How to chill out…
While it’s impossible to lead a completely stress-free life, finding ways to unwind and “chill out” are key to retaining your energy levels and ultimately your sanity when you have a demaning job.
There are as many techniques to decompress as there are human beings; but when it comes to finding inner calm, practices such as mindfulness, meditation and meditation are usually top of mind. Although these are great tools they don’t appeal to everyone. Personally I love both yoga and adult colouring books. But what can you do it none of these apeal.
My golden rule is any activity that is enjoyable and absorbs you to the extent that you aren’t aware of the time and you stop thinking about work helps you unwind and chill out. So you can choose any activity that helps you distracting your mind from everyday pressures and you love. Once you have choose your activity do it often, and put it in your diary and don’t feel guilty – we all need time out.
One free, easy activity is just going for a stroll. I don’t mean walking fast to hit your 10,00 steps per day target. Just go for a stroll for the sake of it.
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Sleep
This week the press seem to be full of articles on sleep, ranging from recent research to the reasons why we lose sleep - the top reason being a heavy workload. I am sure that most people reading this blog post know that if they have a good night’s sleep they wake up feeling refreshed. So the recent discovery by scientists from University of Wisconsin which shows sleep restores your brain will be of no surprise. (For any geeks out there the research showed that sleep boosts myelin which is essential in the growth and repair of our brains. The research also revealed that deep sleep doubles the rate of reproduction of some cells.) While over in Stockholm researchers have discovered that people think sleep deprived individuals “look sad, unhealthy and unattractive”. For anyone that is struggling to get a good night’s sleep knowing science has proved that they look as awful as they feel isn’t exactly helpful either! So I wanted to share a few tips with you on getting a good night’s sleep.
- Try to go to bed and get up at the same time as bodies like routine and it will help you sleep better.
- Ensure your bedroom is quiet, dark, restful and the right temperature i.e. not to hot and not to cold. Remember it isn’t ideal to watch TV or work in your bedroom that includes trying to sleep while keeping one eye on your blackberry.
- Try to mentally and physically relax before going to bed by turning of the TV or computer and having a warm bath, listen to some relaxing music, read a book or simply sip a cup of Chamomile tea.
- Valerian is a dietary supplement that has been used since ancient times to help with a good nights sleep as it is known for combat insomnia and nervousness.
- While exercise is great to combat stress, exercising too close to bedtime can actually make it harder to sleep.
- It is best to avoid alcohol before your go to bed as for some people it will interrupt their sleep pattern later in the night.
- It is best to avoid coffee from later afternoon onwards as for some people it will keeps them awake.
Natrual Ways to Reduce Anxiety – Part 2
Having explained what anxiety is, I want to look at how people can help themselves to reduce their anxiety levels. Whether you suffer from occasional anxious thoughts to a full blow anxiety disorder yoga can be helpful. Once study found that women who practiced yoga twice a week for two months reduced their anxiety levels significantly. Another scientific study found that regular yoga was more effective than walking for improving the mood and anxiety levels in healthy people. Current thinking is that Yoga may work by boosting the levels of the neurotransmitter GABA (gamma-aminobutryic acid) in the brain - which acts as an inhibitor in the brain reducing anxiety. References https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19341989 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20722471
