Ice Bath Weight Loss Finding Your Own Key to Stress Relief.
There is so much stress in today's world. It is no surprise that anxiety and stress type disorders continue to mount in volume. More and more people need to seek out relief for their stress because weight of it is causing any number of issues in their life. Stress adds to physical ailments such as headaches, blood pressure, weight and low immune system. We have enough going on in our lives without adding more to it. Not knowing how to handle stress adds significantly to it.
And not in a positive way. It can, when not addressed, literally kill you. So with that reality hanging over us, it is in our best interest to find ways to relieve stress and to relieve it quickly. It is very much a matter of life and death. No lie. Excessive, untreated stress is not something human beings are meant to deal with and not something our bodies are built to deal with. It is in our best interest to find ways to deal with the stress.
There are of course any number of medications out there that are prescribed for such ailments, prescriptions that can be given after conversing with your doctor. In many cases these medications can help in alleviating many of the problems with stress you might be having. The question is: Do you want to be on medications the rest of your life? What are the side effects? What will happen when you decide you no longer want to be on prescriptions? If you still do not have a mechanism for defeating stress you will be facing the same issues later on in your life. It is something you need to learn how to deal with.
How does stress impact you personally? What is it that you feel? Your body and mind react very individually to the inputs of stress and before you can begin to deal with stress and anxiety you need to understand the signs that your body sends you. For some it will be very physical. Typically migraines and bad headaches are huge tell-tale signs of potential stress.
Weight gain or weight loss are also huge indicators of the impact of stress on your metabolism. Additionally there is the issue of heart rate and blood pressure. In some cases high levels of stress will impact you by causing your heart to race or your blood pressure to rise. You might feel heat emanating from your body,(probably your face) and understanding that this is a potential stress indicator is important for you.
Emotionally, you might find that you get irritable or lose patience. Perhaps you just get depressed and overwhelmed or you try to hide somewhere and hope that it goes away. You might start to cry because you feel like there is too much going on and your stress is overwhelming you. For most people these are all signs of very high levels of stress and anxiety. And aside from the outlets of seeking therapy for intense stress which is prohibiting you from living a normal life or the drugs that you can get prescribed, other therapies are available. Many people do not want to take drugs; many more do not want to talk about their issues to strangers. But there are a few other things you might try.
What makes you relax when you feel like just chilling out? Chances are that this same hobby can be used as your stress or anxiety relief if you figure out how to channel it correctly. In many cases, it is usually something familiar to you that you will use to deal with episodes of stress. One of the things to keep in mind is that you don't want to go so far outside your comfort zone and "reach" for a stress relief that you will never use.
It's great to say you're going to take up yoga or go jogging when you are stressed, but if you don't do yoga chances are you won't turn to something new when you are stressed. You tend to go toward the familiar. Same with jogging. Jogging is a great stress relief but if it's already a chore to get yourself up and jogging chances are you won't look at it for a stress relief. So you need to find the things that work for you when you don't have to think too much about it. Pick things that come naturally and that naturally cause you to calm yourself.
This isn't to say that when you are stressed you should go out and eat a gallon of ice cream. You need to choose something that is healthy for you if you can. There are plenty of unhealthy things you could choose but in the long run you are just asking for another problem. Okay so you have two general rules: Pick something that comes naturally to you that you don't have to work too hard at to enjoy and try to pick something that at the least is not unhealthy for you. That leaves an awful lot of options that you have to choose from.
Finding your own personal stress relief will come from one of three places (or a combination thereof). Your body, your mind or your spirit. What exactly does this mean? It means that anything you will find that relieves stress can be categorized as impacting and/or using one of these three areas of your psyche. If you find the "key" for you, when you turn it up it will turn the stress down. So what exactly are some of the examples of each of these?
Body: Body is very simply any activity that you do that you find relaxing for your body and the endorphins that you get from the activity are successful in reducing your stress. The example of jogging before was with someone who did not enjoying jogging to begin with so it would not have been a good stress reliever. But what if you like jogging? All the sudden it can become a stress relief because it is something you "know" and that you enjoy.
Same for yoga--only if you already know/enjoy it. The connection between yoga and the relaxation that it can give you makes it a great reliever and it touches on body, mind and spirit. This is probably why it is so successful as an anxiety relief. But if you are just learning it and don't have the moves down to a comfortable level you will not find relief when you hit serious stressors, you might even find doing it more stressful because you have to think about it so much.
Mind: There are many things that are available to relax you using your mind. Meditation is a great mind exercise but you need to again practice it regularly for it to be called upon in stressful times. Reading is also a great de-stressor. It takes your mind off of what is stressing you and what is occupying your time.
Additionally in using your mind you can do positive visualization to try to bring your mind to a more stress free place. Many people do cross words or other mental games to get their mind onto another focus. Any activity which uses your mind to alter your stress state by replacing it with something else to occupy your time (and mind) will work.
Spirit: One of the best ways to rid yourself of stress is through the spirit. When talking about spirit we are talking about things you enjoy that lift your spirit and replaces the stress with an activity that you find calming. Many of the fine arts fall into this category as do many hobbies.
Spirit rejuvenation can include things such as listening to or playing music. Taking a long bubble bath in a hot tub. Add fragrant candles to that experience (perhaps some lavender?). Draw a picture if you like to doddle, write in a journal or write a poem. Rearrange some flowers or do some creative gardening. Find something creative to do which forces out the stress and replaces it with the good will of creative juices.
Aromatherapy is a great addition to anything you might do, it involves an additional sense and that is always good when trying to trigger a relaxing response. Try a cup of tea in a quiet room with candles and perhaps some very low music (nature music perhaps?) playing in the background.
Find which of the three work best for your stress level; Body-soul or mind, and then work with it and use it for those highly stressful times. And don't be afraid to find and explore other possibilities. It's like a headache, sometimes the aspirin work and sometimes it's the Advil. You need to be willing to try something different if one thing is not working. Whatever you do, find your key, and use it to unlock the peaceful person inside of you.
Ice Bath Weight Loss.