According to the 'stress father'Hans Selye, any stressor, imagined or real, can cause the certain range of reactions in our body. For you your emotions act as stressor.
The emotions play a crucial role in the stress response and consequently influences an overall health.
Meditation is one of the great stress management techniques because it carries many varied benefits. However, more than a few people have found it to be challenging at first.
Walking meditation provides the benefits of meditation combined with the benefits of exercise, and has the bonus benefit of being easy to learn, thereby making walking meditation a great technique for those new to meditation.
It's optimal to do this for 30 minutes, several times per week, but if you only have 10 minutes, or even 5, that's better than no practice at all. Walking meditation can be useful even in small doses.
Remember, this is not an exercise in movement, it is a practice of mindfuness that uses movements to develop greater awareness.
Get More Info About Walking Meditation.
Can chocolate be a considered as a stress management tool?
Well, chocolate isn’t going neither to solve the stressful situation, nor change your perception of it and this can’t be considered as a proactive stress management tools as using meditation, visualization or exercising.
But I enjoy chocolate and I have noticed that there are situations (stressful) in my life that it is ok to have it in my ‘stress coping techniques’ tool box’.
Here is why:
Dark, organic chocolate is good for me.
It contains a great amount of antioxidants and can work to balance your hormones (stress hormones included). It can lower blood pressure and cholesterol. Click HERE to learn more chocolate benefits.
Raw, organic chocolate makes me feel better.
It stimulates the production of ‘feel good hormones’ – endorphins and the release of serotonin (natural anti-depressant) and could boost your energy.
Chocolate can impede that its time to learn some stress coping techniques
There could be situations that you do not realize you are stressed but you somehow crave chocolate. Use this as an early warning sign - maybe its time to learn some more conventional stress management techniques or better again, consider working with stress management coach.
Click to learn truth about chocolate.
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Our body responds to stress and anxiety provoking thoughts and events with muscle tension. This tension in turn, increases the experience of stress and anxiety.
Deep muscle relaxation is not only very easy to learn and practice but also extremely effective stress reduction technique: it reduces physiological tension and is incompatible with anxiety, panic and worries.
If you can relax you can control stress. Guaranteed!
We are, by nature, social creatures, and the company we keep can have a huge impact on quality of life. Good friends and close family can celebrate with us during our best times and support us through our worst. A social network of healthy relationships can be a buffer against stress and provide many other benefits.
When under stress it is very natural to withdraw from the world and concentrate exclusively on solving that problem that causes the stress. Sometimes this is appropriate and useful reaction.
But most often it not. Many times one person working on her own simply cannot achieve the tasks beyond a certain size. It is very similar with stress in our lives – many stressful situations cannot be resolved without the help of other people.
People can help and support you in many ways:
- Physical assistance – financial or direct help, or provision of useful resources.
- Information – they may have information that helps in the situation or solves the problem, or may have some personal experience that also can help you.
- Problem solving – explaining your problem clearly to someone else can bring a problem into focus so that a solution is obvious. Or others could have a problem solving skills you don’t and are not directly involved with your problem can bring fresh alternatives.
- Emotional support when you start to doubt yourself or cheer you up when you are feeling down.
N.B. Don’t forget to keep talking to people and building your relationship even if you are stressed.
Take Action:
I would like to encourage you especially those of you in home based businesses to explore Web 2.0 – social networking possibilities to communicate, make new friends and who knows also business partners and surround you with like minded people. It will help you through good and stressful times.
Please join me on Twitter , A2A, Facebook , Squidoo and LinkedIn.
If you have stress management/wellness/healthy living related questions just drop me a line on info@action4balance.com and I will be glad to help with your goals.
Inese Millere