5 Simple Ways To Reduce Stress

So you’ve ticked off exercise, sleep and meditation but have you tried these for stress relief?

Stress is inevitable but it doesn’t need to creep up as frequently as we may allow it to. While the usual stress busters (sleep, healthy balanced eating, low caffeine intake, plenty of water, meditation, exercise) do wonders, here’s a few surprising ways you can beat a stress injection. Here Jacqueline Alwil, nutritionist, personal trainer and founder of The Brown Paper Bag, shares her unique tips on calming down.

Cap your social media catch ups
To just three times per day. That’s right three. Morning, noon and night. All the intermittent scrolling we (yes, I’ve been there too) do increases stress because we’re subjected to constant information overload. But not just simple information we’re looking for, marketing and advertising, events, foodspo, fitspo and all the things which potentially distract us from what we’re doing, suck time from our day unnecessarily and worst – make us feel like we are missing out. Limit social media, and you’ll limit your stress levels too.

Hang out on the floor
With your legs up against the wall. It’s an inversion in yoga, but for some of us non-yogis, we can just go with ‘floor to wall time’. And the benefits are massive, but most notably for stress reduction as this pose helps to boost circulation back toward the upper body and head, increase energy and relieve lower back pain where many of us hold stress. When practicing this pose, you’re practicing the opposite of action, which is reception. We’re more ready to receive rather than act in our daily life and that speaks mountains for relieving the load we place on ourselves, physically, mentally and emotionally.

Time block your day
This is one incredibly simple trick that helps you stick to the time you allocate for individual items in your day and not over do on those that really don’t require that much of our attention. Smaller demands often chew more time than we want them to and then we are left with less time for the more important commitments in our day. Less time on the big stuff equals imminent stress.

Do a home detox
It’s as good as any kind of detox because it can completely refresh your head set in regard to your health and life. Eliminating clutter, cleaning out the old and allowing space within the home, office, fridge, pantry, wardrobe (wherever floats your boat) is a wonderful way to flush out the stress. There’s nothing quite like a fresh start and some space to move, inject good healthy elements to life and let go of the past a little. All factors which can help reduce stress.

Say ‘no’
We’re encouraged to be positive, open and look for opportunity not decline invitations, right? This is absolutely true, but only if it serves your ‘why’ or purpose in this life. Jumping too often and saying ‘yes’ to everything can result in a list a mile long of ‘stuff’ to get done, and that ‘stuff’ can cause some serious stress.

Why? Simply because you cannot tick all those boxes and look after your own mental, emotional and physical health at the same time. Something inevitably has to give and that usually is our health. We can’t sacrifice our health for the sake of the yes game, instead we need to stay true to our why and only say ‘yes’ to those things we are 100% passionate about.

Read the original article here.