October 16, 2018 | Categories: Health
If you want to find ways to reduce stress and feel more tranquil when the going gets tough, arm yourself with these health, wellness and self-care tips. From the hot beverage to help you wake up each morning, to what you listen to on the radio, to the deep calming breaths you take in your office, and which scents you inhale before you go to sleep at night, there are lots of small ways to incorporate a little calm into your life. We talked to wellness and spa experts around the country to get their best tips for keeping you happy, healthy and as stress-free as possible at any given moment. Here are their 12 tips to put into practice, starting today.
When you have a scent you like, one that brings you joy, happiness, and pleasant memories, take a deep breath of it to make everything slow down, says Mindy Green, an herbalist, aroma therapist, coauthor of Aromatherapy: A Complete Guide to the Healing Art, founder of Greenscentsations.com. Green likes to make a beautiful room spray with pine essential oils around Christmastime. She suggests you can make spray with seasonal scents like fir or pine needle aromas, citrus, peppermint, and possibly frankincense combined together. Put the essential oils in a mist bottle to spray the room, use a candle diffuser, or put the mix in an inhaler and breathe it in throughout the day. If you’re making a room spray, use 10 drops of essential oil with two ounces of water to mist a room. If you’re using essential oil on your body for a massage, apply no more then 10 drops of oil to one ounce of a dilutant, usually a vegetable oil, like almond oil, apricot oil, or coconut oil. To make sure you’re buying pure essential oil, look for a plant name on the bottle, usually with the Latin name.
If you’d like to introduce aromatherapy to your office environment, put the oil(s) you enjoy on a handkerchief and sniff it throughout the day. Or you could use a personal inhaler, an empty container you can find at the drug store. Put a cotton pad inside of it and add a few drops of oil, suggests Green. Another idea is to keep a small jar with a lid on your desk and add cotton balls with essential oils on them. Simply open up the jar and take a few whiffs during when you need calm down a bit. Green tells us that research says lavender, citrus oils, and frankincense are supposed to be the most calming scents but she advises you to buy and enjoy the scents that you love the most.
Take a cue from restorative yoga and explore supported poses, suggests Jessica Matthews, exercise physiologist, certified yoga instructor, and Senior Health and Fitness Editor for the American Council on Exercise. She says the “legs up the wall pose” helps to release tension from the lower extremities and reduce swelling in the legs and feet while also calming the mind and decreasing feelings of anxiety and stress. Sounds like a win-win to us! With your back and head on the floor and your legs extended up the wall, use folded blankets to help support the lower back and allow yourself to come to stillness for five minutes. This is a great pose to enjoy after a long day to help you truly relax and unwind, says Matthews. (Click here to see more about how to do this move on YogaJournal.com.)
Lisa Boalt Richardson, tea specialist, and founder of Lisaknowstea.com, says it’s important to sip what you love. She calls teas “true teas” (from the Camellia sinensis plant, classified as “white,” “green,” “oolong,” or “black” teas) or “herbal teas.” “True teas” contain L-theanine, which is actually an amino acid compound only found in tea. “It acts with the caffeine to make the caffeine do things in your body differently than caffeine from coffee would,” says Boalt Richardson. L-theanine and caffeine produce a soothing, calming reaction and can increase your serotonin level, she says. “I tell people to drink tea throughout the day because it doesn’t give you a hard crash that coffee sometimes can. Tea has a nice gentle release of caffeine.” Boalt Richardson says her favorite herbal tea to help relax is a mint lavender flavor. She encourages you to sit with a cup for five or 10 minutes, sip it slowly, inhale the aroma, and relax while you take this mini break.
Make time for a nice, hot shower or bath with some lavender soap or essential oils, suggests Sara Trapani, Development Senior Associate Institutional Gifts, the Omega Institute. “Think of something to let go of on your to-do list that is not a priority for that day.” She also suggests taking this time to forgive yourself and be kind to yourself.
“This time of year I like to relieve stress by singing along with my favorite, fun holiday music,” says Trapani. “The old-fashioned holiday songs have a warm and cozy quality that always melts away my stress. Even if you aren’t a fan of holiday music, activating your vocal cords through song creates a soothing vibrational effect throughout your body, and helps soften tension in face, neck, and shoulders—so find your favorite music and sing like no one’s listening!”
A study found that vitamin C helps reduce stress levels and return blood pressure and the stress hormone cortisol to normal levels after a stressful situation, says Erin Palinski-Wade, RD, author of The Flat Belly Cookbook For Dummies. Try adding vitamin C-rich foods, like oranges, kiwis, green and red peppers, to your meals and snacks.
You’ve probably felt relaxed and even a bit sleepy after your big Thanksgiving meal this year. Sure, you probably overdid it on the food portions, but blame that sleepy feeling on the bird. Turkey contains an amino acid called L-tryptophan which triggers the release of serotonin, a feel-good brain chemical. Eating small amounts of turkey may help you to feel relaxed as it has a documented calming effect, says Palinski-Wade.
Several of our experts suggested this tip to help you relax and calm down a bit when things get hectic. Arielle Sutton, spa director at Rancho Valencia Resort & Spa, suggests the Buddha-Lounge CDs for “wonderful compilations of nice music to bring you into relaxation.” She said that for her, “George Winston is a favorite of mine for the winter months and for bringing me into gratitude while softening my senses.”
“Grounding and centering is a great technique to reduce stress,” says Sutton. “You can envision tree roots coming from the feet and planting into to the earth for the grounding aspect. When you feel solid in that, move your attention to your solar plexus area and softly remind yourself of all the things that make you who you are. Say ‘I am loving, I am a woman, I have blue eyes, I love my family, et cetera.’”
This tip was pretty much a staple amongst all of our experts. “A tip for staying calm is to stop for a moment and breathe deep,” says Makiko Braxton, Spa Director at The MODERN Honolulu. “Breathing deeply has so many physical and emotional benefits; it only takes a few minutes and can be done any time, anywhere. This is my everyday simple solution to calm myself down when I am burdened with too many tasks. Breathing enhances oxygen flow to my body and mind and gives me clarity. To enhance the breathing experience, I sometimes inhale essential oil, like lavender for its relaxing effects.”
Stress takes as much of a physical toll as it does a mental toll, and getting a massage can help stave off the wear and tear on your brain as well as your body, says Suzanne Owen, founder of Relax & Rejuvenate Hotel Spa Solutions.You can’t be jolly, happy or merry when you are stressed to the max. If you don’t want to spend the money, or need some stress-relieving effects right now, Owen suggests trying these self-massage techniques, focusing on reflex points in the body. Here’s how to use touch to fall asleep faster.
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This article originally appeared on Oribe’s lifestyle site.
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