Instant stress relief

 

 

Stress sometimes just comes suddenly that you’re not prepared to fight against it. And this may happen during the most inconvenient or embarrassing times. If stress comes during a company conference or meeting presentation, people might not know how to deal with it.

 

When stress strikes, people might  experience and have certain physical symptoms, including aggression, headaches, diarrhea, sweating, nightmares, inability to focus, low self-esteem, speeded heartbeat Being, tiredness and more.

 

Don’t worry if this really happens! Here are some good tips for you to de-stress within short period of time. This way, you could face your emotion, regulate that feeling, and behave appropriately.

According to Lawrence Robinson, here are some quick stress relief tips for effective communication:

Recognize when you’re becoming stressed. Your body will let you know if you’re stressed as you communicate. Are your muscles or your stomach tight and/or sore? Are your hands clenched? Is your breath shallow? Are you “forgetting” to breathe?

• Take a moment to calm down before deciding to continue a conversation or postpone it.
• Bring your senses to the rescue and quickly manage stress by taking a few deep breaths, clenching and relaxing muscles, or recalling a soothing, sensory-rich image, for example. The best way to rapidly and reliably relieve stress is through the senses: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. But each person responds differently to sensory input, so you need to find things that are soothing to you.
• Look for humor in the situation. When used appropriately, humor is a great way to relieve stress when communicating. When you or those around you start taking things too seriously, find a way to lighten the mood by sharing a joke or amusing story.
• Be willing to compromise. Sometimes, if you can both bend a little, you’ll be able to find a happy middle ground that reduces the stress levels for everyone concerned. If you realize that the other person cares much more about something than you do, compromise may be easier for you and a good investment in the future of the relationship.
• Agree to disagree, if necessary, and take time away so everyone can calm down. Take a quick break and move away from the situation. Take a stroll outside if possible, or spend a few minutes meditating. Physical movement or finding a quiet place to regain your balance can quickly reduce stress.

 

Understanding the stressed smoking myth

When people get stressed, many people choose to smoke in order to get a quick relief from stress. In fact, researches have shown the opposite, that smokers are having higher stress level than non-smokers.

Studies show that adult smokers experience periods of heightened stress between cigarettes, and that smoking only restores their stress levels to normal S. However, soon after smoking, they will require another cigarette to keep their stress at normal levels because if they don’t they will experience the stress that comes from nicotine withdrawal.

According to Australian Bureau of Statistics, smoking is recognised as the ‘largest single preventable cause of death and disease in Australia’. It is associated with an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, emphysema, bronchitis, asthma, renal disease and eye disease. About one-fifth (21%) of people (aged 18 years and over) were current smokers in 2007-08, down from 23% in 2004-05 and 24% in 2001.

 

To quit smoking, The Cleveland Clinic Foundation has some tips:

• Pick a quitting date one to three weeks in the future. Prepare for the date by cutting down on smoking, staying away from your favorite places to smoke, and making a plan for how you will deal with stressful events without smoking.
• On your quitting date, get rid of all cigarettes, keep busy, and stay in smoke-free places.
• “The nicotine patch, nicotine gum, or other medication that may be prescribed to help you quit can be helpful but they will not take away your cravings to smoke.”
• Make a clean break. Do not allow yourself to smoke “now and then.” An addiction to nicotine can be reactivated anytime, even years after quitting.
• Take it one moment, one hour, one day at time. Cravings to smoke are usually short-lived and will go away whether or not you have a cigarette.  Repeat to yourself that “smoking is no longer an option”.
• Get help with quitting if you need it. Choose a comprehensive smoking cessation program that does not rely on a single technique (such as hypnosis).

Laughter Is the Best Medicine

According to the University of Michigan’s research, the sound of roaring laughter is far more contagious than any cough, sniffle, or sneeze. Humor and laughter has many benefits—and it’s fun!

Striving to see humor in life and attempting to laugh at situations rather than bemoan them will help improve your disposition and the disposition of those around you. Your ability to laugh at yourself and situations will help reduce your stress level and make life more enjoyable. Humor also helps you connect with others. People naturally respond to the smiles and good cheer of those around them.

Research shows that laughter has some amazing health benefits. Laughing can relieve stress, increase pain tolerance and support the immune system, as well as serve several other healthy purposes.

Laughter reduces the level of stress hormones, provides a physical and emotional release, and it’s actually a good internal workout for the diaphragm and the heart. Also, it distract you from stress and negative emotions, and lighten up the environment during a threat or a stressful condition.

With so much power to heal and renew, laughter is a powerful stress relief technique! Feeling stressed? Let’s go HA HA HA HA HA!

Here are a few tips to get you started:

Practice laughing 5 minutes every day. Fake it till you make it.

Laugh with other people when they laugh.

Wear a smile. It puts you closer to laughing.

Seek out entertainment that makes you laugh.

Wave to yourself in the mirror. Every time you pass a mirror, give yourself a little wave and a smile.

Do at least one silly, non-conforming thing a day.

Practice these tips often and soon you will find you have developed a new healthy habit. Keep laughing, pass it on to everyone you meet. We can never laugh too often or too much.

 

Understanding our brain: Sleep and Stress

People always ask the following questions:

–         Do I have stress because I don’t sleep well?

–         Do I not sleep well because I have stress?

The answer is YES to both questions.

 

Stress is the number one cause of sleep problems, according to Mary I. O’Sullivan, and ineffective sleep is a major cause of increased stress. 

 

According to Time, people who sleep between 6.5 hours and 7.5 hours a night, as they report, live the longest! People who sleep 8 hours or more, or less than 6.5 hours, they don’t live quite as long. There is just as much risk associated with sleeping too long as with sleeping too short. The big surprise is that long sleep seems to start at 8 hours Sleeping 8.5 hours might really be a little worse than sleeping 5 hours.

 

Mind Tools Limited pointed out that, on the psychological sides, deep sleep reduces sleep need. This stage of sleep is an especially refreshing part of the sleep cycle, unless you are wakened out of it, in which case you will feel very sluggish and may have sleep drunkenness during which it is unsafe to drive. Some recent neural network research also indicates that deep sleep may be important in helping clear the brain for new learning the next day.

 

A short nap in the afternoon can get your energized, or a high quality sleep at night will keep you sharp the other day. If we are regularly short of sleep, then our concentration and our effectiveness suffer and our energy levels decline. Therefore get enough sleep! Adequate sleep fuels your mind, as well as your body. Feeling tired will increase your stress because it may cause you to think irrationally, diminishes our effectiveness in our job, and can therefore increase stress. As our energy declines, we become less proactive in what we do, reducing our control over events. This means that a situation that is already difficult and stressful can become worse, needing even more sacrifice to bring it back under control.

 

The following are common symptoms of poor sleep.   If you’re experiencing these symptoms on a regular basis, your sleep is showing the effects of stress.   If you:

1. Have trouble going to sleep and take longer than 10-15 minutes.
2. Fall asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow.
3. Wake up frequently during sleep.
4. Wake up during sleep and can’t fall back to sleep.
5. Sleep lightly and have trouble relaxing as you sleep.
6. Wake up feeling tired.
7. Wake up feeling aches and pains.
8. Wake up feeling emotionally down.
9. Wake up feeling tense and can’t seem to calm down.

10. Sleep less than 6 hours or more than 9 hours.

 

One suggestion for you if you experience insomnia, listen to some soft music! It may help you sleep better, to relieve stress and anxiety, for stress relief and stress management, to improve insomnia. Try this:

 

Group hiking to reduce stress

The view of the City from Hermit Bay

The wakeup call of the singing birds, the blooming flowers reminds me that, Spring has finally arrived! With the beautiful scenery of Australia and the perfect weather, I have participated in a bush walk group activity one Sunday at Vaucluse, a rich suburb in the eastern side of Sydney.

In winter, sunsets is much earlier than in the summer, therefore the group decided to go for a hiking route that is easy to recognise and hike —– The Hermitage Foreshore Walk.

The Hermitage Foreshore Walk has 1.8km, is a part of the Sydney Harbour National Park. The walk meanders along the bush land, and running form Rose Bay to Nielson Bay. There are pricy properties along our way, which I have seen a see-through class-walled building that I can see everything from outside in the house.

When asked about what the participants can get out of this bush walking activities, people have different reasons.

One person said that this is release his irritations from work, and someone came here mainly for talking to friends. Through sharing happiness and sad incidents happened in life, hikers can get mutual support from each other, listening, sharing or giving advices can therefore reduce stress,

Looking the pretty scenery along the hiking route, having the endorphin secreting from the brain makes people feel good, catching up with family in friends, these allow people to relax, and clean up their body and mind.

Bush walking is becoming more and more popular because everyone wants to have a healthy life. Also, bush walking is a cheap but healthy exercise, everyone should go explore Sydney, enjoy the natural beauty.

And before you realise, your stress have gone with the wind.
Further information:

Government flyer on the Foreshore Walk

Map of the Walk

Seaside yoga for stress relief

Some people believe that doing yoga is an effective way to reduce stress, so I went to check out this outdoor yoga class located at Bondi 8:30am in the morning. I did interviews with the yoga teacher Sasha, who is the founder of her organisation “Yoga by the Sea”, and some of her students.

Listening to the sounds of the waves, feeling the cool breeze on the coast, at 8:30am, the yoga class at Bondi has began.

In today’s blog, I will introduce a special outdoor yoga classes to you which can reduce stress.

Yoga by the sea is a seaside yoga schools. It has three divisions, two indoor one at Tamarama and Bronte, while the only outdoor one is located at Bondi Beach.

Sasha Hawley is the founder of Yoga by the sea. She has been teaching around the world for years in Asia, Indonesia, South Africa, South America, where yoga were all taught outdoor. So when she returned Australia, she wanted to try and re-create this feeling down here for the locals. Another reason for arranging the class next to the ocean is that there’s some natural energy from the ocean that benefits yoga practitioners. Sasha said that students can get the negative ions of the ocean, leaving them with the positive sense of well-being. Last but not least, in May to October, students might spot dolphins and whales at the beautiful Pacific Ocean next to the school.

Sasha teaches two types of yoga, Yin and Yang yoga. Yin meaning more feminine and relax, while Tang is stronger and more masculine. Some people think yoga are those pose that people have to straighten their leg and place them across the shoulders, or supporting the entire body using one finger. In fact, yoga focusing more on relaxing muscles, for Yin yoga, it is even suitable for pregnant women, people returning from injuries or accidents, kids, old people, so any age and physical conditions can do yoga. Of course, the student need to tell the teacher to adjust the program that suit their situations.

Students said that they become more calm and relax after the class, and they all enjoy the fresh sea breeze, sunshine and just being outdoor.

A cake a day, keeps your stress away!

From my previous post, it’s no secret that exercise is fundamental to good health, and also improves mental well-being, especially in reducing stress. But Margaret Morris, Professor of Pharmacology at UNSW, not only found a direct link between stress and exercise, but also STRESS AND BINGE EATING.

Binge eating, as defined by Melinda Smith,is characterized by compulsive overeating in which people consume huge amounts of food while feeling out of control and powerless to stop.

In fact, university students may go for comfort good when they are under stress because of uni work, assignments, and trying to meet deadlines.

Eating palatable food rich in fat and sugar can alter the chemical composition in the brain and ameliorate anxiety-like behaviour induced in early life, Professsor Morris found.

Is it the time for us to enjoy high sugar diet including cakes, chips, savory snack? Sorry, but no. A fatty diet however may lead to other health problems, therefore Professor Morris seeks alternative ways to reduce stress.

In an interview with Professor Morris, she has an advice for uni students: “It’s true that being a student is stressful, esocually arund exam time. So I guess if there were any messages from our work, in the hjuman context, it might be that may be instead for reaching for that handbag, you should run around the block a few times, or even better, go for a walk with some friends, because social interaction is going to have similar benefits.”

Further readings:

UNSW Press release of the scientific research results