Simple Strategies To Soothe Stress

This time I’m sharing how to build emotional resilience and keep your stress levels under control. Emotional resilience refers to attitudinal and behavioural choices for dealing with trauma, tragedy, or other significant life stress. People with high levels of emotional resilience are more likely to find a way to stay calm and peaceful during uncertain times. Stress can be positive or negative. We all experience stress in life, and some temporary stress is good because it can increase motivation to complete important tasks and meat deadlines. It’s also a normal reaction to exciting events such as falling in love or starting in a new job. 

On the other hand, overwhelming and constant stress can become extremely damaging to the entire body. Stress is a survival technique to protect you from danger: when triggers arise, the sympathetic nervous system signals a “fight or flight” response. Normally after a stressful event your body returns to homeostasis (it’s stable state). And that’s exactly what you want because chronic stress lowers immunity, and causes aches and pains, mood issues (like anger, depression, and anxiety), cardiovascular issues, as well as metabolic issues (increased fat storage) and weight gain. Among many other things Dr. Mark Hyman talked about chronic stress and viral immunity on Mikhaila Peterson’s show. Highly recommend listening to their conversation if you haven’t already done so. 

The past year and a half has been challenging for all of us and has definitely challenged our stress tolerance. When you have the right tools, life becomes way easier and more enjoyable. I used to be someone who became anxious easily and stressed about all kinds of things like exams, presentations, meeting new people, etc. Over the years I have adopted more relaxed mindset and learned techniques that help me to breath through turmoils in life. This doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t feel stressed sometimes. I definitely do, and it immediately affects my gut health and digestion. When I notice symptoms, I know they are signals from my body to take better care of myself and slow down. 

To bring more positive vibes you need grounding, healing, and pleasure producing nourishment in all areas of life. You want to activate your parasymphatic nervous system, which turns off the “fight or flight” response. Parasympathic nervous system helps the body conserve energy and rest or  “rest and digest”.

Tips For Combatting Stress And Attracting Good Energy

Learn To Breath

James Nestor has written an entire book about breathing and shares exercises so that you can start breathing better and improve your health. Unfortunately, so many of us have lost the ability to breath correctly. The way we breath affects every area in our life: athletic performance, development of our bone structure and teeth, mental health, etc. Instead of breathing through the mouth, we should focus on breathing deeply and slowly through the nose. Constant mouth-breathing is problematic because it changes the physical body and transforms our airways making breathing more difficult and this leads to even more mouth-breathing. Breathing through the nose has the opposite effect: it makes the airways wider and breathing easier. Make sure your inhalation and exhalation are equal in length. This is something very simple but immediately affects our mental state.

Sleep Well

The quality and quantity of our sleep is proven to have significant effect on our health and wellbeing. The most important thing is to turn off all your electronic devices at least 30 minutes - ideally an hour or two - before going to bed. The blue light keeps you alert and suppresses the secretion of melatonin. Having a consistent routine: go to bed and get up pretty much at the same time every day - even on the weekends. True, you may have difficulty falling asleep, or you may wakeup in the middle of the night when you’re stressed. All kinds of thoughts and fears may be chasing you. In these moments change your thoughts by practising gratitude. Another trick that could help to change your thoughts is to start slowly counting your breaths.

Embrace The Digital Detox 

I’ve have written a blog post about this here and I highly recommend checking that out if you notice you cannot go an hour without checking your phone. Most people need a kind reminder about tech addictions. So many of us are glued to our devices and this can lead to a long list of health issues such as stress, decreased levels of happiness and wellbeing, and ironically feeling more disconnected. Have a digital detox: have at least one day a week without social media and message checking. During the detox day your smart phone is for genuine emergency situations only. Have something meaningful to do that keeps you busy, like go for a day trip and spend time in nature with a friend.

Choose Your Company Wisely 

We cannot always choose our company, for instance at our workplace. However, you can choose how you react and respond. The most important thing when dealing with challenging individuals or energy vampires is not to take things personally. Maybe they are just having a bad day or going through challenges in life, or that’s just part of their personality type. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take constructive feedback. Just ignore the toxic part of the message. Have balanced, uplifting individuals around you. Also, you need to set and maintain healthy boundaries with people in general, and say “No” when you mean it. 

Create A Calming Work Environment 

Have a clutter-free and peaceful environment. And get a plant or beautiful flowers! Aloe vera or cactus can be a great choice if you struggle to give them enough love (meaning water). Clean and tidy environment is highly important if you work from home. Some people have the privilege to have a separate home office, but many don’t. Have a routine to end your day: put your equipment (notebooks, folders and devices) out of sight so that you can better mentally switch off too.

Move Mindfully 

Gentle yoga (I wouldn’t recommend power yoga here!), walking in nature, or any other low intensity activity can definitely boost your wellbeing and mood. High intensity workouts are more likely to worsen your situation if your are dealing with chronic stress and already burning out. 

Change Your Mindset 

Avoiding repeating the mantra “I’m so stressed”. Ask yourself “what is the best-case scenario” and “what is the worst-case scenario”. Very often we have absurd fear-based scenarios that are never even close to become reality. Perceived stress refers to the amount of stress that an individuals feels he, she or they is/ are under. Two people in the exact same situation may perceive stress in a very different way. It’s well known that our emotions create chemical reactions in the body, for instance serotonin is activated by joy, and oxytocin by a passionate romantic affair. On the other hand, stress produces hormones too - including cortisol and adrenaline. Here’s the harsh reality: life is never going to be perfect. Life is imperfectly perfect. There are no perfect people with perfect lives on this planet. The more you try to control everything, the more you’ll feel out of control and dissatisfied with your own life. You can never control other people, nature around us or other random events in life. The sun will always rise whether you liked it or not.

Nourish With Whole Foods 

For some food can offer a momentary escape or pleasurable experience in the midst of chaos. It can be an attractive quick fix to alleviate stress. In extreme cases some people start binging while others can completely lose their appetite. Stress can also affect our food choices. Many crave for their comfort foods like a bowl of creamy pasta, cake, and ice cream. These highly palatable foods (rich in fat and sugar) provide a quick source of energy and lead to the release of dopamine (the feel-good hormone). For some highly processed foods can become an addiction. Remember to always go back to the root cause. It’s not going to be the end of the world to eat “junk” every once in a while, but if you notice that you are becoming addicted to these foods and they seem like the only way out of stressful situations then you have an issue. Eat whole foods and organic as much as possible. When we eat real foods we feel fully nourished and start craving out from highly processed alternatives. Processed junk doesn’t even keep us satisfied long and leads to blood sugar spikes and crushes creating more stress in the body. Focus on eating plant-based protein, whole grains, fruits and vegetable.

Talk To Someone You Trust

Talk someone you trust. If your anxiety is becoming unbearable, you should definitely seek for help. There’s nothing to be ashamed of - especially now that we're living through these periods of limited social interactions. Journaling can also be very helpful. It’s important to get your feelings out.

Touch And Love

I know we are living this interesting transformation period. However, skin-to-skin contact is proven to boost our health and immunity against viruses. So, if you have a chance, fully enjoy it. Loneliness is one of the biggest killers. The vast majority of people wants to be loved and touched… Love heals. 

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RESOURCES:

Book:

Breath: The New Science of A Lost Art by James Nestor 

Podcast:

Mikhaila Peterson Podcast: Mark Hyman - The Pegan Diet