Just Stress Relief

Music helps you to tap into your most primal emotions; it can also change your mood. This makes music ideal for stress relief.

One of the original functions of music may have been to express the inexpressible.  Music was used for laments, for worship and for medicine.  One of the oldest kinds of healer, shamans, used songs to seek assistance from the spirit realm to assist his tribe.  In modern times, blues music can make you feel good by listening to songs about bad times.

Times have changed, but the need for relief from, as Shakespeare put it, “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”, haven’t. 

Between worries about basic survival, there are also worries about traffic, about how to cook a new meal or meeting your date’s parents, about why the cat won’t use her litter box, and hundreds of other straws that can make your camel’s back reach breaking point.  By reducing stress, you can make yourself healthier, which can lead to being more energetic, creative and happy.

For stress relief music, you might prefer instrumentals to those with lyrics.  Some people find their minds latch onto words, whether sung or not, and can’t stop thinking about the song lyrics rather than trying to relax.  And then, there are some people who can only fall asleep with Metallica blasting at full volume (and they always seem to move next door, don’t they?)  Music taste is a very personal thing, so stress relief music that works for one person may do nothing for you.

Music for stress relief

Your stress relief music should remove you from your worries and fears.  It is as if you are placed in a temporary cocoon hanging outside of reality.  You can’t stay there all of the time, but a few minutes a day can make coming back to reality a lot easier.

Not your body’s reactions when listening to a favored piece of music.  Does your pulse quicken?  Then that’s not the best stress relief music for you.  You want your body to calm down, not speed up.  You might try tapes of classical, New Age or even songs of whales or birds to help you relax.  You want to be interested enough in the music to pay attention to it, but not so much that it bores you to tears and thus cause more stress.  The best stress relief music can balance between relaxing you and boring you.  You’ll know it when you find it. 

[tags]music, stress relief[/tags]

When you’re stuck in a stressful job, the stress from work can flow over into other areas of your life. Before you know it, your family is suffering as much as you are.

Relieve your stress at work

There are a dozen small, stress-relieving exercises that can help ease the symptoms while working toward the long-term cure. Stress produces a number of well-documented physiological effects like muscle tension, shallow breathing and compromised immune system. To combat these, you can take direct action.

Take a few deep breaths, slowly. No need to go into some kind of Zen state, just allow yourself to expand the chest and relieve tension around the center of the body. Stretch the arms and shoulders. Gently work the head from side to side. Flex the calves.

Take a few minutes to work on your mental processes as well. Stress often inhibits the ability to focus or concentrate effectively. It decreases memory retention on needed items because the irritation causes focus to shift to the fact of being angry.

While you’re breathing deeply, close your eyes and meditate for a couple of minutes. Again, that doesn’t require any form of deep relaxation, just a moment to let the external world go. At the same time, you don’t want to focus solely on the anger or stress you’re feeling. Focus on an internal image of something pleasant – a child’s face, the family dog, a great golf swing, anything that works for you.

Now that you’ve tackled the symptoms, go after the roots of the problem.

Many choose to start their own businesses. That choice brings with it a whole new set of challenges, but the overarching benefit is the freedom to meet them. You’ll find yourself working long hours with little recognition. But, even in the absence of large external rewards, the internal rewards – the satisfaction, the feeling of being the ‘commander of your own ship’ – is frequently cited as a major incentive for those who keep trying.

Many others will try to work for positive change within their current organization. Even when those efforts are only partially successful, individuals report that they gain satisfaction from the knowledge that they are not simply accepting their unpleasant fate passively.

You can make efforts to transfer to another job within the organization, or look forward to the day when that unreasonable boss will have moved on. Remember, very few things in any company stay the same for more than six months to a year.

While you’re waiting for better circumstances, focus on the process less than the results. Keep a realistic attitude about what is and what is not within your control. Try not to let the latter matter very much. Seek out the cooperative individuals in the company and don’t burden yourself with trying to change the others.

Stress at work can be managed: try breathing your way through the worst of the stress, and you’ll find your day progresses much more smoothly.

[tags]stress, work, stress relief, breathing[/tags]

Prolonged stress has bad effects on your health.

Some of the more elementary and obvious effects of stress are well known. Headaches, excessive muscle tension, high blood pressure, rapid heartbeat, interrupted digestion, and other symptoms are often recognized. But there are longer-term, and more serious, potential consequences from chronic stress.

Just as one example, several studies undertaken at the National Institutes of Health and elsewhere strongly suggest that stress has an effect on the immune system. Interestingly, the effect is sometimes positive, sometimes negative.

Since stress, in one definition, is just a person’s ‘fight or flight’ response to a perceived threat, it can have a positive effect. It triggers the release of biochemicals that can help heal infections from bites, punctures or other damage. That makes sense if you consider how evolution might have tailored the immune system to deal with these problems.

But when that response persists over a long period of time, the effects can be harmful.

One result is that the immune system actually decreases in effectiveness. This is logical if you consider that once those chemicals are depleted, but have nothing to act on and hence dissolve, they can’t readily be produced again when there is something to counteract. The result is a higher susceptibility to infection and a lowered resistance to colds and other virus induced illnesses.

The other result is a general fatigue and sometimes depression. When a person is stressed for long-periods, there is a feedback between one part of the cause – the belief that no action is possible to overcome the stress initiating events – and the effects. In other words, the belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Another impact on health caused by chronic stress is a compromised circulatory system. When stress hormones released by the ‘fight or flight’ trigger don’t get used up by physical activity, they can cause actual physiological stress on the body.

High blood pressure increases physical tension on the walls of blood vessels. When the body reacts to heal the micro-tears that sometimes result, scar tissue can be produced. That decreases the ease of blood flow through them.

If carried to an extreme or for a long enough period, or for individuals at risk for genetic or age reasons, heart attacks can occur. As the blood vessels narrow, the heart may be unable to deliver sufficient blood and oxygen at moments of high demand.

Stress has long been known to worsen the effects of rheumatoid arthritis. As the link between this condition and the immune system have become better understood over the years, it’s clearer why this should be so.

Protect your physical and mental well-being by practicing techniques to lower it. Adopt a philosophy that helps minimize stress in your life. Your health depends on it.

[tags]stress, health[/tags]