Stress Reduction - Six Top Methods To Beat Stress

by Cindy Locher, CHT

Life is more stressful than ever these days, and everyone is seeking stress reduction. The Information Age has quickly become the Overwhelming Age as more and more new information is generated and pushed at us daily. Our society is now structured so that one person now must fulfill many family and community roles. Especially in our midlife years, we find ourselves trying to climb the corporate ladder, care for children, care for elderly parents, be good spouses and partners, pursue some level of personal growth, and attend to church and community matters. So many messages are coming into us! No wonder stress is a bigger problem than ever for many!

The key to reducing stress in your life is, paradoxically, not to escape it, but to increase the ability of your mind to deal with it. The best way to do this is to provide yourself with specific methods of venting out the excess messages that are flooding you every day. By increasing your ability to cope with stress, you will reduce your reaction to it. Wouldn't it be nice to face a situation that you usually find stressful with a calm, focused mind?

Here are the six most effect methods that I have found in my practice for increasing the ability to cope with daily stress.

  Yoga. The practice of yoga is not only physical, but mental. The gentle, consistent focus required in a half-hour practice of yoga does wonders to free the mind of extraneous thoughts and stress. Plus, the effect of lengthening the muscles helps to reduce your tendency to get those stress kinks in your back and neck. Try to practice at least three times a week for a half hour.

1. Meditation. Meditation is another powerful way to focus the mind. The process of eliminating all other thought gives you a feeling of peace and calm, and this feeling lasts well beyond your session. Practice for just 10 minutes daily, and use your ability to focus to quickly reduce your stress levels on command throughout the day.
2. Exercise. Good exercises for stress reduction are cardio and aerobic type exercises such as running, stair climbing, elliptical machines and the like. The key is to get your body into the "zone" where you are shutting out the rest of the world and focusing on your breathing and the sensation of the exercise. As a bonus, a physically fit body is more capable of handling the physical effects of stress, too. Make exercise a regular practice (at least three times a week for 20 minutes) and keep up with it.
3. Hypnosis. Hypnosis (or Hypnotherapy) is a wonderful strategy for reducing stress. The mind naturally vents the built-up excess and stressful messages in they hypnotic state, so simply being in hypnosis provides a measure of relief from stress. In addition, a skilled hypnotherapist can provide suggestions that will enable you to deal in a calm, focused way with stressful situations. If you are often faced with situations that create anxiety, hypnosis can alleviate your stress reaction to those situations, and the effects of hypnosis can last a very long time, even years after your therapy has been completed.
4. Simplify. If you can, reduce the stress in your life. Learn to say no to additional responsibilities that you don't have the time, or inclination, to do. Taking control of your life, realizing that you have a choice in everything that you do, is a major step toward reducing stress.
5. Take time for yourself. Finally, make sure there is time in your daily and weekly routine for you! Do the things that bring energy to you, to counterbalance the many activities that take energy from you. Read a book, walk in nature, paint, sing, dance: whatever it is that brings you pleasure. The more that activity causes you to focus on it and eliminates thoughts about the rest of the world, the better.

Take time for yourself, choose one or more of these stress reduction activities, and get more out of life now!  Increase your confidence in your abilities in these areas by taking a self hypnosis or meditation class.