“A diamond is a chunk of coal that did well under pressure.” — Henry Kissinger

It can be very hard to remain calm and present during challenging times. Today certainly feels like one of those days, and if you’re finding yourself preoccupied, stressed, and pressured today, you are certainly not alone.

If you’re struggling today and want to feel a bit more calm and centered, there are several relatively simple things that are reasonably easy to do. I have found them to work wonders.

Stand on your head. I'm sure you're thinking, "Really?" This one is a tiny bit exaggerated to get your attention, but only a tiny bit because actually standing on your head, or doing a handstand, would accomplish the goal here. It just may not be practical. The point is that all of those forward folds and downward-facing-dogs we practice in a yoga class (if you practice yoga) are about more than stretching out our hamstrings and backs. Turns out getting your head below your heart has a calming effect on the central nervous system. This partly explains why we feel so fantastically calm and centered most of the time after yoga practice, we've spent some time inverted. So try it, when you're feeling irritated, angry, anxious, excited, whatever, just do a nice long forward fold. Try to touch your toes, or do a rag doll bend, sit and bend down so that you’re hanging your head between your knees, or something. And just stay there for a few minutes with your head below your heart. It works.

Breathe. You've heard this before, I’m sure. Breathing is one of our best tools for calming, and one we so often forget that we have. Here are a couple breathing exercises that might help you calm yourself today.

• Cleansing Breaths. In yoga, throughout a practice, we often do deep, cleansing breaths. These are super easy to do, you just inhale deeply through your nose and then open your mouth and "sigh" it out. The idea is to exhale pretty intensely so that you can hear yourself and it sounds like a loud sigh. This kind of breathing actually signals to your brain that everything is ok and helps to calm you. Do several of these to release the stress inside, and do them throughout the day as you feel stress and/or pressure building.

• Breathe deeply and evenly through your nose, or breathe deeply through your nose making the inhale a bit shorter and the exhale a bit longer. This type of breathing helps activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which will calm your body (do a minimum of three breaths and as many after that as you need)

Clean Up. Have you ever noticed that you feel lighter and freer when the house is clean and organized? This is because our brains really interact with the world around us, and when things are chaotic around us, we feel more internal chaos. Therefore, when things around us are more orderly and organized, we feel internally more centered, peaceful, and relaxed. So clean up. Set up a donation pile and go through your storage spaces, closets, toy room, etc. and donate the things that you really don't need or use anymore. Clean off and declutter the surfaces in your kitchen, office, bedroom, common rooms. Get your surroundings to a place that feels more organized and less "full" and see how much more relaxed and present you feel.

Meditate: Meditation is a good dual purpose suggestion. Not only can it often help ground you in the present moment, which can lead you to calm a bit and respond better to whatever is happening, but it also functions like "mental push-ups," exercising your brain to strengthen the parts the help you regulate yourself and manage stress better. Try to set aside some time today, or a few chunks of time throughout the rest of the day, and sit quietly in meditation. Use a guided meditation (many are available online or on free versions of apps such as Calm, Headspace, or Insight Timer), or simply keep your awareness on your breathing or on one or more of your senses to anchor you in the present moment.

Be calm and smile today, the world will certainly benefit.