AI & Art

 

When it comes to art, there is no consensus on what qualifies as art. There is a perpetual passionate debate about "What is Art?" amongst the art scholars and critics. So when it comes to calling something "Art", I stick to the basics: If you think it is Art then it is Art. 

There is an apparent ongoing paradigm shift in the art world with all the craze around NFTs. Renewing school-of-thought that the spirit of art could accommodate the utilitarian as well as aesthetic outlook. As for "the purpose of art", it is integral to the human experience.  I digress to steer this blog into the never-ending discussions on what qualifies as Art. This blog is about Artificial Intelligence. 

Having created a neural network that outputs "art" seems like a paradox to me. What is the epitome of creativity here? The art created or the code that creates a virtual "brain" that creates the artwork.  If we try to settle all the questions on that, it will take a lot of time and many assumptions. Thus, I believe, let us leave it to the thinkers as a subjective matter.

So after "Releasing" the album in my last blog post, I thought now it is time to hand over an easel and brush to another AI model. So I trained AI to create another artform. When it comes to painting I wanted my model to paint what I like to paint the most: Oil painting portraits. Well, we can't actually do it on canvas with real oil paints cos let's face it I have so many limitations on having a real-life robot and training it to do so. So for all the intents and purposes, I will stick to a virtual replica of an oil painting aka Image.

Oil On Canvas Portrait 

To do so, I built a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). Generative modelling is an unsupervised learning task in machine learning that involves automatically discovering and learning the regularities or patterns in input data. GANs work by identifying the patterns, So I trained them on images of portraits. The orientation and poses in the dataset did very vastly which makes it difficult for the model to recognise the patterns. Despite knowing that, I was still willing to give it a try. As I basically love oil painted portraits and thought it would be awesome to see what a machine would process out of it. 

How It works!

Neural Networks are the basis of deep learning where the algorithms are inspired by the structure of the human brain. The Neural Network takes in data, train itself to understand the patterns in the data and gives out the output in a new set of similar data. Let us learn how a neural network processes data. A Neural Network consists of layers of Perceptrons, the fundamental component of a Neural Network. The network consists of three kinds of layers; An input layer, an output layer and sandwiched between those are one or more hidden layers.

Say we want to build a neural network that can classify images of cats and dogs. The input layer takes in the data in the form of images of cats and dogs, which is encoded as the numeric values of pixels in all three colour channels. The neurons in the input layer are connected to the consequent layer, so on and so forth, via channels. each of these channels is allotted some weights. Weights are a numeric value, which is then multiplied with corresponding input data, that is the pixels value in our example. This multiplied data value is passed on to the corresponding hidden layer. Each neurone in the hidden layer is associated with a value called bias. Which is then added to the input to the neuron from the previous layer and passed on to an activation function. The Activation function outputs the result which decides if the corresponding neuron will be activated or not. I like to think of it as the synapse in the human brain. If the corresponding neuron is activated the data is forwarded to the next layer. This unidirectional flow of data is called forward propagation. This goes on for as many hidden layers as the said neural network has. At the output, layer ends the neurons with the highest value fire up and this is the determinant of the prediction by the network. This prediction is in the form of probability and the output class getting higher probability is the final classification of the model. For an untrained neural network, this is absolutely arbitrary.

When we train a network it iterates the values of weights and biases in such a way that the final values are optimized to predict the right output. This is done by a process of bi-direction information flow that includes backpropagation. To train a neural network along with the training data the network is also fed the actual class of the image. In this way, with each iteration, the network gets to evaluate the errors. This comparison of the calculated values and the true values is indicative that there is a need to change the values of weights and biases. As this information feed propagates backwards through the network the weights are adjusted. This backward flow of information is called backpropagation. During the training, this forward and backward flow of information iterates over with multiple data points a number of times, until the error is significantly low and the predictions are mostly correct.

This approach is good for classifying data. To generate images, I will build a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). It is a dexterous way of posing the problem as a supervised learning problem. It comprises two models, a Generator and a Discriminator.

Two models are trained, simultaneously, by an adversarial process. The generator ("the artist") learns to create images, that look like the dataset. While a discriminator ("the art critic") learns to tell real images apart from fakes. During training, the generator progressively becomes better at creating images that look real. Likewise, the discriminator becomes better at telling them apart. As the process reaches equilibrium, the discriminator can no longer distinguish between real and fake.

Generative modelling is an unsupervised learning task in machine learning. It involves automatically discovering and learning the regularities or patterns in input data. As GANs work by identifying the patterns in the data, I used portraits. However, glancing over the dataset gave me an idea that it was going to be a long shot. The orientation and poses in the dataset vary vastly. Keeping that in mind I was still willing to give it a try. Only because portraits are my jam. I basically love oil painted portraits.

The output of the Neural Network picked up some patterns in the portraits. As we can see in the slide below. My model with GAN worked quite well.

GAN Generated Portraits 

Check out my full project Kaggle notebook for this one. (here)

GANs are notorious for being data-hungry, so I would consider increasing the dataset. There were many inconsistencies in the data which is rather complicated for the GAN to learn. Incustencies in colour pallet and poses orientations. Cleaning the data for the portrait styles would certainly help. Training it longer i.e. for more epochs would also help. Lastly, one can always strive to make a more robust architecture for the Neural Networks.

Nonetheless, I am pretty pleased with the way it turned out. It has been a few weeks since I published this notebook. So, I am delighted to tell you that it has a Kaggle's Gold medal now. This being my 15th Gold on Notebooks (and my 15th Notebook) I am now a Kaggle Notebooks Grandmaster!

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Lyrics Generation 

Music Generation

Link To My Notebooks

Down The Uncanny Valley

The uncanny valley is the abrupt dip in human affinity to a non-human creature when we see it approaching human-like characteristics. For instance, the spooky feeling when one looks at Sofia the robot or  Lil Miquela the Instagram influencer. Really though, Lil Miquela gives me the creeps when I go through her timeline. It is the eeriness of a realistic face with personalized captions with her sense of awareness that she is not a real person that is quite unsettling. 

Album Cover

Although, Artificial Intelligence amazes me all the time. There is something surreal about it that makes working with it exciting. Of course, we can peel off the layers and see the maths behind them. Get to the matrices and tensor to understand how these neurons work. Even get the values of weights and biases and assure ourselves that this is no sorcery. Still, when I see the result play out it is astonishing. They are mysterious and quite understandable at the same time. Nonetheless, It is the emotional uneasiness associated with it that is difficult to process.

When I first decided to build an AI to write song lyrics for me, to my surprise, I was able to get to a working model pretty fast. I will spare you a summary of my personal learning curve and my initial skill set. As that is too resume-ish for the blog's content, some may say. I geek out in my blogs, I mean that's basically what I live for. 

Long story short, the initial "working" Recurrent Neural Network that did generate some output, only generated gibberish. After a few improvements, I reached a model that had real word generation. Although to my dismay, the network appeared to be obsessed with being "born". That was a sneak into the uncanny valley of AI. Fascinating! 

AI's Obsession On Being Born

This Probably was my Victor Frankenstein moment. God's complex or God's conundrum.

After that, refining the model was pretty peachy, The AI wrote an extension of my poems. And I think it was quite thoughtful. Okay, at least it was a bunch of fully-formed meaningful sentences... stuck together mostly out of any context. And that was actually what's expected if we look into the way Recurrent Neural Networks work. 

My Poem Extended By AI

As long as there were words and were arranged together in a manner that would pass as a sentence at first glance; I was proud of my little AI monster. After all, it is just a child in front of the giants, from open AI & hugging face. Those transformer-based models are trained on a ginormous amount of information. The adjective State-of-The-Art is often associated with such models. They have is these delightful websites interfaces where you could just go and type one line to text and In return, they would generate a book for you! I so wish I had that during my academic years. I would have saved so many midnight candles that I burnt on completing the assignments. The assignments that, I still believe, no one ever read.

Getting unstructured sentences from the model, got me thinking; If only language had a set of rules that were slightly less intricate. Maybe had a certain strick pattern ... a sort of key. Like musical compositions have. Like Mozart's Symphony No 40, one of his most popular, in the key of G minor. the symphony is literary known as the great G minor.  

Sound is created by vibrations in the air. There can be infinite kinds of soundwaves as there are infinite combinations of frequencies and amplitudes. In music, we consider pitch and wavelength. As there are infinite soundwaves there can be infinite musical notes. However, contemporary music uses12 unique notes. The 12 notes have a constant difference in frequency with respect to each other. 

Twelve Notes on Piano

Though there are far more keys on a piano, all of them are different versions of those 12 notes on musical instruments. Say in the above image the key of A has a frequency of 220 Hz. The next assortment of keys will be set in a different octave and that A will be of frequency 440 Hz. Each shift in the octave doubles the frequency. 

Twelve Tone Musical Scale

Not all of the notes sound good together, there are a selected set of notes that are used in a song. This set of selected notes are indicative of the Key. When a song is in the key of C Major or D Minor this is simply telling you which of the 12 notes are used in this song.

Back to the initial topic, This sets up an easier pattern for a Recurrent Neural Network to learn than to learn a language with a strict syntax and oh so many exceptions. Besides even if it breaks those rules, I would never know. 

I went further down the valley and made my first AI model generate music. I trained it with Frédéric Chopin's compositions. On second thought I think, Beethoven would have been an ideal candidate. Nonetheless, I did skip over my initial plan to work with Mozart's works... Ugh! What the hell I didn't want to work on data scraping there I said it! So I found this big dataset on Kaggle and Chopin’s was the one with the most files. 

The first output was basically "something" ponding on the same key with one finger at a constant interval of time. It was still an art form, in my opinion, Made me think deep and hard about existence and how we should all be just annihilated right on the instinct the next note is played. The longer I played it the more I was convinced of it 

After making a few tweaks in the architecture of the network It worked alright not as good as Frédéric Chopin's. Still, it is nice. See for yourself. 

On scrutinising the generated melody, as it has a variety of notes; I am quite satisfied. On the enigma, is it a good musical composition; is it artsy? Did the AI create a masterpiece? I don't know! I am not a connoisseur of music. I used a Recurrent Neural Network and it worked alright. I decided to let the AI have the fame it deserved. 

So, I am releasing the album here on this blog! Yey! Don't forget to get your copy!

Get your copy:

 

Afternoon On Pluto

 

Almost A Lovesong (for Zombies)

 

Children's Rhyme By The Clown

 

Homealone In Lockdown

 

Midnight Intruder

 

Netflix and Videocall

 

Secret Stash

 

Up The Infinite Castel

 

Thanks for visiting my Blog; it’s always good to see you here!

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Links to my RNN Projects:

Lyrics Generation 

Music Generation

Link To My Notebooks

Dear Moon

Dear Moon,

It has been a long time since I last wrote to you. I hope you are doing well. It is a very different world now, Moon. We are under a lockdown till the 16th of April due to the ongoing pandemic. 2020 began with the trends of world war three on social media. On the first day of this year, social media was full of memes circulated on the ongoing war-like situation. Things went in a spiral down, but there is no war. It is a pandemic. We are not even halfway through the godforsaken year, and the whole world is bound to be in isolation. Cancellation of flights and closing of state borders as a precaution. It is to spare us from a further spread of the virus.

I reckon you don't get the memorandum on what is going on Earth. Nonetheless, I assume you are aware of the current scenarios. Moon, the sky is so clear since the lockdown. I got a glimpse of you during the daytime. I don't remember the last time I saw you during the day. Perhaps, I didn't care to look. Or maybe it was due to the typical Delhi's pollution blocking my view. I may never know. One thing I know of is that that our lives will be changed after this Pandemic.

In 2001, after 9/11, the trajectories of everyone's life was deflected. Either directly or indirectly entire world was affected. The social, political and economic conditions of the world are linked so intricately with our lives. Nonetheless, we often ignore the role the world plays in who we are and where we are heading.  At times like this, we come face to face with the fact that how fragile our accomplishments are on their own. 

On the other hand, pandemics are quite rare. One occurs every 100 years or so. In this context, the world is in a new territory. The situation is dire and warlike. People are stuck in different places with no access to essential services. The businesses are shut down. Jobs are lost. The news makes me overwhelmed! I try to avoid it, but keeping tabs on the situation is also necessary. 

An unexpected effect of this lockdown is a toll on people's mental health. Everyone is forced to sit with themselves and ponder over their lives, Moon. The sort of events that one brushes down by keeping busy on the work front resurfaces. I believe I am aware of my childhood and adulthood traumas. So in that context, I am better off than others. Especially when it comes to sitting in peace with oneself. Observing the thoughts come and go. I may not have resolved them but I know what floats my boat and what shakes it. So I am not stuck on contemplating the past and falling through the rabbit hole of unresolved feelings.  

I hope to keep up our correspondence. Until then  Goodbye. 

~Your Friend

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This post is from my series - Letters To The Moon.

Older Posts from series

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Chaos

There has been a popular phenomenon in media called the Butterfly Effect. It reveals how a butterfly flapping its wings in China could cause a hurricane in Florida. Okay, so it is not as simplistic as to link the cause and effect directly, to be clear. The butterfly is not some magical creature. It is more about how a small variation in a complex system can cause radical effects.  

This effect came upfront when in 1963 an MIT meteorologist Edward Lorenz was using an old computer to calculate weather patterns. He was working on a simulation of weather patterns and placed the data into the system. At his first attempt, he entered the initial data values up to six decimal places. However, on the second run of the system, he assumed that the significant figure doesn’t hold much of significance (Pun intended) he entered up to the three decimal places. Both the simulations were running on the same data; the only difference was after the three decimal places. 

However, this small change made the results remarkably different. To paint a clearer picture, say if the first simulation, with 6 decimal places, predicted a sunny day. The second run, with 3 decimal places’, the prediction was a hurricane. It is intuitive to think that if we change a little data input, in the beginning, this would lead to only a little change in the resultant data output. However, this is not the case in a chaotic system. 

A chaotic system is highly sensitive to initial conditions. These systems do follow the same laws of physics, however, due to a large number of constraints, it appears to be random. As the numbers of moving components in any system increase the calculation and prediction of the path, that the system takes become, well, chaotic. The turbulent system is an example of such systems. 

The Chaos theory attempts to find patterns in chaos. The model by Edward Lorenz is called Lorenz System. On plotting the graph of this model resembles spread-out wings of a butterfly, ergo the term butterfly effect. 

Nonetheless, the idea of it being linked to a butterfly flapping its wings seems more appealing to start the conversation about it. As a butterfly flaps its wings it sets up the air molecules in motion. Those molecules further strike other molecules, and this initiates a domino effect. Depending upon the system, this could potentially lead to the onset of a hurricane. The flutter of wings is similar to the variation in the data of the Lorentz's system. 

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Blog: A Classic Travel Blog

A few years ago, I was on a long drive from Dubai to Ras al Khaimah. The goal was to see the highest peak of the United Arab Emirates at Jebel Jais. It is so pretty to accelerate through such a rapidly changing landscape. In a desert-scape, the colour of sand varies so dramatically. It is fascinating to see this gradual change. FYI I love the colour of sand in Dubai as oppose to any other sand I have seen so far. It is a golden beige. The low saturation of this shade makes it fit perfectly to my current sense of aesthetics. 

As we rode through the fast-paced highway from Dubai to Ras al Khaimah. We found ourself in the middle of a pack of bikers. A group of 40 or so odd men riding their typical Dubai style modified bikes. It was an exciting sight to see. Nonetheless, I was far more interested in enjoying my playlist and watching the picturesque terrain. The theme track of the movie The Glass Castle was playing on the chart. If I think of it now, it feels like the Sunlight was filling up the world with hope.  

As we entered Ras al Khaimah, I started to notice a few pebbles on the sides of the road. At first, I thought it could be the theme of the vista of the city. However, As we drove further, it was not just a few pebbles. The terrain had dramatically changed into mountains of sedimentary rocks. It was clear at that point that this area was a waterbody. We parked our car at the side of a valley. There was a small pond at the bottom of the valley. Any rain in or around the proximity of that area kept this pond filled. 

We sat on a big roadside rock and finished our Mc Donalds takeaway that we had picked up at last gas station. (We bought our trash-bags back with us, in case you are wondering.) It was a nice stop to relish in the beauty of an isolated corner in the middle of nowhere. Often at places like this, a particular observation comes to mind; How the most beautiful places in the world are the ones that have no human inhabitants. 

After resting for a while, we continued our drive to the peak of Jabal Jais. We drove up to the topmost motorable point. We decided to climb further on the mountain. It was a scenic view from the top. After tracking for a while it started to get dark. On considering that a downwards descent would be harder in dark. we decided to head back on the downward track.  We reached an open lounging station. There were a few people at this location. Most of them had their barbeque setups on the place. The air was filled with celebrations. People were playing music. 

As the night passed, we took out our beach mat from the car's trunk. We laid on the highest peak of the UAE and the sky was clear. Our view was filled with bright stars. We spotted a few shooting stars. Talked about random stuff and shared some snacks that we had bought. 

The conversation led us to the stories of ghosts. We decided the next stop for the night was going to be the abandoned Ghost village in Ras al Khaimah. Spoiler alert: we did not find any ghost. However, that's a story for some other time.

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Apocalypse

As I Pulled my laptop to start writing my very first post of 2020, my news updates notified me “Wimbledon is cancelled for the first time since World War II due to the coronavirus pandemic”. I thought it is almost unprecedented. Unprecedented - A word we heard a lot in the past couple of years over news debates and whatnot. 

Strangely enough, this pandemic and its effects are something none of us experienced before. The other day my mother shared her concerns by asking rhetorically “How long will this go on?”. “I don’t know I have no experience in something like this” I replied. “Nor have I.” she retorted. 

My mind often draws a parallel of the current situation to movies like the birdbox, a quiet place, etc. At this current day, life seems like the beginning of a dystopian apocalypse. However, in the movies, the situation accelerates too fast. Perhaps they, in the movies, never get the chance to “flatten the curve”. “Flatten the curve”; Another phase appears a lot on media in light of the pandemic. I shall pardon you the explanation assuming that at this time you will all be broadly aware of the mathematical models of infectious diseases. (if not then perhaps I shall write about it for you some other time)

Much like in the movies, media is flooded with the only thing "apparently" happening in the world right now. I admit having paid my fair share of heed to the apocalypse analogy. India has been on 21-days lockdown since March 24. So, I do spend uncountable hours scrolling through the news. I imagine an extension to the lockdown ... Lockdown lasting up to an indefinite time. A time when crumbling supply-chain and the crashing economy would be scattered on the green landscape of this spring. 

The spring of 2020, on the other hand, is one of the prettiest spring we have had in Delhi. The clear blue sky filled with puffy bright clouds. Birds are chirping everywhere. A pleasantly cool breeze flows towards the east. My cats purr while basking in the sun as the sunlight flies through their whiskers. It is a beautiful site. The sound of pin-drop silence is my favourite sound on any day of the year. However, at this time this silence is dire. Like we are tip towing in the eye of a hurricane. 

Or maybe, this abrupt spike in panic is all in my mind.  Anxiety makes you anticipate the most unfortunate scenarios. Meh! 

This too shall pass. 

How are you coping with the current times?  Let me know in the comment section below.

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Anxiety

The human brain is a clever organ. In a dangerous situation, it takes over the steering wheel to an auto mode. The fight-or-flight response is a natural reaction that occurs in the presence of something that is terrifying. The response is triggered by the release of hormones that prepare our body to either stay and deal with a threat or to run away to safety.

In ancient times when our ancestors lived in caves and had frequent face-offs with bears, tigers or other life-threatening organisms (or situations), they could either fight or escape. We have the same physiological and psychological response hardwired in our brain to prepares the body to react to the danger. In layman's terms, it is like a reflex action, but prolonged.

Imagine face off with a hungry lion during one of those relaxing morning walks. Unlikely, I know but work with me here ... You are walking down the usual route and suddenly a lion appears in front of you. You wouldn't think twice but run. Faster than Forest Gump, I know I would. In that instant, our brains sympathetic nervous system (reflex action part of the brain) kicks in and shuts down the prefrontal cortex (thinking and reasoning part of the brain). We are out of reasoning and rationalising part of the brain and our brain's prime objective is to make sure we survive.  So we fight or flight. Our body is prepared to fight or run and sometimes to freeze in fright. This brings in a number of physical changes to give the body increased strength.

• Blood pressure, heart rate and blood sugars levels increase in order to supply the body with extra energy.
• Increased muscle tension in order to provide the body with extra speed and strength.
• The vision is heightened or sometimes it is a tunnel vision.
• The onset of shallow breathing
• The blood clotting function of the body speeds up.  
• Adrenaline hormone is released. So it provides energy and makes the person alert to take prompt action.

All the physiological changes help the body to sustain the imminent threat. However, in an anxious mind, like mine, has a constant notion of perceived threat. A small whiff or sound, some distant memory and in most of the times absolutely nothing triggers the fight or flight response. A sheer state of panic and confusion takes over. That situation is called a panic attack. I tend to avoid doing things that I feel are uncomfortable as I know my body would react in the following way and that might freak me out.

• Inability to breathe or swallow
• A feeling of constraining force around the chest
• Mild but concentrated pain in the chest
• Sweaty palms
• Cold hands and feets
• Dizziness
• Pain in shoulders
• Feeling of terror
• Dry eyes due to heightened vision
• Having to pee frequently
• Feeling claustrophobic
• Lights feel too bright
• Confusion
• In an extreme case, numbness throughout the face  
• Uncontrollable crying

Steps that I take to deal with anxiety

It is very important to have and maintain a strict routine. It helps in getting our body and our mind accustomed to our everyday life. The routine doesn't let the body get off balance by panic. Having a healthy body is the key to sound and calm mind, and vice versa. Thus to live a hearty life we should follow a wholesome lifestyle.

Diet

Eating healthy meals is vital for overall well being. Be fastidious to including all required nutrients in the diet. Eating on time is also crucial to routine. Staying hydrated is equally essential.

For me, I start my day with a glass of warm water followed by overnight soaked almonds. I focus on having balanced home-cooked meals. I make sure to include seasonal fruits and veggies. I drink from 3 to 4 litres of water a day.

When it comes to anxiety certain foods can feed it while others can soothe it. If you suffer from anxiety include seasonal fruits and veggies, lots of greens, eggs, yoghurt or buttermilk, walnuts, figs in your meals. Avoid coffee; Coffee activates the adrenaline gland and stimulates fight or fright response. Don't eat junk food or eat out too often.

Sleep Hygiene

 

Sleep hygiene includes a set of behaviours that one can adapt to help promote good sleep. It is a way of using behavioural interventions in our life that will help us start and maintain a good sleeping routine. Read more about it here

On a typical night, I brush my teeth and take a shower before going to bed. I put on comfy and clean nightwear. I turn on low-intensity light about 1 hour before bedtime and get away from my phone and other digital devices 30 minutes before going to sleep. I use the vanilla aroma in my room as it helps me calm my nerves. Last but not least I use sleeping meditation to doze off. I recommend the Headspace app they have some really nice guided meditation to sleep.

Calm the mind to relax the  body

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us. A way of practising mindfulness is by paying attention to our surrounding. I practice this by noticing 3 things that I can see, touch and hear and describe them in my mind. This doesn't let the mind roam. Trying to be in present physically as well as mentally instead of being at a place while our mind is wandering around in multiple mental scenarios.

In our day to day life, our phones are somewhat the culprits by distracting us (or we are the culprits for being distracted by the phones. Or the algorithms that the apps are using ... ) The tech companies iterate their algorithms to grab our attention. Our mind is being exposed to too many attractive amusements especially meant to get a hold on our mind's time, personally. If you think of it this fight for our attention amongst the different apps is kind of evil. It is taking us away from the natural course of being focused on the work in hands. At this point, it is up to us to procure the sound mental state by controlling and training our mind to deal with such distractions.

I keep my conscious focus on only one task at a moment. Whenever I acknowledge myself doing something on my computer screen while simultaneously doing something else on my phone. I immediately take my attention to one thing.

Meditation

The benefits of meditation are numerous. For anxiety and depression, it trains the brain to be in the moment. It is believed that the human mind thinks an average of 70000 thoughts per day. If not half, some of them are bound to be negative and worrisome thoughts. Such thoughts are the food for anxiety. Meditation helps the mind in gaining control over thoughts.

Practising daily meditation for 10 to 15 minutes workes for me. It helps in building focus that is being deteriorated by my mind keeping multiple tabs on thoughts and emotions. By the end of the meditation session, I find my body calmer and my mind fresh. For instance, I have noticed that a part of my fight or flight response is a heightened vision due to which my anxious self makes my eyes feel quite dry, perhaps because of lesser blinking. After meditation, my eyes have just the right amount of moisture.

Journaling

Writing down our thoughts works well to organise our thoughts. venting on a piece of paper is cathartic and releases the pent up emotions. Helps us explore our emotions and heal. I must admit, I am not as disciplined with keeping a journal as I am with keeping up my other anxiety curing activities. However, when I enforce it on myself I always find some of that mental fog coming clear. It rationalises the preoccupied mind and lifts the mood. After writing I feel as I have taken a step further towards wellness.

Relaxed body to calm the mind

Breathing exercise

One of the common things with anxiety is breathlessness. I find myself hyperventilating with shallow breaths. At the time of the panic attack, I cannot quite catch my breath. Doing breathing exercise helps in the better intake of oxygen, relieves stress, lowers the blood pressure and releases endorphins. Whenever I am overwhelmed, I try to catch a few deep breaths, focusing on the movement of the diaphragm as I inhale and exhale. It helps in calming the anticipated/ upcoming outburst of panic.

Yoga

Relieves the physical symptoms of anxiety. My anxiety manifests as stiffness throughout my body to such an extent that I start feeling achy. Yoga helps in relaxing those muscles. It makes us aware of our body and gives us better control over our body.

Yoga also regulates breathing by conscious deep breathing. My shallow breathing during my panic attacks would have worked for me if I was a cavewoman and my life was on stake. However, for my day to day life, it doesn't provide the amount of oxygen that my body needs.

Exercise

Exercise promotes the release of endorphins.  Endorphins promote the mental and physical well being and relieves stress. I do 15 to 20 minutes cardio. Any vigorous workout that gets our muscles to work will help with. I personally prefer cardio, you may enjoy dancing, Zumba or Hip-hop maybe. The key is to focus on the body and don't be zoned out. Enjoy the feeling of tension and relaxation in different muscle groups. Turning the focus fully to the body while exercising doubles as a mindful practice.

Read my old post on anxiety here