Strategies for Stress-Free Living

You have got the pieces, now it’s time to put it all together so you have a complete Mind and Body Maintenance Programme.  Just as you might spend 30 minutes a day taking care of your body by exercising, it’s important to take care of your mind too!

Here’s where it’s a good idea to focus:

1. Relaxation is the key.  Have you arrived at that place where you are doing something relaxing every day?  It doesn’t have to be a big thing.  For me, I make lip balms.  I absolutely love it and I feel relaxed whenever I put them on. 
2. Give your mind a mini break.  You don’t need to carry around an endless list of problems.  Put them in the suitcase so you can deal with them when you feel ready.  Carrying them around with you won’t solve your problems, it will just wear you out!
3. Where are you keeping your tension?  Check in with your body every day to strengthen that mind and body connection.
4. When you find a tense area, get that tension out.  You can use creative visualisation exercises, like the ones in my programme, Reduce Your Stress – Your 7-Day Turnaround Programme.  Or try out some body therapies or ayurvedic therapies such as shirodhara (tension melts from your mind as soothing warm oil is poured over your forehead).
5. Notice your triggers.  How does your body feel before you get stressed?
6. Catch those trigger thoughts by noticing how you are feeling.  Change those thoughts and you stop stress at its source.
7. Build in helpful rituals.  Check out your relationships.  Who can you talk to?  How do you problem solve or share issues?  Monitor your food and fluid intake.  Check out my special report on stress busting foods for more information on this one.

We are not here to have no stress.  We are here to learn and to grow.  Learning and growing involves short bursts of stress and challenge, followed by down-time where we relax, regenerate and integrate.  Not learning is a stress in itself.  Leaping from one stress to another stress is chronic stress and really is not helpful. 

The trick is to make sure that you are not chronically stressed - that’s when you wear yourself out and create or exacerbate health issues. 

By building in these tools and strategies, you can enjoy stress-free living.

Tags: Focus and Meaning, Reduce Your Stress Programme, Relaxation, Stress Related Illness by Tracy
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What you are focussing on can have an impact on your body and how you are feeling.  Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is a very powerful example of this connection.  Some forms of IBS are caused or aggravated by stress.  It’s as if your body is trying to get your attention.  Research shows, reducing stress can reduce the symptoms of IBS. 

Anxiety is another example.  Some forms of anxiety are triggered by your thoughts.  It’s as if the fire alarm in your body has gone off but there’s no fire.  Although the result of the anxiety can feel very real and have a very real effect, the trigger is just like that false alarm.  Here’s an exercise you can use that helps alleviate panic attacks and anxiety.  It’s called the Emergency Exercise.

Imagine that you are breathing in a white mist.

Breathe in through your nose and as you breathe in, see that mist circling in and around the inside of your head.

On the out breath, breathe out the white mist allowing all the tension to leave your body with this out breath.

Let your shoulders droop and feel your body go limp.

Now repeat this three more times in your own time.

Stress really is a mind and body game.  What we think, effects how we feel and we act or react based on how we feel (whether we are trying to avoid pain or move towards something pleasurable).  By changing what you are thinking about, you change how you feel and as a result change how you behave.  This works the opposite way too. 

You don’t have to monitor your every thought to catch what is triggering your stress.  You can track back by noticing how you are feeling or what you are doing.  If you catch yourself worrying try the Heavy Load exercise and put all your thoughts in one of the suitcases to be dealt with at a more appropriate time. 

If you catch yourself stressing over something, hold the image of a beautiful pink rose or a gorgeous friendly butterfly in your mind.  Now that you have that image in your mind, change your thoughts to something more helpful.  You might like to change the image of the rose or butterfly to something that always makes you feel good when you think about it.

Change the meaning you give to a situation or event and you have the power to change the whole chain reaction; stopping stress at its source!

Tags: Focus and Meaning, Reduce Your Stress Programme by Tracy
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Today we are looking at the early warning signs of stress.  Often we are not aware of the little stress triggers and before we know it, things have built up and we discover we’re really stressed.  If you register when your body is sending you the signal then you can take action before you get to the straw that broke the camel’s back!  Just because you are not registering you are stressed, doesn’t mean that you are not stressed.

The key to understanding when something is triggering your stress is by noticing how you feel in your body.  Remember, stress starts when you perceive a situation to be threatening.  That decision launches a cascade of reactions in your body that culminate in something helpful (for example, when things are going well) and something less helpful (for example when you’re tense but not in a life threatening situation). 

Take some time to write down how you feel when you are stressed.  It may help if you think of a stressful situation. 

Now work backwards.  Before that something happened, how did you feel in your body. 

Keep working back and record that trail of feelings.  Now you know what to look out for. 

When you notice these feelings, check in with what you are thinking.  If you can, change what you are thinking about.  Also build in some of the tools that we have already talked about.  Schedule in some extra relaxation time, map and release the tension in your body.

Tags: Reduce Your Stress Programme by Tracy
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