In today’s busy, stress filled world, we have forgotten to take care of our mind and body as one unit. These sustaining parts of our being need rest and nourishment and deserve down time when we feel overwhelmed with our everyday tasks. Today with multitasking, taking our work with us wherever we go and rushing to complete so many daily chores, we forget that we are interconnected from head to toe and that what is affecting one area of our self will ultimately effect every part of our being.
When you are experiencing stress and tension, you are actually causing not only mental discord in your being, you are also causing distress throughout your body with an increased heart rate and depleted oxygen to the cells in your organs. Chemical changes take place in your body that can, if not controlled, cause your breathing to become shallow and therefore, not refresh the 02 - C02 exchange causing you to become hypoxic throughout your lungs and the whole of your body systems.
Being in a continuous state of stress can cause harm to your physical well-being. It is widely accepted today that stress can even cause illness such as frequent colds due the fact that being in a state of stressfulness decreases the immune systems efficacy to fight off germs. It is also believed that the disease process can be initiated by continuous and unrelieved stress. It is definitely true that you do not feel well when you are stressed and get headaches and feel fatigued. This decreases your ability to take care of your obligations and daily activities. As you become more enveloped in a stress mode and the fatigue worsens, you don’t feel like being creative and find you can’t enjoy doing pleasurable activities. In this respect, you are fighting with yourself because creativity and doing things that make you happy or that increase pleasurable thoughts and feelings, decrease the stress you feel. But, because you are stressed, you can not experience the things you need to do to quell the stress.
When you get to the point that you feel that you are experiencing an overload , you enter a state of exhaustion. At this point, even little stressors become intense and impossible to deal with. This increases feelings of helplessness and you feel out of control and unable to stop feeling stressed. If this unhealthy state continues to spiral out of control, you can experience feelings of depression and isolation because you don’t feel able to do anything. You stay alone, avoid demands placed on you and avoid people and activities hoping the stress will go away or will not continue to happen. Unfortunately, this vicious cycle continues and makes you even more stressed! Hopefully, you will already have discovered a technique that stops the negative effects that stress in your life is causing.
There are many things, passive and active, that you can do to help get yourself back in control. Luckily, many things you can do to relax and decrease stress only take a small amount of energy to begin and do not cost anything. You don’t need much study to initiate the process of relaxation and many techniques only take minutes before you feel the benefits. Everyone needs some type of stress reducing technique. Having something you can immediately employ when you feel tension and experience the symptoms brought on by increased stressors in your life creates a positive coping mechanism and can allow you to feel in control of your life and promote feelings of good health. You will be better able to handle your daily tasks in a relaxed, calm state. When you finish the technique you have chosen to decrease stress, you will feel relaxed and calm. Your mind should clear and negative thoughts float away as you increase pleasant thoughts and mental clarity. After practicing relaxation techniques you should experience less headaches and back pain that can be brought on by stress. The following relaxation techniques are some of many options to try. Chose a technique that you feel will be enjoyable. The one thing you don’t want to do is choose a technique that seems too difficult to accomplish. This will only cause you to become more stressed as you feel unable to complete the technique.
Meditation
Because of the hippies movement of the 1960’s, the word meditation sometimes conjures up negative thoughts of someone ‘checking out’. In a sense, this is true…in a positive way. The hippy generation did have it right in the fact that the relaxation technique employed in meditation does allow you to escape your everyday worries and it definitely does decrease stress. Your mind and body respond by becoming calm and focused.
In ancient times, many cultures used meditation for a more mystical experience. Some cultures believed if you could concentrate on one thing long enough, your mind would be clear enough to open your ’third eye’ allowing you to enter the other world. Meditation was used for purposes of seeing the future. Some ancient practitioners used the intense meditative state to astral project or to initiate a trance state for magical rituals. Today, we know that intense concentration on one thing for a certain amount of continuous time clears your negative thoughts and unpleasant or uncomfortable sensations. Practicing this relaxation technique replaces these worrisome aspects in your life with more positive thoughts and increases relaxation of the muscles in your body. This promotes feelings of wellness and increases energy. There is a practical side for use of meditation in today’s stressful world. It simply works to help alleviate stress. Meditation can be accomplished by several different techniques. Your environment plays an important part in accomplishing the meditative state that allows you to concentrate. The first thing you should try to accomplish is making your space quiet and beautiful. Surround the place you have chosen to meditate with things you find pleasant such as a favorite plant or colors that you like. Keep it simple. Too many things can be distracting. Find a comfortable spot to sit either cross legged or not. A soft pillow on the floor works and so does your bed or a comfy chair. The most important thing is that you feel comfortable. You can choose from several options to achieve the intense concentration that leads to relaxation. Many people choose to focus on a sound such as one single word like ’om’ said repeatedly over and over. You can really use any word that gets you to the place of relaxation. Another common thing done for this purpose is listening to a continuous chant. These can be purchased on line or at most large music chains. Or, you can create your own or even say a prayer that you find comforting. Many people use imagery to relax and allow positive and pleasant thoughts get you into a meditative state. This is a good technique that can be used alone as it is in itself relaxing and can be used if you are somewhere you can not control your environment. Practice imagining some place or event that made you feel happy and serene. Think of the sights, sounds, smells and scenery involved in this pleasant experience. In your mind, retreat into this image while breathing in a pattern and slowing the breaths to a relaxing pace. Stay very still and allow the distractions of the day to disappear into the distance away from your place of safety and peacefulness. Relax your muscles and feel your body lose the tenseness. Stay in this relaxed state for an amount of time you have decided on. Many people continue this relaxation technique for between ten and twenty-five minutes daily or twice daily. When you come out of the meditative state you will see and feel the difference of how you approach life. Some people find a sort of hypnotic state happens if you concentrate on an
