Stress and Anxiety
Stress is the mind and body’s reaction to external stimuli and can be positive or negative. Events which create feelings of ‘pressure’ often result in negative or damaging effects, especially over time. If you are constantly battling high stress and anxiety situations, you need to find ways to reduce your stress levels before it causes a serious health issue.
Reducing your stress levels is a must especially if you want to keep your whole body healthy. Stress and anxiety affect your mind and physical wellbeing, so it’s important to reduce the levels of stress you experience.
Below are examples of stress relieving techniques that have helped others:
Autogenic Training
This type of relaxation method uses a technique where you perform visualisations while maintaining a relaxed posture and telling parts of body to feel a certain way. The effect is to illicit a heavy and relaxed feeling while inducing a positive effect in the autonomic nervous system. For example, you may say something like “my arms feel heavy and I am completely calm”. You must repeat the process several times for each part of the body you give your focus to, as you allow all the parts of your body to feel relaxed and calm. Autogenic training is a structured method of relaxation which is best performed under the supervision of an expert.
Before starting your autogenic training, you must prepare your body with deep diaphragmatic breathing. Autogenic training can have long term benefits and once you have familiarised yourself with its structure, you can then perform the sessions in the comfort of your own home or workplace.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Many people use the Progressive Muscle Relaxation technique. This is a method of relaxation that involves tightening several muscle groups and then relaxing them. You will only need fifteen minutes of your time everyday to be able to perform this activity. As you regularly perform exercises that allow your muscles to “tighten and release” it becomes easier for your body to be relaxed. Thus, you will be able to reduce not only your anxiety and stress levels but also your risk of developing serious anxiety disorders.
You may think that you are too busy to find other methods to help you cope with the increasing levels of stress and anxiety that your body is experiencing but in reality it can be an easy thing to do.
Nobody deserves to suffer from excess stress and anxiety, but our frantic modern lifestyles can make it difficult to avoid along with the current stress of a prolonged lock-down situation. Thankfully there is now a strong public awareness of the dangers of excessive negative stress, in addition to well-documented coping mechanisms. Help is available to those who are battling with these symptoms.