How I cope with stress is something I’ve refined in recent years. Everyone experiences stress, but finding ways to cope is often challenging. These tips work for me and may help you.
How I Cope with Stress: Simple, Easy Tips That Work
My technique may work for you if you want to know how I cope with stress. Even if it doesn’t, you’ll probably find some helpful tips you can adapt.
How I Cope with Stress After a Brutal Day: Sleep
Doesn’t everyone have days when everything goes wrong? Things are just awful and possibly bleak. Sometimes, one bad experience follows another, and all you want to do is crawl into bed. After all, tomorrow is another day, correct?
There is sound evidence that getting a good night’s sleep will help you see things differently tomorrow. This always works for me, even if I can’t imagine how things can be resolved. It’s amazing how your brain finds answers while you’re sleeping. That’s the beauty of how sleep helps you heal and find solutions you couldn’t see before. Plus, sleep is excellent for alleviating stress.
Any Day Is Better with Yoga
Among the relaxations touted to relieve stress, yoga works best for me. If I have even a half-hour, yoga is how I cope with stress. It always changes my mood, outlook, breathing, and heart rate. I like the brief, easy routines available on YouTube or Silver Sneakers. These are quick and comfortable, and I can do them anywhere.
- Notice I said easy yoga sessions. I started with beginner ones, then moved up to intermediate
- Life gets in the way sometimes. I’ve had to pause my daily yoga, but I intend to return to it soon.
- Besides, yoga is one of the most effective ways I’ve found for coping with stress. Yoga reduces anxiety, which is a vital component of stress.
Head Outside for a Walk to Reduce Stress
Walking is one of my favorite pastimes. I enjoy being outdoors and in nature. There’s something incredibly restorative and peaceful about taking a walk that I can count on to lower my stress.
Scientifically, walking reduces a person’s negative mood and enhances positive emotions. Both can significantly lower stress.
- I enjoy taking “awe walks” to maximize the benefits of being in nature. Even if I can’t visit the Grand Canyon or revel in California’s Yosemite National Park that much, many locally available nature reserve trails provide the same awe-producing effect.
How I Cope with Stress: Laugh a Lot
There’s nothing like a good laugh to make you feel better. I enjoy watching comedies, sitcoms, and comedy specials. A funny joke helps, too.
How Laughing Reduces Stress
What is it about laughing that helps you cope with stress? These are some of the ways laughter is a stress reducer:
- When you laugh, you take in oxygen, stimulating your muscles, lungs, heart, and brain. This increases endorphins in the brain.
- Laughing also releases endorphins, the body’s natural feel-good chemicals. Specifically, the endorphins are dopamine and serotonin.
- At the same time, laughter lowers the levels of stress hormones, including cortisol, dopamine, adrenalin (epinephrine), and growth hormone.
- Furthermore, laughing activates and relieves the body’s stress response.
Workout, Weights, and Pilates Help Curb Stress
After a knee injury, cortisone, and hyaluronic acid injections, I began physical therapy. The regimen includes a strenuous workout using weights, exercise bands, and gym equipment. No matter how stressed I am when I go to the gym, I always feel better afterward.
I also do Pilates, some at the gym and the rest at home. As with yoga, Pilates instruction videos are available for free through YouTube and other sites. The principle is the same: toning your body, breathing appropriately, and doing repetitive movements help lower stress levels.
Helpful Tips:
- Work up weight gradually. Start with the lowest pound weight and incrementally increase. The idea is to push yourself, but not to the point where you feel pain.
- The same holds for resistance bands. I started doing side steps with the easiest band, then moved to an intermediate one, and now I’m on the slightly more challenging one.
Massage Melts Away Stress
Who doesn’t love a great massage? I used to believe that getting a massage was too expensive. It was years before I began getting one regularly, and that came after a family member became a licensed massage therapist.
Helpful Tip:
- See a licensed professional for the best massage. You want someone who knows anatomy and how to ease your body’s tension and stress.
- Try different kinds of massage: Swedish, deep-tissue, Shiatsu, Thai, craniosacral, aromatherapy, hot stone therapy, reflexology, sports massage, and Chakra-balancing (Reiki and energy).
Deep Breathing Can Lower Stress
After I was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, I needed to learn natural ways to stop my heart beating so fast. Even during the afib attack that landed me in the hospital’s emergency department, the doctors and nurses advised me to breathe deeply. It took a lot for me to be convinced, but at that point, I’d do anything to lower my heart rate from near 200.
Astonishingly, this did help – temporarily. I had to go on prescription medicine to keep it within bounds, and I still take this daily. Still, like everyone else, I must cope with daily stress. Some days are more stressful than others. Deep breathing calms me down, lowers my heart rate and blood pressure, and restores peace. It also stops the stress, anxiety, and panic that something out of my control is happening.
Helpful Tips:
- I use the simple deep breathing exercise of breathing in through my nose deeply for a count of five, holding it for five, and releasing it through pursed lips for a count of eight. I typically do this five times, although sometimes up to 10 times.
- Other breathing exercises include abdominal, thoracic, clavicular, and yogic.
How I Cope with Stress: Meditation
Medication is one of my favorite ways to relax. Some techniques are included in my online live combination yoga and Pilates classes. Like deep breathing, yoga, and Pilates teach you how to breathe to maximize the benefits of meditation practice. In meditation, I use these breathing techniques to calm my mind, lower stress, and feel a sense of fluidity and peace.
Try these techniques from meditation and yoga:
- Boxed or square breathing
- Triangle breathing
- Breathing through alternate nostrils
Are there other techniques you’ve found to help cope with stress? I’d love to hear what works for you. If you rate them highly, I’ll give them a try. I’m always on the lookout for effective ways to lower stress.
Here are other thoughts on how to fix your stress.
