Stress Management
Stress can be a killer & destroy your life but the good news is that you can improve your health & lifestyle with these stress management techniques.
We all know that stress is a complex thing and can have an extremely detrimental effect on our bodies and minds.
However, managing it & leading a normal life takes more than a few deep breaths & positive thoughts for most of us.
So how do we manage this beast called stress?
What Causes Stress?
Well a good starting point would be to examine the common causes of stress.
Stress is a psychological and physiological response to anything that happens to disturb the harmony of our lives or our personal equilibrium in some way or other.
How Does the Body Respond to Stress?
When this happens our body’s automatic response is to either fight the threat or situation or to avoid it and the physical effect to the body are things like an elevated heart rate, faster breathing, muscles tensing & all of our senses on high alert – not to mention the release of adrenaline in no small quantity, readying us for action.
The problem with the stress response process is that in this day & age there are so many situations that can trigger stress, eg traffic jams, work situations etc, that the more often your body responds to these crises the harder it is to shut off and your stress hormones, heart rate, & blood pressure remain elevated even long after the crisis has passed.
So what makes stress bad for the body?
Whilst sometimes we operate best at an optimum stress level and not having enough stress us may leave us feeling bored, having too much stress not only impairs our performance in the short term but can also be the cause of serious illness in the long term.
This is because the extended or repeated activation of the stress response above takes a heavy toll on the body by increasing its exposure to the risk of things like heart disease, cancer, eating disorders, depression, increased consumption of alcohol & drugs, breakdown of relationships with family & friends and so on.
How to Manage Your Stress
You will agree it is therefore essential to learn how to deal with stress in a way that has a positive influence & reduce its negative impact on your daily life.
6 Highly Effective Stress Management Techniques
1. 
Healthy Body = Healthy Mind
Exercise never fails to help relieve the intensity of the stress in your life
2. Deep Breathing Calms Anxiety
Breathing deeply from your diaphragm will reduce general anxiety and provide additional benefits, such as lowered blood pressure and heart rate. Also, it is estimated that deep breathing eliminates about 70 percent of the toxins and wastes in our bodies.
3. Help Others
By helping someone else, or doing something positive, will help you focus on something other than your problems and you’ll be able to work your way out of your negative inner thought circle.
4. Healthy Mind = Healthy Body
Out of the approximately 60,000 thoughts an average person has every day, nearly 80 percent of these thoughts are negative which effects your thought patterns and behaviors subconsciously and subsequently has an extremely unhealthy impact on your body.
5. Stimulants
Reduce your intake of stimulants as too much caffeine stimulates the central nervous system stimulator that works against your attempts to relax the body and calm the mind – the result of course is anxiety, insomnia, a racing mind – all contributing to stress.
6. Relax
Easier said than done but by practicing certain relaxation techniques you can counteract the negative effects of stress.
If practiced regularly Yoga is extremely effective in serving as a protective quality by teaching you how to stay calm and collected in the face of life’s curved balls.