Do you know your own ability to relax?
Stress is with us throughout the day. It’s not all negative by any means. But to make sure stress doesn’t harm their quality of life, each person needs personal strategies to be able to relax instantly any time. According to psychologists, the best relaxation method is the one that works for you.
Everyone experiences stress in their daily life, at least occasionally. According to the Job Stress Index 2018, one in four working people even suffers serious stress. Heavy workload, deadline pressure, financial worries and other strains aren’t things you can completely avoid. They’re part of an active working life, and having different challenges makes it interesting. But too much stress can make you sick. The healthy middle way lies in how you deal with the strain.
So for the sake of your body and mind you need the ability to relax quickly – especially if you don’t have time for a holiday or spa weekend. Relaxing doesn’t necessarily mean doing nothing. Each person has their own way of finding peace and quiet. People’s ability to relax is individual, and depends on the physiology of their brain. Some find vigorous exercise helps. For others, lying on the sofa is the best antidote to the rat race. Others may turn to spirituality to relax.
It doesn’t matter what works for you. What’s important is to know and follow your own ideal relaxation programme. Enjoy and relax!
Everyone experiences stress in their daily life, at least occasionally. According to the Job Stress Index 2018, one in four working people even suffers serious stress. Heavy workload, deadline pressure, financial worries and other strains aren’t things you can completely avoid. They’re part of an active working life, and having different challenges makes it interesting. But too much stress can make you sick. The healthy middle way lies in how you deal with the strain.
So for the sake of your body and mind you need the ability to relax quickly – especially if you don’t have time for a holiday or spa weekend. Relaxing doesn’t necessarily mean doing nothing. Each person has their own way of finding peace and quiet. People’s ability to relax is individual, and depends on the physiology of their brain. Some find vigorous exercise helps. For others, lying on the sofa is the best antidote to the rat race. Others may turn to spirituality to relax.
It doesn’t matter what works for you. What’s important is to know and follow your own ideal relaxation programme. Enjoy and relax!
For many people the most effective anti-stress therapy is physical activity to literally shake off the tension. Especially for young adults up to age 30, sport can be the best way of overcoming feelings of stress. In tense situations stress hormones are released, blood pressure rises, and people’s breathing becomes shallower. Exercise balances out these physical phenomena, as well as loosening muscles made tight by stress.
If your head’s full of problems and your thoughts are going round in circles, it can help to change your environment and immerse yourself in another world. It doesn’t matter if it’s something creative, cooking, gardening, reading, gaming or watching a movie. As long as you enjoy it and it takes your mind off things, it will serve the purpose. For people in Switzerland, TV, the internet and social media are popular means of distraction. Nature is also a favourite place to recharge: around a third of respondents in a survey said they found the great outdoors the best place to escape stress.
If you want immediate relaxation, the magic word is mindfulness. Mindfulness means that you’re consciously aware of what’s happening in the here and now – whether you’re preparing a presentation in the office or emptying the dishwasher at home. Mindfulness is a mini-meditation built into your everyday activity. The technique is learnable – or more accurately re-learnable, as children are masters of perfectly immersing themselves in the here and now.
Studies show that at least to some extent, you can use your own thoughts to avoid the negative effects of stress. If at the end of a strenuous day you consciously think about the positive moments you experienced, you realise that despite all the hectic activity there were good things: spontaneous praise from a business partner, a short chat with a new coworker at the coffee machine, or the fresh air after summer rain. Moments of satisfaction like this give you positive feelings and strengthen your inner defences for the difficulties to come.
Of course we don’t forget to breathe. But in stressful situations we don’t breathe deeply enough. This leads to shallow breathing and reduces the supply of oxygen. This is why preventive health experts recommend breathing exercises as a means of reducing stress. You sit on a chair with your eyes closed and lay your hands on your belly. For several minutes you breathe deep into your belly. Feel how your abdominal wall moves as you breathe in and out. If you take a few breaks of this sort to breathe every day your stress might not disappear into thin air, but it almost will.
