Stress Relieving Tips

February is Heart Month!  When we think about heart health, we often think about reducing our stress levels.  While short term stress is a normal part of life that helps your body stay alert, long-term or chronic stress can  cause the body to release prolonged surges of adrenaline and cortisol, which increase blood pressure, heart rate, and arterial inflammation.  This can lead to health issues such as heart disease.  Try using these tips to build a practice of stress reduction into your daily life.  And remember, help is always available.  If these tips don't help bring you ease or you need more support, contact your Inspired Health Group care team.

Be Playful 

Being playful is an effective way to reduce stress, improve mood, and enhance overall well-being for people of all ages:

• Engage in mindful play like puzzles and board games. 
• Try tapping into spontaneity.  Can you take a different way home for some new scenery, or flip a coin to decide an activity?  The next time it snows, get bundled up and go for a walk through the snow, taking in the beauty and stillness of our winter landscape. 
• Tap into your childlike wonder.  Go outside and look the clouds, play with your pet, study the night sky for constellations, and be curious about the world around you.  Revisit some of your favorite books and movies from  your childhood that sparked your imagination.
• Embrace boredom.  Instead of reaching for your phone while you wait in line, trying being present.  What do you notice?  What can you see, hear, and smell?  You may be surprised in how you are able to find amusement through your own observations and creative thoughts. 
• Get a different perspective. Try using tools like magnifying glasses, telescopes or binoculars to look closely at the world in different ways. 
• Creative and artistic play with no attachment to outcome other than being playful, such as dancing around your living room, sketching something that happened in your day, or writing a silly poem can also reduce stress. 

Get Active 

Almost any form of physical activity can act as a stress reliever. No matter your physical ability, exercise can still be a good stress reliever.  Physical activity can pump up your feel-good endorphins and other natural neural chemicals that boost your sense of well-being. Exercise also can shift your mind to your body's movements. This refocus can improve your mood and help the day's irritations fade away.  Need inspiration? Try:

• going on a walk
• work in your garden
• cleaning your house
• biking
• swimming
• weight training
• dancing
• stretching out with yoga
• vacuuming or do anything else that gets you moving.

Learn more about your Physical Activity Philosophy 

Eat a healthy diet

Eating a healthy diet is an important part of taking care of yourself.  Aim to eat a variety of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains.

Learn more about our Nutrition Philosophy. 

Avoid unhealthy habits

Recognize and try to avoid the unhealthy habits you may use to manage stress.  These may include drinking too much caffeine or alcohol, avoiding sleep by staying up late on your phone or watching TV, smoking, eating too much or too little, or using illegal substances. These habits can harm your health and increase your stress levels.  

Talk to your healthcare provider about habits you are trying to avoid.  They can connect you to helpful resources as you work on building healthier habits.

Meditate

Try a mindfulness practice such as meditation. During meditation, you can focus your attention on things like your breath, bodily sensations, noises around you, or an uplifting phrase or mantra.  This practice can quiet the stream of thoughts that may be crowding your mind and causing stress, bringing you a sense of calm, peace and balance.  Meditation can help both your emotional well-being and your overall health.

New to meditation?  Try a mediation app or find guided meditations online for support.  There may even be meditation groups that meet together physically in your community.

Laugh More

 A good sense of humor can't cure everything but it can help you feel lighter.  When you laugh, it lightens your mental load. It also causes positive physical changes in the body. Laughter fires up and then cools down your stress response.  Read some jokes, tell some jokes, watch a comedy or hang out with your funny friends. 

Connect with others

Instead of isolating yourself when you're stressed, reach out to family and friends and make social connections.  Social contact is a good stress reliever because it can offer distraction, give support, and help you ride the waves of life.  Take a coffee break with a friend, FaceTime a relative, visit your place of worship, volunteer, or explore a hobby in class with others.

Get enough sleep

Stress can cause you to have trouble falling asleep. How well and how long you sleep can affect your mood, energy level, focus and overall functioning. If you have sleep troubles, make sure that you have a quiet, relaxing bedtime routine. For example, listen to soothing music, make sure the area you sleep in is cool, dark and quiet, put phones and tablets away, and stick to a regular schedule.

Get outside

The average American spends 90% of our life indoors. This results in far less time outside in green, natural spaces than our ancestors. New research suggests activities or exercise performed outside in connection with nature have several unique health & wellness benefits, including elevating our mood, reducing our stress levels, boosting our immune system, improving sleep quality & enhancing our concentration.  

In WNY, getting outside in the winter takes a little more effort and motivation, try:

• walking in your neighborhood
• shoveling
• meeting a friend at a local park
• taking up a new hobby like cross country skiing, snowshoeing, or learning to identify animal footprints in the snow

Keep a journal

Writing down your thoughts and feelings can be a good release for otherwise pent-up feelings. Don't think about what to write — let it happen. Write anything that comes to mind. No one else needs to read it. So don't aim for perfect grammar or spelling.

Let your thoughts flow on paper, or on the computer screen. Once you're done, you can toss out what you wrote or save it to think about later.

Unplug from Social Media

Is social media adding to your stress?  Take time to unplug and gift yourself more time to unwind by doing things you love.  Endlessly scrolling on social media can heighten our sense of stress, rather than focusing on the things we can control and change in our day-to-day lives.  Check your phone to see what your daily screen time is.  You may be surprised to see how much time you spend on your phone.  Give yourself that time back and do more of the the things you wish you could do if you had the time.

Listen to Music 

Turn on your favorite playlist or play some music for yourself!  Music can provide a positive mental distraction, lessen muscle tension and lower stress hormones. Turn on the tunes and let your mind be absorbed by the music.

Get Creative

Make time for a creative hobby.  For example, try gardening, sewing, reading, knitting or sketching. Creative hobbies can make you focus on what you're doing rather than what you are thinking, helping to bring  you some ease.

Seek counseling

If self-care measures aren't relieving your stress, you may want to think about therapy or counseling. Therapy also may be a good idea if you feel overwhelmed, trapped or are having a hard time coping with stress. If you worry a great deal, or if you have trouble carrying out daily routines or meeting duties at work, home or school, therapy may be a good option to consider.

 
Professional counselors or therapists can help you find the sources of your stress and learn new coping tools.  Your Inspired Health Group care team can help connect you to helpful resources if you need support in seeking counseling.