A Girl’s Gotta De-stress: 10 Holistic Stress Relief Tips

Your Zen friends like to point out that your suffering is all in your head, and you like to ignore them; meanwhile, stressors seem to stack up on your shoulders and roll off of theirs. Take a page from their book of techniques for stress relief tips and see what happens when you forget your personal injustices:

Here are 10 holistic stress relief tips:

Meditate

Meditation is as old as breathing itself. Common unsavory habits, including gross inactivity and smoking, tend to engender unnatural breathing rhythms, which impact the mind. Meditation resolves these ills (among other things).

Find a furry friend

Show some love to the nearest and dearest animal. It’s a scientific fact that petting an animal can lower your blood pressure, thereby reducing stress.

Watch your favorite show

Sometimes, acting like the most complex life form around involves taking a load off and letting the computer or T.V. screen think for you. Be selective though, it certainly won’t be.

Start a garden

As smart as we may be, the Plant Kingdom has a leg up on us when it comes to self-determination. What happens to a plant that questions its purpose? We’ll know when it happens. Try getting out in the garden or up in a tree and learn a thing or two from something that never speaks.

Workout

Exercise is a no-brainer – literally. After several minutes of rigorously moving around, you’ll find that your mind is in your feet hitting the ground, the burn in your arms, and the sweat on your chin. There’s not enough to go around to keep tabs on the minutiae.

Try yoga

Yoga isn’t just for flexibility. Yogis have been passing it down for millennia as a school of thought which has the ultimate goal of eliminating suffering, and is based on the study of the “subtle body,” or “energy body.” Legitimate or not, it doesn’t hurt to cover all your bases, and it would be a shame to miss out on this phenomenon simply because you never gave it the time of day.

Keep a journal

I know, you’ve tried and quit before, but that was before you consulted your typical search engine with your stress issues. Writing things down forces you to keep your thoughts moving forward and, over time, ties seemingly random occurrences into a more meaningful narrative.

Take a nap

A nap in the middle of the day can help offset the natural cycle that your brain follows, staying chipper and energetic near the beginning and end of the day and crashing in the middle.

Take a day off

If you’re not feeling up to it, you’ll only give yourself another reason to feel less than your best by going through the motions. Stay home; it’s O.K.

Try supplements or herbal remedies

Maybe you’ve tried everything and can’t seem to find the “Holy Grail” of stress relief. Some say the Grail has been inside you all along, and at least on some occasions, this is more literally true than you would suspect. If your troubles are chemical in nature and your brain and body aren’t responding to the things that should be helping there are herbal remedies that can help such as lemon balm, peppermint or Ginkgo that can help to calm the nervous system and soothe the mind.

Image Credit: Paufarro