Do the daily demands of commuting to and from work, or from a full day working at a challenging job, or from parenting a family to care for leave you with little or no time to find healthy ways on how to quickly relieve stress?
If yes, then any number of effective relaxation techniques for stress relief can be done on a daily basis to aid in relaxing your mind and body.
For instance, any number of physical exercises for stress relief can be done on a daily basis, to aid in reducing a stressful mind and body, and can be practiced while at work, on break, during a commute, or while a baby is taking a nap. For example:
– Climb instead of ride: Using the stairs instead of using the elevator provides a window of aerobic exercise that will increase blood circulation, promote mind clarity, and reduce body tension and stress.
– Lunchtime power walk: Use daily breaks at work to get outside the building for a brisk walk around the block or preferably a nearby park. Just this short active commune with nature on a regular basis will bring down pent up feelings of accumulated stress.
– Yoga poses: When taking a break, bend slowly at the waist keeping your back flat and grab your elbows with opposite hands. Let your head dangle toward the floor and take five deep breaths. Slowly walk your hands up the front of your legs until you are in an erect standing position. This pose not only helps clear your head, it releases tension in the muscle groups of the lower back.
The above techniques require physical activity but what if you’re not able to exercise?
Then connect with Nature.
– Nature videos: There are many scientific studies which indicate that time spent in nature is beneficial to your health and to relieving anxiety and stress. Natural settings were shown to have a positive effect on connectedness to nature, attentional capacity, positive emotions, and ability to reflect on a life problem.
“Researchers Kjellgren and Buhrkall asked people suffering from stress to go out into natural environments and relax for half an hour. After their relaxation, the participants felt connected to nature, had a better sense of well-being and a higher overall level of energy and positive feelings than other participants who relaxed for 30 minutes watching a nature simulation indoors. A key finding of their research was that both environments—real and simulated nature—helped to reduce stress. Relaxing au natural just seems to give people even more energy and restorative effects. But even a simulated natural environment can be powerful.” *
If you find the demands on your time, with work and personal obligations, make it less likely for you to exercise and engage with nature consider the options available to you and then take action.
Take care of your body, tend to your mind, exercise and connect with real nature or ‘simulated’ nature and you can create states of overwhelming peace and relaxation.
* Kjellgren, A., & Buhrkall, H. (2010). A comparison of the restorative effect of a natural environment with that of a simulated natural environment Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30 (4), 464-472 DOI
