7 Quick Tips for Stress Management

1. Be aware of your body’s warning signs – headaches, body aches and pains, anxiety, feeling overwhelmed, digestive problems, emotional imbalances, feelings of frustration, irritability and anger. Many people, when asked will say yes they have stress but their handling it well. This is a survival tactic that the mind uses but the body is where the truth can be found.
2. Lifestyle management – manage and plan your time. Having a plan helps you define realistic goals. Break up long term goals into small manageable goals so you’re not going to bed every night not knowing if you’re on track or behind on meeting your goals. Not knowing and not having a plan can lead to unnecessary stress and anxiety – bad for health.
3. Breath of life – when mentally overwhelmed redirect your mind to focus on your breathing – deep, comfortable breaths. Let go of being busy minded. Let the mind cool down. Let the head cool down. Just breathe and relax – now that’s a quick tip for stress!
4. Avoid feeling stuck and get moving – Exercise, Tai Chi, Chi Kung, Meditation – pent-up feelings lead to qi or energy stagnation – emotions like irritability and frustration can be understood as energy stuck internally overheating the body. Often times, when life gets overwhelming, this pent-up energy explodes outward and can manifest as anger and shouting. Use exercise to move stagnation and burn this excess energy out of the body. This will help cool down the body, relieve the excess feelings and improve your mood. If exercise is too draining you could be dealing with a stuck pattern of energy based on deficiency. A therapy like exercise that drains your energy can leave you more depleted and feeling worse. An exercise style that is gentle and energizing would be suggested. Even meditation will help allow your energy to gather and replenish. This follows the health principle of yin yang philosophy found in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
5. Adjust your perspective – change is a constant. Understanding things happen in phases and learning the ups and downs of those phases or cycles can help you navigate through the changes better. Change the things you can change and accept the things you can’t change.
6. Regularity is key to health. Promote regularity in your life. Consistency satisfies expectations. Inconsistency creates frustration and stagnation of energy.
7. Regulate your sleep schedule – so important for handling stress. Insufficient sleep and irregular sleep patterns diminish mental focus, drain your energy, degrades your immune response, overheat your body and can lead to overeating and weight gain. Daytime energy patterns moves outward – an active state that consumes our internal resources. Nighttime energy patterns move inward – a resting and rejuvenating state to rebuild our body’s natural resources. Your body does most of its healing at night when you sleep. Sleeping should be valued and practiced like a ritual for greater health and well-being.