3 ways to reduce stress
Stress is a brilliant way that our brain and body has adapted to survive threats. Think about it. You see a saber tooth tiger and you RUN! You don’t sit there, check one more email, and make a plan for tomorrow to take action. This system was designed to get you moving and fast. You lived or died and moved on with your day, or not.
Unfortunately our modern life isn’t as suited to our hardwired stress response. These hormones are released before we are even aware of what is happing, so we can’t stop that process. The problem when we don’t move and use up these hormones is they continue to build up in our body. Chronic stress is chronic, but what can we do about it?
Stress reduction sounds great, but for so many of us that just isn’t an option or at least what we need in the moment.
So what can you do in a moment of stress?
Move your body for 30-60 seconds as quickly as possible to when you notice stress in your body. If you can’t do it immediately do it as soon as possible. Get off the phone call and run up and down the stairs. Your child finishes melting down and screaming at your and skips off then you do 10 burpees. Get off a zoom meeting and do 20 jumping squats before you get on the next meeting.
If you can’t move your body yet and are on a meeting etc you can subtly do a physiological sigh. This means you take a double inhale through the nose and then exhale slowly through the mouth. You will want to repeat this 3-5x. This starts to calm the stress response.
Get outside and move. When we are stressed our vision begins to narrow naturally so that we can focus only on the threat. When we go outside we literally expand our horizon. This also combines the above as well, moving our body and breathing more deeply. Even a walk around the block can help. Leave your phone behind if possible.