This de-stressing technique is great to create extra movement for your body on an hourly basis. To move the blood around in your body and to provide fresh blood to your brain.

It contracts your muscles to provide a pump-like effect for your lymphatic drainage system, helping you push out toxins from your body more effectively.

It’s also amazing at shaking off negative energy buildup after a stressful (fight or flight) episode. It works great to bring your body’s ANS (autonomic nervous system) back to peace.

Most mammals have this naturally inbuilt reflex. Hence the name: Zebras, after they’ve been chased, will stop and visibly shake for a while to release energy built up from the chase.

What To Do

• Stand straight with your eyes open.
• Start bouncing on the spot (on your toes), allowing your entire body to shake gently and randomly – like a rag-doll :o). Flop about as much as you feel comfortable – arms, legs, buns, wrists – the lot (without hurting yourself).
• Do this for 10-30 seconds, then let your body take over and leave it to do the movement naturally (trust me it knows what to do).
• Then after another 10-20 seconds come to a natural gentle stop.
• NOTICE how your body feels now… buzzzzz…

Do this once an hour to get yourself up and about = creating opportunities to move.

This de-stressing technique is also a cool (and fun) tool you can use to teach your kids to help them deal with stressful moments.

Your Call to Tiny Little Action

See if you can slot this technique at least 2 times somewhere in your day. A really neat trick I used, is to do the Shaking Zebra while waiting for my coffee to brew, or the kettle to boil. It gives me 3-4 opportunities to move each day and I don’t have to remember to do it, as I stacked that new habit onto something I was already doing.