Natural Remedies For Reducing Stress

33 Natural Remedies For Reducing Stress On Your Body And Mind

1. Quality Sleep

Sleep isn’t only necessary for our bodies to rest physically; it’s also the time when both body and mind switch to repair and rejuvenate mode. You can counteract the effects of stress by getting 7 to 8 hours of quality sleep each night. To achieve this, it’s essential to have a proper bedtime routine, so your body knows it’s time to switch off and sleep.

Go to bed at the same time each night. Do something relaxing to wind down properly beforehand. Have a warm shower, sip a cup of green tea or read a book. Establishing a proper routine will work wonders for your sleep patterns and stress levels.

2. Have A Massage

Massage is an age-old practice that promotes relaxation and works wonders for reducing stress levels. It’s not just tensed up muscles that get loosened up either. Massage helps to raise levels of the feel-good hormones oxytocin and serotonin, and reduce stress cortisol levels at the same time.

Try a professional masseuse, or ask a friend or loved one to give you a massage at home using an Essential Oil such as calming Lavender. Have a midday stress-busting massage in a coin-operated Massage Chair in the nearest shopping center. Or buy a Self Massager you can carry around with you and use anywhere.

3. Go For A Walk

If you can remove yourself from the situation that’s causing you to stress you will feel much calmer after a walk. It’s not just the fresh air and exercise you’ll benefit from. Being outside, watching the trees sway or the clouds roll gently by has been proven to reduce stress thanks to the fractal patterns that can be found in abundance in the natural world around us.
Fractals are our evolutionary comfort zone and looking at them is known to have an almost immediate calming effect.

4. Deep Breathing

If you can’t get outside for a walk, you can quickly reduce stress and calm yourself down with a few minutes of deep breathing. Breathing deeply from the diaphragm rather than the upper chest will slow your heart rate and signal to your brain that there is no need to kick into “fight or flight”, the body’s natural response to stress.

Deep breathing can also help strengthen your immune system by flooding your body with rich oxygen from deep in your lungs. If you can find a quiet place to meditate at the same time, you will soon feel your stress melting away.

5. Have A Snack

You don’t need to feel guilty about snacking, especially when you snack wisely for stress relief. Don’t turn to processed or junk food though. The right snack can lower your stress levels by releasing the feel-good hormone “Serotonin” into your system, so it makes sense to plan ahead and keep something healthy on hand.

High-carbohydrate content snacks like Cereal or Muesli Bars are ideal for keeping in your bag or your drawer at work. Bananas have the added benefit of being sweet and contain Potassium and Vitamin B6, which are known to fight stress. Walnuts are another fantastic stress buster thanks to the Omega 3 fatty acids and the serotonin-boosting tryptophan they contain.

It’s almost impossible to eradicate stress entirely from your life, but there’s no need just to accept the damage that stress can do to your body either. You now have five natural remedies you can use next time life or work throws a curve ball at you.

6. Take Action on Stress

Ask yourself “Am I stressed, or am I in denial?”
Simply making a conscious decision to act upon your situation will bring to you, such a sense of relief that this unpleasant situation is going to change, that you will immediately start to feel some benefit.

7. Chunk Down

Chunking down helps you to define what the problems actually are. It helps you to divide the problems causing you stress into smaller and therefore more manageable parts. You can then look for solutions, options and ways forward. This is a good problem solving technique.

8. Speak to Someone

A problem shared is a problem halved, it’s good to talk. Talking it over with a friend or someone who is willing to listen, who wont judge or offer advice, can often help to de-clutter the mind and clarify your perspective and help you to take appropriate action to relieve stress.

9. Write it down – Let it out

Write a letter to yourself or to someone else, without posting it, but find a means of getting your true thoughts and feelings down on paper. You can then destroy it if you wish, it’s a form of release, which you can then follow up with a plan to resolve your issues.

10. Ask for Professional Help

Seek out a hypnotherapy DVD or find a hypnotherapist to help you refocus on relaxation and stress relief.

11. Stop Procrastinating

Procrastination is itself a cause of stress, Eliminate procrastination from your life. Don’t put things off until tomorrow. Do them today. Create a “DO IT NOW” mentality.

12. Don’t be afraid to say NO

Change the Dynamic of your situation. If you can learn how to be more assertive, this will enable you to say what you think and act how you want to. Imagine how much less stressed this will make you feel.

13. Give yourself choices

Change the stress factors that you can and strengthen your ability to cope with ones that you cannot change. Be creative, find compromises, Reframe problems and look for solutions that create win-win outcomes.

14. Take a step back from the situation

Create some distance between yourself and the stressor. Walk away and find a quiet place even if that’s sitting in your car or a bathroom. Take a couple of deeper breaths and imagine yourself far, far away from it. See the stressor for what it really is. See it small and manageable compared to the bigger picture and see how much calmer you feel.

15. Manage your Time – Be Organized

Time management allows you to plan and organize your life to give yourself more space and opportunity. It involves planning, delegating, setting an agenda and not wasting any time doing unnecessary things or worrying about things over which you have no control.

16. Start the day with confidence

Prepare for the coming day, the night before. Then you’re not rushed in the morning and off to a bad start straight away.

Don’t rely on your memory (it’s the first thing to go when you’re stressed). Write down appointments, to-do lists, directions and shopping lists. Create order out of chaos.

17. Don’t be late

Give yourself more time to do things so that you are not pressured. Get up a little earlier, leave a little earlier for appointments.

18. Focus

Do one thing at a time and do it well, focus on the job at hand and forget everything else you have to do.

19. Take a moment

Allow yourself some personal time, everyday, a private moment for peace, quiet and contemplation.

20. Have an optimistic view of the world

Expect things to go right, expect people to be nice. You may find that’s exactly what happens!

21. Learn to be Tolerant

Remember that most people are doing the best that they can. Find it within yourself to be tolerant and understanding. People make mistakes. Accept the fact that we live in an imperfect world.

22. Take Regular Exercise

Exercise combats many of the physical and emotional symptoms of stress and can make you feel better about yourself. Feeling healthy can bring about improvements in self-esteem and self-image and increase confidence. When our confidence and esteem are lifted our perception of ourselves changes completely and becomes much more positive.

23. Make exercise Fun

Don’t ignore the mental and emotional aspect of regular exercise. Giving yourself time out to do something fun simply makes you feel good, so if you’re feeling stressed and unsure about whether to exercise or not, simply remind yourself of how you are going to feel afterwards.

24. Get outside and walk it off to breathe in some fresh air

If you work in an office with air conditioning, get outside and clear your head. Walk about and Fill your lungs with Air. Try some Deep Breathing Techniques, which re-energizes and invigorates your mind and body. This simple exercise also releases hormones that affect your mood, creating a more relaxed and positive frame of mind and releasing physical stress from the body.

25. Treat yourself – Have something to look forward to

Get away from it all, even if it’s just for one day. Better still, have regular weekend breaks and don’t ever take work with you. Make sure that you book a proper holiday each year to recharge your batteries, it doesn’t matter where, just do it.

26. Learn to use your body’s Relaxation Response

Imagine… having relief on tap – something you could experience whenever you need it, something that would remove all the stress from your body and return the sparkle to your mind.

You can use hypnosis to trigger this wonderful natural effect, which will release hormones and neurotransmitters that flood your body and mind with pure, cleansing relaxation. You owe it to yourself to feel the relief you can have instantly, so learn this technique.

Make Relaxation part of your daily routine. The following practices will help you to relax and unwind.

– Guided relaxation and visualization techniques: obtain a CD or DVD

– Meditation: Brings an abundance of calm into your life

– Progressive Muscle Relaxation: deeply, physically relaxing

– Massage/ Aromatherapy: Go on, pamper yourself

– Yoga; a mixture of meditation and gentle movement and stretching

– Shiatsu; Energy balancing and deeply relaxing

Other methods and therapies include; Floatation tanks, Reiki, Indian head massage, Thai Chi and Reflexology. Do your research and try a few things and find the treatment most suitable for you.

27. Eat Properly – Food is not just fuel

Make the time in your schedule to eat properly and take time to enjoy your meals when you do eat them. Don’t just shovel the food in and dash off for the next meeting, give your digestive system a fighting chance by eating slowly and resting after your meal.

(Remember, peptic ulcers aren’t fun).

28. Eat Healthy

Look after your health by eating a sensible balanced diet. Eat breakfast to kick-start your day. If you need to, create new good eating habits. Ensure that your lifestyle changes to suit your real needs. Poor nutrition will further weaken your resistance to illness and allow other symptoms of stress to develop.

29. Lay off the coffee and tea. (the caffeine doesn’t help you to relax)

30. Take a hot bath

Have a good soak in the evening to relieve the tension in your body before going to bed

31. Ensure that you get enough sleep

This is essential. You’ll wake up feeling refreshed with more energy and able to function better throughout the day.

32. Enjoy the moments

Find something that makes you smile or laugh out loud. Laughter is the answer to stress, because it’s hard to be stressed and anxious when you’re having fun!

33. Remember to Enjoy Life

Every day, take time to do something that you enjoy.