The 1-Minute Trick to Calming Down Your Nervous System

Your brain is very good at time travel. At any given moment, it might be replaying what already happened or rehearsing what could go wrong next. How do you snap back fast to reality? Try “active noticing,” an easy way to reclaim your thoughts from wherever they’ve wandered off to.

“It’s just coming back to the present moment, and being fully there,” says Arati Patel, a mindfulness-based psychotherapist in Ventura, Calif. “When you’re present, you can’t really be anxious—you can’t be...