Techniques for Managing and Reducing Stress

This blog outlines some of the most effective stress-management and stress-reduction strategies.

Stress management involves taking life’s daily struggles and redirecting them toward positive actions.

Stress reduction deals directly with actions minimizing stress using offsetting | deflecting techniques.

Stress Management

Managing stress refers to channeling the same stressful emotions into positive and productive outcomes. The following tips help manage the nervous system by putting that same energy to use in a more productive manner.

1. Make a 2-Part List: This technique converts stress to “fuel” for your tasks and ultimately making you more productive when channeled correctly. When you realize you are under stress, it creates a feeling of being overwhelmed. Part 1 - Take a moment to jot down the reasons you are stressed. You probably will find that your “reasons” include many un-finished things that bother you until they are completed. Part 2 – Add the most important of these items, those that must get done over which you do have control, to this list. The list will give your objective perspective, devoid of emotion.

*Applications such as Evernote, Pomodoro Timer help in creating “to-do” lists.

2. Prioritize: The objectified list provides the opportunity to identify those listed items within your control. Assign all action items a number, specifically the top three (3). Next, schedule time to work on each project in the prioritized order, channelling your stressful energy into productive energy, by telling yourself that “I will not let the stress of other action items bother me until I complete task #1, start to finish.”

*Applications such as Evernote, Clear and Wunderlist support prioritization.

3. Share: Find someone in whom you can confide in when you are feeling the most stressed. Sometimes just having someone listen to you vent opens the window in your head releasing the words and associated feelings from your brain and nervous system.

*The process of finding the words to communicate can help manage the stress in the first place connecting you with your true feelings.

Stress Reduction

While we cannot control what happens around us, we can make conscious choices about how they directly impact us personally. Reducing stress involves some techniques that are simple and easy coupled with complete focus.

1. Breath Awareness: Tune into your breath -- how you are inhaling | exhaling -- not to judge but simply to re-direct the mind’s focus to something productive (the breath) instead of the stressful catalysts. Bring your awareness to how you inhale | exhale in this moment -- through the nose | mouth or a combination. Notice if your inhalation | exhalation seems longer than the other. After one (1) minute of awareness, inhale while counting, exhale while counting down. Consciously, level out the breathing as you focus on inhaling through the nose and exhaling through an open mouth.

*Continue this stress reduction awareness technique for five (5) minutes for the best results.

2. Contract | Relax - Key Body Parts: As you are (sit | stand), bring your awareness to your posture. You can do this even while driving, choose a muscular area to control and work with. Contract your glutes for up to five seconds ensuring not to hold your breath during the process. Hold the muscles, but not the breath. During the contraction, say to yourself out loud “I am stressed.” As you relax, say to yourself out loud “I am relaxed.” Continue the process with a shoulder shrugs (up to your ears & back), ankle circles (in-outward), and finger-fists as you are able. The third and final time simultaneously contract as many body parts as possible, (ankles, glutes, shoulders, and fists) and release with the final conscious relaxation using the mind to reduce the body of stress.

*The goal is to become so familiar with this technique that you will be able to do it any time, anywhere, even in public and in the most stressful situations.

3. Use a Candle: Many find relief in lighting a candle with aromatherapy to reduce stress. A pleasant fragrance encourages deep inhalations, inducing a more relaxed state of being. For some, a candle serves as a symbol of one’s internal light that reflects a living, moving source of energy. A flickering candle, unlike a fluorescent bulb, supports taming the mind from the stresses of our to-do lists, and creating an almost meditative state when gently gazing on it for more than 30 seconds, blinking as needed.

*Select soy | beeswax candles, as long-term exposure to emissions from petroleum-based paraffin wax candles may pose a health hazard.

4. Learn Self-Massage: Stress reduction can include self-myofascial release. This involves the application of a small amount of pressure on while rolling out, the myofascial, the tissue that covers any muscle. This improves the overall muscle function by ridding them of “knots” that accumulate from our daily struggles. In combination with proper hydration and breathing, this form of self-massage reduces many negative side effects of stress, insomnia, muscle cramps, and a general irritability.

5. Meditate: Give meditation a shot.

Not all stress management and reduction techniques are for everyone but trying the gamut can help you settle on the most successful approaches for you.

Given the multi-tasking nature of our society, stress is not disappearing.

The key, therefore, is not prevention but rather management and reduction.