Natural Stress Relief Techniques

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If you’re like most people, you wake up early in the morning, rush to eat something for breakfast, get showered, dressed, and head off to work. While working all day, you’ve got deadlines, demands, and it sometimes feels as if you never get the chance to get caught up. Finally you come home, but maybe have chores to take care of around the house, have to do some grocery shopping, pay bills, take care of the children, and then maybe you have a little bit of time to zone out in front of the television before you have to go to bed to do it all over again the next day. Sounds exhausting and stressful, doesn’t it? Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be this way all the time. There are a number of natural stress relief techniques that you can employ on a daily basis to help you maintain your sanity, calm yourself down, and relax more.

Why Should We Protect Against Stress?

Stress kills. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, stress is the second-leading cause of death among adults in the United States. Stress leads to multiple illnesses, such as heart attacks, strokes, and some medical professionals speculate that cancer may be in part caused by stress. Instead of getting stressed out, if we can help counter it once we begin feeling agitated, it will have great benefits for our health in the short and long-term.

Five Natural Stress Relief Techniques

1. Mediate: Meditating for just a few minutes each day has been shown to have many fantastic effects on your body, brain, and heart. To mediate, all you need to do is to sit with your eyes closed in a quiet room with your feet on the floor. Simply focus on breathing deeply and slowly. It’s also helpful to put your focus onto a phrase or a word to help keep your mind from wandering off into other thoughts. Repeating in your mind, “Peace… Peace… Peace…” or “I am calm… I am calm… I am calm…” will help to reinforce your thoughts.
2. Diaphragmatic breathing: Breathe in slowly through your nose, and as you breathe in, make the air fill your belly with air. Hold the breath for three seconds, and then slowly exhale out of your mouth. Simply breathing from your diaphragm ten times can release relaxation hormones that help reduce anxiety and induce calm feelings.
3. Listen to Music: We’ve gone ahead and pulled up a great link from YouTube that is a 3-hour long recording of Relaxation Music for Stress Relief. Find these types of albums on iTunes or even on Pandora to help you sleep, meditate, or just to have on as background noise. You’ll feel like you’re at a spa getting a massage! Speaking of massages…
4. Physical Touch: Massages can vary in price, ranging anywhere from as low as $40 to as high as $200+ for specialized treatments. Going in for a relaxation massage for 50 minutes can do some wonders for your body. If you can’t afford a massage, hug somebody. Simply hugging someone helps release pitocin, which is a hormone that helps humans relax and bond.
5. Exercise: This should be #1 on the list! By exercising, whether it’s running, an at-home yoga program, or just walking around your neighborhood, it can help to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. All you need is to get your heart beating fast for about 15-20 minutes to feel the effects. If you can do 30 minutes, even better!

We hope that these tips help you to begin to change your habits, and help you to incorporate some new techniques into your daily life to keep stress at bay. If you can help make these exercises a part of your regular schedule, you’ll notice an enormous difference in how you think, act, and feel. If you’re looking for some supplements that can help reduce stress, be sure to check out our Stress Relief supplements to see what might work for you.

What helps you to take the edge off? Leave your suggestions in the comments below. We’d love to hear what natural stress relief techniques you employ to relax!