STRESS MANAGEMENT

Stress, as we understand, is sad and also bad and often terrible. It is the feeling of being emotionally burdened and under too much emotional and mental pressure. A little bit of stress is quite normal and it can help us achieve lots of great things in your professional and personal life, but when it goes out of control, it can lead to serious illness. That’s why everyone emphasizes reducing stress levels at home so as to avoid mental and physical health issues.

Sustained Stress: There were times when the response to demands and threats was not prolonged or sustained like today’s time. Instead, stress was quite essential for survival, so demands and threats were faced and reactions were made and life went on.

However, in today’s time stressors like family relationships, work and finances seem to be exaggerated and prolonged. At times they seem to stack and plot against us. We are in a big need to reduce stress at home for the sake of our physical health. Sustaining the worrisome thoughts for long can lead to complaints like depression, anxiety, insomnia, diarrhea, irritability and other types of distresses.

We really need to reduce tensions even though the causes cannot be reduced. That brings us to one of the most basic concerns and an important part of stress management. What causes the stress in your life and how can it be managed?

LIST OF CAUSES OF STRESS IN LIFE

-- William James

As we all know that Stress is a form of emotion. It’s not the burden of work from your boss or tiff with your best friend today. Those are simply the causes of building stress in your mind. Stress is more about your body’s response to these causes.

Stress is divided into two categories: Eustress and Distress. Eustress is body’s reaction to happy, positive events and emotions where Distress is body’s response to upsetting, negative events, and emotions. People have different ways to respond to events and emotions that could be the causes of stress in someone’s life. For example, extroverts and introverts. Both experience the same situation of stress but will end up reacting differently.

Most likely an extrovert will respond through impulsive and angry actions such as hitting, throwing objects and screaming etc. Whereas an introvert will respond more inwardly, suffering anxiety, depression and crying. The causes for stress are similar, but the stress itself is very different.

Positive Causes: Presenting you a list of positive causes of stress.

• marriage
• birth of a child
• the desire to please parents
• job promotion
• academic challenges
• college life
• birthday
• purchase of a new home
• good news from a physician
• winning a prize or award
  
  

Negative Causes: Here is a list of negative causes of stress.

• children’s misbehavior
• divorce
• college life
• hostile workplace relationships
• unsatisfying job
• death of a known person
• family demands
• finances
• purchase of a new home
  
  
  

DISTRESS AND EUSTRESS CAUSES

You may note that some of the causes are present in both eustress and distress. For example, someone’s college life may bring a response of frustration, depression, and discouragement. The mind and body may respond in excitement and with a sense of pleasure over the purchase of the home or may feel anxiety about the cost associated with it.

CAUTIONS

Remember that the causes of stress in life that revolve around one’s life’s central issues get a more acute response in return. The death of your loved one will bring much more severe response than not being able to celebrate your birthday this year. Your mind and body react differently to different types of stress causing events.

Stress not only disturbs your peace of mind but it also has many serious symptoms that can affect your mental as well as physical health. To bring your mind into a calm state, certain breathing exercises and meditation help you restore your body and mind completely. That brings us to the part where you look for the solutions to reduce stress at home.

TIPS TO REDUCE STRESS

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Tip #1: Understand the stress causing events and situations. What is the demand of threat that seems too big to give you tension? List the cause of your overthinking and stress response.

Tip #2: Make a list and mark all the things you can change. You might not be able to change many things but you can defiantly find the work around. You can reduce stress simply by planning your day out.

Tip #3: Learn to say “No” with firmness and sincerity. When you cannot make any commitment or cannot handle it, learn to refuse politely.

Tip #4: Learn to recognize the signals. Your body always tries to talk to you when the stress level is building. Do you get nervous? Or get a body ache? Though stress signals aren't the same for everyone, you can make note carefully, learn to know the signals and reduce stress through brief exercise.

Tip #5: A healthy, well rested and exercised body is well prepared to reduce stress. Take care of your body and it will get in better shape to handle all the chemical changes brought to you by stress. The stress produces a powerful stress hormone - cortisol which if in excess can deplete body’s protein stores and affect bones, muscles and result in low energy. Increasingly, research is showing 15 minutes of breathing exercise or meditation can reduce your stress levels and boost productivity.

BREATH IN, EXPAND, RELAX AND LET GO

-- Camille Cassie Govender

Even with the advancement of technology in the medical world, there are still natural breathing methods that have greater physical and mental impact in life. You might have noticed how relaxed you feel every time you breathe. Try to feel your body when you are relaxed.

Take a moment to think about the time you wake up or the time or before you fall asleep. Breathing can really help you feel relaxed and make your body feel light. Deep breathing is the best way to lower down stress in the body. The reason is whenever you breathe deeply, it sends the message to your brain cells to calm down and further, the message is transmitted to your body.

As you breathe deeply, all the stressful effects such as fast breathing, increased heart beats, and high/low blood pressure all decrease. Breathing exercises are easy to learn and you can do them whenever you want to without any special tools or equipment. There are different types of exercises that you can practice as per your body’s requirement.

While there are many people who like to join yoga classes to experience peace through meditation and breathing exercises, it often gets very difficult to take out time from the busy work schedule. Keeping in mind the growing net of busy schedules, Optimal Breathing brings you the “All-In-One Optimal Breathing Mastery Kit”.

It’s an all new way to give yourself complete 9 yards on developing natural breathing habits that are very helpful in reducing anxiety, phobias, lowering blood pressure, headaches, migraines, and stress management. While the program is easy to follow on PCs and laptops, the program is also available to download on the no disk drives such as iPad, tablets, and smartphones. The program offers you every little detail of understanding how to conquer panic, anxiety, and stress. How to create an emotional balance through breathing and meditation to re-establish effective stress management.

MEDITATION ENHANCEMENT

Breathing exercises in combination with meditation have qualitatively different effects on body and mind. This practice of resting your mind to detach yourself from the stressors is known as meditation. The goals are slow breathing cycle with repetitive thoughts to regain the sense of control that enables you to feel resilient.

To effectively control stress, you need to activate natural body relaxation responses. This can be done by practicing relaxing techniques like deep breathing, and meditation. Including meditation and deep breathing in your life can help boost your mood and reduce stress.

When the meditation response is activated through breathing:

• Your heartbeat slows down
• Breathing becomes deeper
• Blood pressure stabilizes
• Muscles relax
• Increase in blood flow to the brain

In addition to the calming effects, the meditational response also increases focus and energy, fights illness, relieves pains and aches, boosts productivity and motivation. The Optimal Breathing Mastery Kit is based on the theme “Deepest Calm” to strengthen the meditation form. The program highly aids to such needs.

“Deeper meditation cannot be expressed by language for as soon as we verbalize or conceptualize experiences, they become solidified and awareness stops.”- Tartang Tulku

FACTS YOU SHOULD KNOW!

• Breathing has almost very little to do with oxygen. Your body only requires 5%. It’s all about Carbon dioxide.
• Heart goes into spasm when the limited oxygen is supplied due to heart disease or due to breath shortness.
• Research have to show that there is co-relation between poor breathing and high blood pressure
• Our inhaling is much stronger than our exhaling – you can find it yourself.
• Breathing gives an approximate idea of how long you will live.
• Oxygen is an ultimate natural anti-inflammatory.