“It’s your mind that creates the world.” - Buddha
As someone who thinks of herself as a pretty positive and generally happy person, I have felt a lot of stress the last few years. I did a good job at justifying why I was stressed from my past experiences to injuries to school and work, and well you get the picture.
But really, if it’s not one thing isn’t it always something else?
As many of my clients have excess and/or chronic stress regularly, I often find myself talking about the physical, mental and emotional consequences of stress on the body and mind. Then together with my clients we will go through strategies to reduce and manage stress and how to build their self-care toolbox.
Often times when I myself am dealing with health and wellness issues I ask myself: “what I would tell a client or friend?”
Lately I have been challenging the idea of how much stress I have in my life and how well am I dealing with it.
I wanted to share with you a few things I have been turning to when I am feeling more stressed:
Nourishing my body with food and nutrients. My go-to’s can be anything from pickles to chocolate to coffee, herbal tea or a handful of raspberries, and definitely looking for nutrient-dense foods too! Get those greens in, veggies at all meals, a good amount of protein and healthy fats!
Taking a few big breaths or meditating - breathing in for a count of 5 and exhaling for a count of 10 helps to stimulate your vagus nerve and move you in to a more relax state. I have really been loving the Chopra and Open apps for this. And no, this is not sponsored, thought wouldn’t that be great! ;).
Taking time to get outside in the sun whether it be in the garden or out for a walk
Moving my body - It can be coupled with getting outside, that’s a nice two for one. But it can also be lifting weights, taking a dance break, stretching, yoga or anything you like! This always helps my mood instantly.
Do nothing - I am working on this one, surprisingly this is the hardest one for me, just taking time to lie on the ground or legs up the wall, having a sauna blanket definitely helps me with this one!
Avoid/limit alcohol - this helps me not only sleep better (a key part of stress management) but also keeps me in a positive mood and more resilient to deal with stress. I am also constantly working on this.
Using my stress herbs like lemon balm, passionflower, kava, chamomile and lavender, try them in tea, tinctures, supplements or diffusing an essential oil.
Self talk, gratitude and affirmations that help keep things in perspective for me throughout the day or a tough moment (often I recount something that I have overcome that I didn't think I would be able to at the time, surprise surprise there's a lot of them)
Listening to music, humming or singing. This is proven to stimulate the vagus nerve, which we know plays a key role in the stress response and calming cortisol.
Taking scheduled breaks. We are talking about short ones like 1 minutes to breath, 5 minutes to stretch, 10 minutes to walk around the block, 30 minutes to have lunch away from the computer or desk and ultimately longer breaks like a real vacation!
These are all evidence-based proven ways to reduce or manage stress!
The point is not to always be positive always all the time. We don't ever want to ignore what we feel. All feelings give us valuable information that we can learn from. It's about limiting the amount of stress in our lives and reducing negative self-talk so that we can reduce disease, feel better and ultimately live a wonderful happy life!
* Here’s a FREE stress reduction toolkit PDF worksheet for you to download * Enjoy!
How's your stress levels? What are your favorite way to dial down the stress in your life? Hit reply if you need some help with something that is stressing you right now or if you want to share your favorite way to deal with stress and want to share!