Stressed in Life? Focus on these Stress Management & Reduction Techniques

Aromatic Candles Can Relax the Whole Body

Stress is a part and parcel of every person’s life. Feel like indulging in a bowl of yummy ice cream or a bar of chocolate when you feel stressed? Think again. These not only pile up calories but they are also not permanent solutions. While stress management involves taking stress out of life and redirecting it towards other beneficial areas in our daily lives, stress reduction involves minimizing stress by learning offsetting and deflecting techniques. If you don’t learn to combat stress effectively, it can ruin your life mentally and physically as elaborated in the website www.firsteatright.com.

Stress Management

Stress management involves channelizing the nervous/stressful feelings into more positive and productive outcomes.

1.      List Down Important Things

When you feel stressed sit down, relax and note down reasons for your stress. While there might be several reasons, pinpoint the ones that you do have control over. This helps you to have a closer look at your goal instead of simply thinking on emotional terms which can lead you nowhere.

2.      Prioritize

Once you have the list of objectives ready, prioritize the top three items on the list. Allocate time schedules to work on these action goals channelizing your stressful energy toward productive energy. Never allow the stress due to other action items bother you until done with the first three action tasks.

3.      Ally Yourself with Loved Ones

Conveying the reason behind your stress or having a short conversation with a close friend regarding the reason for your stress can decrease the stress quotient. Speaking out can help manage stress as you connect deeper with your true feelings.

Stress Reduction

We don’t have control over things that happen around us. But, we do have control over our reactions to those events that happen around us. While stress reduction might sound grave, there are some deceptively easy techniques:

1.       Focus on your Breath

Concentrate on how you inhale or exhale not for quality but to bring your mind to focus on productive things (the breath) rather than the stressful catalyst. Pay attention to your breath:

• Are you inhaling or exhaling through your nose, mouth or both?
• Does your inhale or exhale seem to be longer than the other?

Once you notice these, inhale while counting up, exhale while counting down, trying to use the noticed things to make the inhalation and exhalation as similar in duration as possible. Do this stress reduction awareness technique for five minutes for the best results.

2.       Contract-relax Body Parts

Sitting, standing or driving a car, choose a muscular area you can control at will. Contract the gluteal muscles for up to five seconds and hold the muscles while breathing. Say to yourself softly out ‘I am stressed’ while contracting and ‘I am relaxed’ while relaxing the muscle. You can contract as many body parts as possible, such as ankles, glutes, shoulders and fists using your mind to throw stress away out of the body. Keep doing this technique repeatedly that you can do it even when you are standing in a public line.

3.       Light A Candle

Individuals feel pleasant and peaceful when they light aromatic candles. The more deeply they inhale the fragrance, the more relaxed they become. Some other feel that a candle is a symbols of a person’s internal light that reflects a living, moving source of energy. Gazing at a candle for 30 seconds, blinking when needed, can put you in a meditation state and de-stress you. Choose a soy or beeswax candle to protect yourself from the health hazard of petroleum-based paraffin wax candles.

4.       Massage Yourself

Learn self-myofascial release which involves learning to put a small amount of pressure on the myofascia (the tissue that covers the muscles) and ‘roll out’ the stress knots. Hydration and breathing, together with this self-massage can negate the effects of stress, muscle cramps and irritability.

5.       Meditate

Meditation can help certain people. There is no hard and fast rule that proves that a technique can work in favour of a person. Try out any of these techniques and settle down for the one that suits you. Stress cannot be prevented in the society that exists today. The ideology should be to manage and reduce stress.