Draw A Boundary That Works For You

Don’t downplay the positive effects of simple activities that help you recover from stress. She had to spend the whole week cleaning up the mess instead of relaxing. That’s when she realized that it doesn’t work to procrastinate stress recovery. It’s time to set aside any perfectionist tendencies and allow for curiosity and playfulness. It’s okay to start small. When my daughter was young, having the chance to take a long, hot shower was a rare and cherished event! Showering is a meditation for me to this day. Think of when you were a child. Recall your excitement to try new things, to learn and grow. Are there activities you enjoyed as a child but haven’t tried for a long time? Those may be perfect stress recovery activities to consider bringing back now. I was a dancer growing up and through college. I danced in competitions and on football fields. Then, after becoming a doctor, I stopped dancing.

The Weight Of The World

I drove my daughter to many dance classes, but never danced myself, until two years ago. I signed up for ballroom dance classes. Within six months, I was performing again and loving every minute of it. It’s also okay to start with what you already do. When someone asks you what your hobby is, are you the person who doesn’t have a reply? I find that reframing what you do as part of your stress reduction can allow you to see it in a new light. Washing the dishes can be a great way to practice mindfulness. Reading stories to your children allows you to practice being present in the moment. Walking your dog helps you as much as it does your dog. So do watering the plants and drinking a cup of tea. The key is to do these activities with a mindset of stress recovery. By associating significance with your choices, you bring spirituality into your daily existence. For example, you can choose activities that allow you to focus on and enjoy the four elements.

Starting Over Again

Going to the beach, taking a hike, and even sitting on the grass are all ways to connect with earth. Drink filtered water or herbal tea with intention and take a shower or bath, or even a swim in a lake or the ocean, to connect with water. Practice breathing techniques, or whistle or sing, to be present with air. Often the hardest part about choosing stress recovery activities is that it means you’ll need to say no to someone or something else to create the time and space for stress reduction. It’s also possible that others in your life may want to join you. If you notice that you feel anxious or guilty for choosing to take care of yourself, take a deep breath and just pay attention to the feeling. You deserve to take care of yourself and feel good. Choose to allow what you want to be more important than what others want at this moment. Let’s look at practices you can choose for your stress recovery time. Let’s start with gratitude. It is produced when we are stressed to help us cope with danger. Then, when a stress comes along, the levels increase temporarily.

No One Ever Tells You

To practice gratitude, start by taking a couple of deep breaths. Think of something or someone you feel grateful for right now. You might feel grateful for the place you are sitting, the people and pets in your life, for being alive, for something that happened today, for the food you ate, or for the air you breathe. It may help to say out loud or in your mind, I’m thankful for . Practice doing this each day, whether it’s when you wake in the morning or before you go to sleep at night. In doing so, I immediately feel a sense of relief. I feel that it’s all going to be okay. Sitting in silence is another example of how doing nothing, quite literally, can positively affect your brain and body. Start with two minutes, and gradually find ways to increase this window. Can you block out fifteen minutes in your schedule? What happens if you choose silence instead? At first, you may feel like something is missing or like you are missing out on being somewhere. But once you allow yourself moments of silence, I think you’ll see how valuable they are, and they will become easier to choose and even prioritize. Take silence to another level by making it meditation. Meditation is a state of being in the present moment. Many people think they are supposed to stop thinking to meditate, so it feels impossible. But actually, in meditation, thoughts still happen. In fact, it’s the opposite of concentrating and ruminating on thoughts. It’s about being in the present, instead of thinking of the past or wondering about the future. And meditation is a practice, meaning there’s no expectation or judgment about whether you are doing it correctly. I learned how to meditate when I was in naturopathic medical school, at Bastyr University in Seattle, Washington. Meditation was a common activity, as were ceremonies and honoring one other and the medicine we were learning. A young age, my daughter noticed the cat sitting with her paws tucked under her chest and announced, The cat is ‘meowitating’! Still, it wasn’t until recently, when I attended a weeklong meditation retreat where I meditated for eight hours a day and learned advanced techniques, that I finally really experienced the full potential of meditation. In a meditative state, you are relaxed but awake. You allow yourself to become no one, nowhere, doing nothing. It is simply the act of being present in the moment, whatever you are doing. The increase in theta waves indicates deep relaxation in the frontal and middle part of the brain, where mental processes occur. In people who meditate regularly, over time, they experience improved focus and decreased emotional reactivity to stress, indicating that neuroplasticity occurs with meditation. Mindfulness is a slight variation on meditation.