Exercise is good for the mind, not just the body. Exercise can help with stress relief because it provides a way for the body to release tension and pent-up frustration. The Eastern practices of Yoga and Tai Chi are effective stress-reducing forms of exercise.
Whenever we encounter a stressful event, our bodies undergo a series of hormonal and biochemical changes that put as in ‘alarm mode.’ Our heart rate increases, adrenaline rushes through our blood stream, and our digestive and immune systems temporarily shut down. If the stressors continue and we stay on high alert for a prolonged period of time, we experience exhaustion and burn out. None of us can avoid stress, but we can return to a state of balance and regulation through a variety of means: exercise, humor, play, music, prayer or meditation. These activities provide calming and relaxing sensory input for stress relief and can be selected according to lifestyle and preference
How can yoga help with stress relief?
Yoga is a broad term for a series of practices that were developed over several millennia to bring practitioners into a state of wholeness and completeness. The sanskrit word yoga, which literally means ‘to unite,’ has many branches, including Hatha Yoga. Hatha Yoga consists of concentration techniques, breathing exercises, dietary guidelines, and a series of stationary or moving poses—also called asanas. These body movements are what we commonly refer to today when we use the word ‘yoga.’
Yoga postures balance the different systems of the body, including the central nervous system, the endocrine (or glandular) system, and the digestive system. By slowing down the mental activity, and by gently stretching the body and massaging the internal organs, yoga creates a climate of dynamic peacefulness within. This relaxing and rejuvenating experience momentarily removes us from involvement with the stressors in our lives—our “to-do” lists, unresolved issues from the past, or worries of the future. By practicing yoga on a regular basis, we build up a natural response to stress, and bring the relaxed state more and more into our daily lives.
The health benefits of yoga are tremendous. Feeling better physically counters the effects of stress. Yoga produces the following physical health benefits:
improves flexibility and muscle joint mobility
strengthens and tones muscles
increases stamina
relief from back pain
increases vitality and improves brain function
improves digestion and elimination
decreases cholesterol and blood sugar levels
increases circulation
boosts immune response
Even more directly related to stress reduction, the mental benefits of Hatha Yoga include:
increases body awareness
relief from chronic stress patterns in the body
refreshes the body by relieving muscle strain
relaxes the mind and body
centers attention
sharpens concentration
frees the spirit
How does medication help with stress relief?
The history of meditation goes back even further than that of Hatha Yoga, with its origins beginning around 3,000 B.C.E. Meditation evolved as a way for the ancient spiritual seers—known in India as EM>Rishis—to gain direct knowledge of the nature of the Ultimate Reality. Today, meditation is recognized for its myriad health benefits, and is widely practiced as a way to counteract stress. Meditation brings together all the energies of the mind and focuses them on a chosen point: a word, a sound, a symbol, an image that evokes comfort, or one’s own breathing. It is typically practiced in a quiet, clean environment in a seated posture with the eyes closed.
As with yoga, a regular practice of meditation conditions you to bring the meditative state into your daily life. Holistic-online.com reports that “hormones and other biochemical compounds in the blood indicative of stress tend to decrease during (meditation) practice. These changes also stabilize over time, so that a person is actually less stressed biochemically during daily activity.”
In meditation there is both effort and passive participation. You continually bring the attention back to a chosen focus (effort), and simply become a witness of all that transpires (passive participation)—incorporating thoughts, sensory input, bodily sensations, and external stimulus into the meditation experience. The result of centering the mind in this way is a corresponding calming and relaxing of the body, down to the cellular level, providing stress reduction.
Herbert Benson, M.D. developed a technique called The Relaxation Response, which makes the basic steps of meditation easy to understand and apply. Dr. Benson’s website offers the following steps as a simple way to begin practicing meditation:
1. Pick a focus word, short phrase, or prayer that is firmly rooted in your belief system, such as "one," "peace," "The Lord is my shepherd," "Hail Mary full of grace," or "shalom."
2. Sit quietly in a comfortable position.
3. Close your eyes.
4. Relax your muscles, progressing from your feet to your calves, thighs, abdomen, shoulders, head, and neck.
5. Breathe slowly and naturally, and as you do, say your focus word, sound, phrase, or prayer silently to yourself as you exhale.
6. Assume a passive attitude. Don't worry about how well you're doing. When other thoughts come to mind, simply say to yourself, "Oh well," and gently return to your repetition.
7. Continue for ten to 20 minutes.
8. Do not stand immediately. Continue sitting quietly for a minute or so, allowing other thoughts to return. Then open your eyes and sit for another minute before rising.
9. Practice the technique once or twice daily. Good times to do so are before breakfast and before dinner. (Mind-Body Medical Institute)
There are more active forms of meditation as well, such as the walking meditations taught by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh and Jon Kabat-Zinn of the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. Walking meditations employ the practice of mindfulness, which involves being fully engaged in whatever is happening in the present moment, without becoming involved in thinking about it. Therefore, when you walk you focus on each step, the sensation of the feet touching the ground, the rhythm of the breath while moving, and the feel of wind against your face.
This type of meditation is “portable,” and can be practiced in other activities, such as driving or engaging in work tasks. Mindfulness meditation relieves stress because it relieves preoccupation with the habitual thoughts about the past or the future that perpetuate stress. As mind-body medicine pioneer Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., says, “Meditation helps to keep us from identifying with the ‘movies of the mind.’
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