5 quick, simple ways to calm your mind—including 1 that ‘puts a brake on the stress response,' doctor says

Meditating is a proven way to reduce stress, improve sleep and keep you engaged in your work and relationships. While a regular meditation practice might sound intimidating, it can actually be quite simple and take up very little of your day, according to Dr. Esther Sternberg.

Sternberg, a physician and author of "Well at Work: Creating Wellbeing in any Workspace," encourages people to try what she calls "micro-meditations."

"It doesn't have to be the daunting kind that requires months, if not years, of training, like Zen meditation," she tells CNBC Make It. These small acts require a lot less time, and don't have to involve sitting in stillness.

These five steps, whether done routinely or in a stressful moment, offer some of the same benefits of meditation — and you can do them pretty much anywhere.

5 simple techniques for a calm mind, from a doctor

1. Deep breathing exercises

Inhale deeply from your diaphragm, while placing your hands on your stomach. Aim for your stomach to move out as you breathe in.

"You do that a few times, and that will immediately put a brake on the stress response," Sternberg says.

Another deep breathing exercise that Sternberg recommends is the 4-7-8 technique: inhale for four seconds, hold your breath for seven and exhale for eight.

2. Fix your attention on something

"Attention is another aspect of micro-meditation," Sternberg says.

Just looking out the window and noting what you see, like the way the sun hits the leaves, "takes [you] out of [your] immediate anxiety zone."

Sternberg's suggestion resembles the 5-4-3-2-1 method which prompts you to pay attention to the things in your surroundings. Identify five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you hear, two things you smell and one thing you taste.

3. Spend time in nature

Head to your local park or any green space and just take a walk, Stenberg says. "Inhaling deeply, slow walking, all of those things kick in the relaxation response."

When you walk or hike in the woods, "you're breathing in what we call biogenic volatile organic compounds, which are the molecules released from plants just before rain or just after rain, when the air is moist," Sternberg says. "Those molecules themselves are relaxing."

Even if you aren't anywhere near a forest, a walking meditation in nature where you actually pay attention to what you see and hear, "takes you away from worrying about your troubles," she adds.

4. Practice gratitude

There's a Choctaw tradition that starts the day by "looking at each of the four directions, north, south, east, west and up and down," Sternberg says. The goal of the practice is to "feel gratitude for everything you see, all the trees, all the houses, whatever you see, feel gratitude, and feel gratitude for your loved ones."

Expressing gratitude for what you have and what nature provides moves you into a state of compassion.

"When you're in a compassion state, you're releasing dopamine, you're releasing endorphins, all these feel-good molecules," she says.

Keeping a gratitude journal and adding to it once a week left participants in a study feeling more optimistic than groups who wrote about the negative events that happened or general thoughts about the week's events, according to one study.

5. Drink a cup of tea

Having a cup of tea may not seem like a meditation but it can be, Stenberg says. An ancient tea ceremony in Japan involves giving thanks to everyone who attends and being grateful for everything that contributes to the experience, including the teapot and the cup.

"When you focus on that [and] slowly, instead of just pouring the tea in and gulping it down," and watch the tea change the color of the water and give off steam, the act becomes a micro-meditation. Relax and "feel the warm cup against your hands," she says.

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