Stress levels today are higher than ever. According to recent studies, more professionals, stay at home moms, and even fresh-out-of-college graduates report that their stress levels are higher than they were a couple of years back. Worse still, many say that high-stress levels hurt their performance at school, work and personal relationships. Stress makes people grumpy, and some may even lose sleep.
As time passes and people grow in terms of age and career, so do their responsibilities. For this reason, it’s easy to lose yourself and feel like you’re falling even further and succumbing to stress factors in your life.
Stress Reduction Techniques
So, which stress reduction techniques work? There are little things you can do for only a couple of minutes and have a significant impact on reducing stress. Even better, many of these simple techniques can be incorporated into your daily routine. Here a look at one of the most effective ways to reduce stress that you can use to get you started:
Meditation And Exercises
The meditation-and-the-stress study has been a hot topic for years with new studies emerging everyday and revealing the benefits of meditation.
Meditation is quite straightforward. Typically, the mind is ever active and often, the minds wonder, and people focus on things that happened in the past or will happen in the future. For this reason, people find themselves forgetting about the present and their surrounding. Meditation is about preventing your mind from wondering and turning your attention back to where you are and what your body is doing.
How To Get Started With Meditation
Meditation is not an exotic practice for a few people; it’s for everyone. Meditation aims to make you a calmer, kinder and more patient individual. It mainly focuses on creating awareness of the present.
While you can always successfully learn how to do meditation on your own, a guide, program or teacher can help you during the early stages to make sure you successfully learn how to meditate. Here’s a window into a simple mindfulness meditation practice:
1. Find a quiet spot and comfortable spot and sit with your neck, back and head straight but not stiff
2. Rest your arms and your legs wherever it feels most comfortable.
3. Become aware of your breath. Bring all your attention on the sensation of air moving through your mouth and nose. Feel the movement of your belly and chest rising and falling as you breathe. Focus on how each breath is different from the others.
4. Watch and listen to every thought that comes to your mind, but don’t linger on one particular thought except your breathing. Note every thought and emotion and use your breath as your anchor if you feel like there’s too much chatter in your mind.
5. Allow your mind to wonder. Your mind will wonder to particular thoughts and feelings, that’s natural. Rather than resist, allow yourself to wonder and pay attention to where it went off to without judging. Pay attention to all your thoughts and then come back to your breathing.
6. As your session comes to an end, sit for a couple of minutes and notice things in the surrounding. Notice where you are, your thoughts, emotions as well as how your body feels.
Meditation can make a world of difference in reducing stress. By training your body and brain with meditation, you boost concentration, awareness and flexibility, all of which make you a calmer and patient person.
