve your problems. Life remains unpredictable. Bodies change. Circumstances change.

But I do believe deeply that genuine contemplative practices — whether Yoga, meditation, prayer, walking quietly in nature, or simply learning how to be still — offer real support for mental wellbeing.

Not performative support.
But real support.

 

Final Thoughts

Mental health support is not found in dramatic transformations. It’s in meaningful repeatable acts of steadiness that reflect the mind-body connection:

  • slowing down a little
  • unclenching the body
  • sitting beneath old trees
  • speaking to ourselves with understanding
  • returning to practices that reconnect us with what matters

None of these remove the realities of modern life. But they can help us meet life with a little more presence, clarity and care.

-written by yoga and mindfulness teacher, and author, Divya Kohli, May 2026