April is Stress Awareness Month so in the first of our blogs from DeskLodge experts, we have some top tips from Rebecca of Wildflower Massage. Rebecca visits DeskLodge House once a month to offer a mixture of treatments to our members.
Rebecca writes:
Modern life is stressful. Keeping up with work, social lives, exercise routines, childcare, the list goes on. Living in a state of high stress negatively impacts our immune system, quality of sleep, ability to focus, and can lead to long-term health issues. It’s really important both to develop healthy coping mechanisms for dealing with unavoidable stresses, and to do things that help to minimise causes of stress.
If you’ve been stressed for a long time, it can feel difficult, even impossible, to know how to calm down. Once feeling stressed becomes the default for your nervous system, it can be hard to even realise how stressed you really are!
April is Stress Awareness Month, and this year the Stress Management Society is focusing on a ‘little by little’ approach to managing stress levels. Through making small, sustainable lifestyle changes, you can reduce feelings of stress, and improve quality of life.
Fight! Flee!
The stress response is preparing our body for fight or flight. However, most of our stressors aren’t physical, so we accumulate all this wound-up energy and have no outlet for it. If you have had a stressful day, literally fight! Okay, not literally, but go to a box fit class, play football (kicking), throw something (like a basketball)! Or flee! Run, swim, cycle, use that energy that’s there to protect you. Moving your body - even just shaking your arms and legs for a couple of minutes - will help release some of that energy and bring you back into your parasympathetic nervous system, the state of rest and digest.
Do nothing for a bit!
We’re all hugely overstimulated. Living in busy cities, and with modern technologies like phones giving us access to an endless stream of information and entertainment, we are able to constantly consume and distract ourselves, and it’s leaving us feeling fried! Letting our brains wander is not only important for managing our stress levels, but also for our cognitive function and ability to focus. It gives us the chance to process thoughts and experiences, rather than just continuously taking in more information than we can comfortably handle. Enjoying your morning coffee without checking your emails, or staring out the window on your commute instead of scrolling is a more mindful way to begin the day.
Focus on your breath.
Breathwork hacks our nervous system into relaxing. There are certain ways in which our body functions when we are stressed - fast heartrate, quick and shallow breathing, lots of oxygen being sent to our muscles – as opposed to when we are relaxed - slower heartrate, deeper and slower breathing, more energy going to our inner organs and digestive system.
What’s great about our breathing is that this is something we can have conscious control over. By breathing as if we are in a relaxed state for a few minutes, we ‘trick’ our body into feeling calmer, and so all the other systems we don’t have direct control over start to change too. As our breathing slows, so will our heart, and our body will begin to let go.
Try breathing in for 4 counts, holding for 4 counts, and out for 6 counts for a couple of minutes, and see how you feel after compared to before.
Sometimes life just is stressful.
It’s all well and good being told to just breathe, but sometimes life is stressful. Things happen that are outside of our control, like losing a loved one, family issues, uncertainty at work, or financial difficulties. Stress is sometimes a very rational response to what you are experiencing. You are stressed because something stressful is happening, and no amount of sitting calmly and listening to your nervous system, will fix it. However, understanding what your mind and body need to feel calm, may help you to cope better when unavoidable things happen.
Have a massage!
Massage is so powerful for releasing stress you are holding onto! It offers much needed time away from your busy life to completely let go and unwind. Not only does it feel good, but when you are worried and stressed, this commonly shows up as physical tension in your body, especially neck and shoulders, which massage can help release.
My treatments offer a mix of techniques that help to calm the mind, restore the body, and bring some balance into your life.
I’m at Desklodge every 3rd Thursday of the month, and you can book for any length appointment between 20 minutes and 1 hour. Each massage is tailored to your unique needs.
Book here 💆♀️💆♂️
If you’d like to ask me a question or want some more info ahead of booking your treatment, you can reach me on 07990162374, or wildflowermassagetherapies@gmail.com
Keep in touch, follow me on Instagram and Facebook.
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