You’re waiting for a first date, or you’re about to give an important presentation, and you start feeling strange, like there is butterflies flying around your stomach.

Well, it turns out that this is stress. Your body is preparing you for a stressful situation. I am not going to go into the science here, you can find that out in the videos below.

Instead, here are a few things you can do to feel slightly less stressed.

Sit with the feeling. Don’t try and frantically push the feeling down, because that will make it come back stronger. Acknowledge it and respond to it gently. These exercises will tell your brain to calm down:

Take deep breaths, in through the nose and out the mouth. Count to 5 when you breathe in, hold your breath for 5 seconds, and breathe out for 5 seconds.

Soften your eyes. Sounds weird but try it. Scrunch up your eyes and open them slowly. Repeat that a few times.

Yawn. Pretend you are yawning – open your mouth wide, make the sound and everything. (This is what dogs do to calm down. Pretty cool, right?)

If you are feeling the stress in your shoulders, lean into it. Scrunch up your shoulder to your ears, scrunch up your face, hold it for 5 seconds, and let go. Repeat.

Hang in there.