4 Great Relaxation Techniques to Reduce Your Stress Levels

We all feel stressed from time to time. Sometimes it is due to pressure at work, financial issues or perhaps a strained relationship. Sometimes it can be something as simple as the house being messy or being late for work.

The thing about stress is that there often isn’t anything we can do to avoid it. What we can do, however, is manage it. Failing to manage stress and reduce them can mean that you end up allowing it to take over you and leave you feeling completely wiped out.

This really doesn’t need to be the case. In fact, there are some fantastic stress reducing, relaxation techniques that you can try out for yourself at home. Best of all, they are all simple things that won’t take too long to do and can be worked into your everyday routine with ease.

Meditation

Meditation isn’t quite the same as people think it is. Whilst there are people who practice this in a variety of ways, there are also those that use it as a method of calming down and reducing stress. The idea behind meditation is that you spend time focusing on your own breathing or perhaps just starting at a lovely view. Anything that you can do to clear out your mind and bring back your focus to something other than what you are finding stressful. Another name for this that is currently going around is mindfulness.

Deep breathing

Whilst this may sound similar to meditation, deep breathing is just when you focus on your breathing and nothing else. When we feel stressed out, then we are much more likely to take shallow breaths, this stops us taking in as much oxygen and can leave us feeling even worse. Instead, you need to stand up and breathe deeply into your stomach. You need to imagine that you are filling up a balloon as you breathe in through your nose and then deflating it as you breathe out. This needs to be repeated at least 10 times to have an effect.

Listen to some music

Music is known to be a really powerful tool when it comes to changing our mood. For those that have some feelings of stress and anxiety, soothing music, such as soft and gentle classical music is going to not only bring down your blood pressure and heart rate but also your anxiety and stress levels too.

Exercise

You would be surprised to learn just how much exercise can really help make you feel less stressed out. The reason behind this is because, when we work out our bodies release some of the good hormones that are known to make us feel calmer. It also uses up some of the hormones that are released when we feel stressed. Another reason why exercise is so good for stress is that if you are heading for a run or to a class, you are likely to be taking yourself away from the situation that is causing you the stress in the first place.

Whilst stress is something that we all have to live with, the way that we choose to deal with it and keep ourselves together is a different matter. And this is something that we definitely do have control over ourselves.