3 Quick Tips for Decreasing Stress Now
My clients come to me often wanting to address their anxiety and decrease their stress. What we label as anxiety and stress is often what I consider the tip of the iceberg: we feel that familiar feeling of a tightness in our chest or bellies, shallow shallow breathing, maybe we feel restless inside or our thoughts are racing & ruminating. Whatever it may be, physiologically speaking, the feeling comes from the activation of our central nervous system.
Our nervous system serves to protect us. When something in our environment triggers it to turn on, our sympathetic system jumps to action in order to save our lives. In an environment where predators are present, we may automatically prepare to fight, flight, or freeze if something triggers us to do so. Once the stressor is gone, our parasympathetic system activates, which serves to help us rest, relax, and recoup. In today’s world, these clear moments certainly exist, but most of our stressors often arrive in the form of a nearly constant, lower-level drip. These stressors are things that won’t kill us, but definitely erode our sense of well-being, which keeps us in a state of near constant sympathetic arousal, or feeling stressed or anxious.
While taking a deep dive into examining and healing our past & determining the most impactful way of changing our environment is certainly a long term way to constructively address our stressors, I want to provide you with three of my favorite tips to reset the nervous system.
The Double Inhale.
In this technique, you will take two consecutive breaths in. First, take a deep breath in through your nose, and at the top of the breath take another quick breath in. Then exhale with a long sigh. If you feel good after this (not light headed) you can do this one to two more times. During the inhale, we activate our nervous system, and during the exhale we relax our nervous system. This technique is incredibly effective, fast, and does not require much physical movement, so if I’m particularly stressed, this is often my first go-to, especially if I have limited time or space. If you’d like to look further into this technique, or are a physiology nerd, check out Andrew Huberman’s example and some more information on why we breath.
The Dance Party.
This is one of my favorite techniques to reset my nervous system, and I first encountered it in a yoga class, where we call it shaking meditation. You can choose to listen to music if you’d like — I love using rhythmic drumming, or whatever my current favorite song is. Start with wiggling your fingers, then shake out your hands, then your arms and shoulders. Next, you’ll shake out your legs, first one at a time, then plant your feet on the ground and shake your knees and hips. Once your whole body is being used, I also like to incorporate gentle head rolls and movement as well. When you get to the knees, hips, shoulders, and neck you will see why I call it a dance party, because you’re basically dancing. The goal is to move all parts of your body, and to shake out whatever is continuing to activate your nervous system.
The Walk
If it’s available to you, get outside and go for a walk. I almost always feel refreshed mentally and physically after a walk, especially if I go to a greenbelt, walking path, or park. Getting out into the natural world optimal, because we often feel a greater sense of connection to the world around us in nature. However, during our day to day, this often isn’t an option for many so using a a hallway or staircase, treadmill or walking pad, or walking in your office will also achieve some benefit. We intuitively know that walking is good for us, but when looking through a therapy lens, we see that walking includes the rhythmic, bilateral movement of both our arms and legs. Bilateral stimulation increases our parasympathetic arousal (rest & digest side of our nervous system), thereby decreasing our stress.
So, there you have it, my 3 favorite tips for de-stressing fast! If you are interested in some of the longer term ways to address the stressor in your life through therapy, please make sure to get in touch with me for a complimentary consultation call.
