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5 Surprising Ways to Lower Your Stress Now
By Stacey Colino
Now that the holidays are history, it’s time to return to regular life again. That means dealing with the work that piled up while you were out celebrating the season and the bills that have stacked up from your holiday shopping, as well as the extra pounds you might have packed on from all those food-filled festivities. Yikes. Factor in the frigid winter weather and a still-weak economy and you may feel like screaming, “Bah humbug!” Before you let anxiety get the best of you, though, try these eight surprising stress busters. They’ll help you stay cool, calm, and collected no matter what comes your way in 2010.
Give Yourself Breathing Lessons
The way you breathe can either calm your body’s response to stress or fire it up. “When you breathe shallowly, you set up the body’s fight or flight response, including the release of stress hormones, and you get less oxygen—all of which makes stress worse,” explains Alice Domar, Ph.D., director of the Domar Center for Mind/Body Health in Waltham, MA, and co-author of Live a Little.
To relieve stress and calm yourself, practice diaphragmatic breathing: Inhale deeply, allowing your chest and your abdomen to rise to a count of four, then exhale slowly to a count of four; repeat this exercise four times. Do this several times throughout the day, every day, and you should feel a lot less stressed, says Domar.
Take a Tea Break
Skip the coffee and opt for tea instead. Research at the University College London found that drinking black tea on a daily basis can actually help you recover more quickly from the stresses of daily life by lowering levels of stress hormones and inducing greater feelings of relaxation. Whether you prefer your tea black or with milk or sugar, the choice is yours. Just sit back, enjoy your time-out, and sip the soothing brew.
Seize Control Over What You Can
Having trouble getting back in the swing of things after the holidays? Don’t sweat it. Write up a to-do list of small tasks you’d like to accomplish. Clean out your purse. Organize your desk. Schedule overdue check-ups. Even such simple steps can help you feel on top of things, Domar suggests. And taking charge of what you can control will help you feel less overwhelmed and disheartened by what you can’t.
Ban the Word from Your Vocabulary
Describe a situation in your life as “difficult” or “challenging” instead of "stressful," and you’ll open yourself up to more options for taking action, rather than making stress an immutable fact of life, says Scott Sheperd, Ph.D., a psychologist in St. Louis and author of Who’s In Charge? Attacking the Stress Myth.
“If you look at a situation as challenging, it gives you some power to do something about it instead of making it seem like something that's happening to you. Words not only describe states—they also create emotional states,” says Sheperd. Just by changing your choice of adjective, you can take some of the punch out of an unpleasant situation and make it seem much more manageable.
Use Good Scents
Dab essence of rose oil or ylang-ylang oil on your wrists. A recent study from Srinakharinwirot University in Thailand found that when healthy people absorbed rose oil through their skin, their breathing rate and systolic blood pressure decreased, and they felt more calm and more relaxed than those in a control group.
Previous research at the same university found similar effects with oil from the ylang-ylang, a fragrant, flowering tree found in tropical areas. Apply a few drops and let the soothing scents de-stress you from the inside out.
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