Stress Management Techniques

The stress management strategies below may be beneficial if used regularly for your own stress management. We recommend you use these stress management tips in addition to seeking the advice and guidance of an experienced Body Mind Therapist in Perth who practices our form of Stress Management.

Stress Management Techniques Include:

• Body scan for tension – Take timeout to scan your body and check how you are feeling. Check for signs such as resting heart beat being elevated, tension in shoulders and neck, clenching of teeth, curling of toes, racing thoughts, shallow breathing.  Then release these tensions to down regulate your stress.

• Deep Breathing – When you slow down and deepen your breathing, you signal back to yourself that you are safe.  Close your eyes and pay attention to your breathing and think the thought “I am safe” ” as a repetition thought loop while doing the closed eye breathing. Inhale all the positive energy of life around you and imagine as you exhale that all stress and negativity is leaving you.

• Music for Shifting Your Mood –  Listen to an uplifting song that resonates in a positive way for you. Do not choose aggressive loud music as that will amplify stress states. Close your eyes and listen to the music and if it has words, be comforted and inspired by those words. Smile as you listen to the music.

• Sip a Herbal Tea – Step away from stressful tasks and environments by indulging in the ritual of making and enjoying a herbal tea rather than an energising coffee or alcohol. Research shows that each herbal tea contains natural compounds and attributes that promote wellness, relaxation or nurturance.

• Safe Aromatherapy Oils – The soothing and calming scent of essential oils can help you overcome stress and anxiety. This occurs as smell is a primary sense factor and when you stimulate your smell sense receptors in your nose, which connect to your brain, they trigger brain signals that relax and regulate emotions.

• Get a Pet – Unconditional love is hard to get from humans but safe animals such as cats, dogs, budgies etc, provide an uplifting relational bond that breaks stress and releases relaxing and positive mood endorphins from the brain.

• Dance or do Active Grounding – When you move your body, you break up its held tensions in musculature and segmental armouring, and create blood flow and endorphin release. Stomping the legs and making noise as a form of active grounding is useful for the same reason.

• Meditate or do Yoga – Meditation, Yoga and Tai Chi, each play a part in relieving stress at the level of body or mind and there are different forms of these to explore. As with any technique there is a need to commit to a regular practice to realise the benefits of these type of practices.

• Laughing – Laughing forces the brain to jump track out of its stress state hyper-vigilance and into its relaxed social engagement brain centres, where endorphins can be released and body tensions relaxed.

• Confide in a Trusted Friend – The brain feels stress when you are isolated and a lot of your self-regulation comes from social interaction with others that is safe and appropriate. As the saying goes “a trouble shared is a trouble halved”, so confiding in a friend will help you feel better.