With advent of Internet we’ve become citizens of the world today! Global citizens we call ourselves, and hence it is no surprise that our problems are also common. Stress being one; and a major one at that! The thought of stress is enough to stress us out. Let’s see how we can control them in 5 minutes!
Practice Progressive Relaxation: This is a technique where you close your eyes, open minds’ eyes, and begin to note of each body part and loosen them; skull, eyebrows, ears, cheeks, chin, neck, shoulders, chest, stomach, lower abdomen; pelvic, thighs, calf muscles, elbows, forearm, waist, knees, foot toe; think of every part one by one relax them, and move to next. This is called progressive relaxation. At the end take a few deep breaths, try to listen to your heartbeats. You will feel relaxed within 5 minutes.
Do Basic Yoga While Focusing on Breathing: Set specific yoga postures aside for phases when you get stressed. Yoga is known to be great stress reliever. Do asanas that will improve your blood flow, and normalize your heart beat and breathing. When you try syncing your breathing with Yoga, it helps to keep your focus and control your mind from thinking the thoughts that have caused this situation. And when you are doing yoga focusing on your breath, I think we’re automatically meditating.
Get a massage: A simple head, neck, and facial massage will do wonders for you! Not only will it help to reduce pain but also help to relieve stress.
Hug a Friend: Hug is known to relieve blood pressure and stress in adults; it’s a science backed theory. Having a pet also helps. Calling up a friend and discussing a different subject also helps to take your mind of the issue that has caused stress.
What works for me? A shift in mindset! A very typical thing works for me. Not always, and not at once, but it does help. When I am stressed, or when it’s building; when I’m feeling angry etc, there always comes a moment, when the thought strikes “if all this stress is worth it? Does it go with the bigger picture of life that I have? Is this likely to improve anything major?” and the answer is always NO. If not, then why am I fretting over it! Then I find a mental door to run, and release myself from the negativity. Eventually I become stronger than the stress. Then after an hour or so I get a feeling of headache, which I know is a result of over stretched nerves. I take it easy and by then I have already found my way out of it. I begin to relax. It takes effort, but it’s worth it.
Tip: If you’re learning to stress less, avoid keeping company of negative or aggressive people. They create unseen, emotional hurdles in our way of such a critical progress!
Try any of the above techniques for each of these are known to relax you quickly. Keep one thing mind; the techniques will work if you’re open to them. Some people know of 3 reasons to prove why it will not work, instead of giving one trick a try with an open mind; such people will have to find their own solutions, as nobody can help them. However they have remember that if not controlled stress will kill them irrespective of their logics and reasons for them.
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