Tips to Reduce Stress

We all lead such incredibly busy lives that it’s so common to experience periods of stress that can feel overwhelming.

The key is recognising the stress within your body and putting in place practices to cope with stress in your life and minimise it where possible.

Set goals and intentions for your week

By starting your week off with a plan, you’re putting in place structure. This will ensure that when there’s times of stress, you’re able to refer back to your plan to orient yourself when it all feels too much and reprioritise.

Maintain a regular exercise routine

Physical activity can help produce the brain’s feel-good neurotransmitters, endorphins which is one of the most accessible ways to combat stress. Studies have shown that exercise is an effective way of improving alertness, concentration, reducing fatigue and enhancing overall cognitive function.

Keeping exercise as a regular part of your day and week is a really accessible way to provide stress relief. Exercise, even just a simple walk around the block, can help to ease your stress and the symptoms that come alongside it.

Practice breathing exercises

Breathing exercises can help ground you and rewire your mind and body to unwind.

Deep breathing lowers stress in the body as it sends a message to your brain and body to return to a relaxed state and combats stress symptoms such as increased heart rate, fast breathing, and high blood pressure.

A simple breathing exercise to practice is to lie down, put one hand on your belly and one hand on your stomach and breathe in deeply through your nose to make the hand on your belly rise as you fill your stomach with air, and breathe out through your mouth. The hand on your chest shouldn’t move.

Reach out if you need to talk to someone, there’s also help available at Beyond Blue (1300 22 4636) or Lifeline (13 11 14).

Photo by Toni Reed on Unsplash