In this modern fast-working world stress is a universal human experience that almost everyone deals with from time to time.
As Kids, we don’t think a lot, we only live in the moment. Their response to change around them is instant, and they adjust effectively. But, as adults, it becomes increasingly difficult to adapt to changes in our lives. This change can be because of an added responsibility, a lost chance, the decaying health of a loved one, or it can be any other change that requires you to adjust to it. As change is the only constant in one’s life, we all are bound to experience stress.
•What is meant by stress?
Stress is characterized as a condition of anxiety or mental tension brought on by a challenging circumstance and there can be multiple reasons for stress. Stress is a typical human response that drives us to confront challenges and threats in our lives. Everyone goes through periods of stress.
10 Tips to Control Stress in Our Life
1 )Breath:
Focus helps you concentrate on slow, deep breathing and aids you in disengaging from distracting thoughts and sensations. It’s especially helpful if you tend to hold it in your stomach.
First steps. Find a quiet, comfortable
place to sit or lie down. First, take a normal breath. Let your abdomen expand fully. Now breathe out slowly through your mouth (or your nose, if that feels more natural).
Breath focuses on practice. Once you’ve taken the steps above, you can move on to regular practice of controlled breathing. As you sit comfortably with your eyes closed, blend deep breathing with helpful imagery and perhaps a focus word or phrase that helps you relax.
2) Healthy diet:
A balanced diet provides the extra energy. If you frequently rely on fast food because you are tired or too busy to prepare meals at home, consider meal planning, a practice that can help save time in the long run, ensure more balanced healthful meals, and prevent weight gain.
3) Mindful eating:
Mindful eating practices counteract stress by encouraging deep breaths, making thoughtful food choices, focusing attention on the meal, and chewing food slowly and thoroughly. This increases enjoyment of the meal and improves digestion. Mindful eating can also help us realize when we are eating not because of physiological hunger but because of psychological turbulence, which may lead us to eat more as a coping mechanism.
4) Regular exercise:
Physical activity will help to lower blood pressure. Aerobic exercise like walking and dancing reduces tension in muscles, including the heart.
5) Getting plenty of sleep:
Stress can cause a heightened sense of alertness, which delays the onset of sleep as well as causes interrupted sleep throughout the night. The REM (rapid eye movement) sleep stage in particular helps with mood regulation and memory. Aim for 7-9 hours of sleep a night by slowing down about 30 minutes before bedtime. Controlling stress through the other tips listed above can also improve sleep quality.
6) Schedule fun activities or hobbies at least once a week:
Gardening, reading, enjoying music, getting a massage, hiking in nature, and cooking a favorite recipe are examples of welcome stress relievers.
7) Mental health counseling or other social support:
Feeling alone can add to stress. It can help to talk through feelings and concerns with a trusted individual. Often, just realizing that you are not alone and that your feelings are not unusual can help lower stress.
8) Talk to others:
A person having stress should talk to other people and share about their day-to-day life this helps the body and mind to gain some mental peace. As we share things with another person we feel better than before.
9) Avoid excessive alcohol and harmful substances:
People might think that alcohol helps you cope with stress, but it is not a good coping mechanism. These substances make your mind more depressed because of excessive use of these harmful substances.
10) Yoga as stress relief:
Yoga can help reduce stress because it promotes relaxation. Yoga can benefit three aspects of ourselves that are often affected by stress: our body, mind, and breathing. You don’t have to wait to feel stressed out to do yoga, and you shouldn’t!
Conclusion
Mind-body therapies can be a helpful adjunct in managing chronic pain and other stress-related noncommunicable diseases by fostering resilience through self-care. Though they are not a panacea, they can do much to improve well-being and reduce symptoms and the physiologic effects of stress. These underused tools thus have much to offer on both the individual and societal levels. As we continue to develop models for integrating these tools into our healthcare and education systems, we have an important opportunity and obligation to study these experiments so that we can learn how best to personalize these approaches and maximize their public health potential. We need to understand whether particular approaches are more likely to help certain people, temperaments, or conditions; whether psychologic or genetic factors predict who will respond best to certain practices; what constitutes optimal “dosing”; and to what extent these practices can shift the course of disease and reduce the need for pharmaceuticals and expensive tests and procedures. More robust, well-controlled prospective clinical trials are needed as well as additional implementation and comparative effectiveness trials and basic research into the putative cellular underpinnings of mind-body health effects. There is much work to be done, but we believe the future is promising for mind–body medicine.
Mind-Body Healing For Stress-Free Life, Use Mind-Body Healing to Live A Healthy Life
