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- DictionaryRe·laxed/rəˈlakst/
adjective
- 1. free from tension and anxiety; at ease: "we were having a great time and feeling very relaxed"
Jan 24, 2024 · Tense your muscles for about five seconds and then relax for 30 seconds, and repeat. Visualization. In visualization, you may form mental pictures to take a visual journey to a peaceful, calming place or situation. To relax using visualization, try to use as many senses as you can, such as smell, sight, sound and touch.
- Meditation
Meditation is an umbrella term for the many ways to get to a...
- Exercise and Stress
For most healthy adults, the Department of Health and Human...
- Stress Basics
Once the threat is gone, your body is meant to return to a...
- Meditation
- What Is the Relaxation Response? It's one name for what happens when your parasympathetic nervous system is in charge of your body functions. This part of your nervous system regulates the work of your organs and glands while you're at rest.
- Your Heart Rate Slows. Stress triggers activity in your sympathetic nervous system, which is in charge of your body functions in dangerous situations.
- Your Blood Pressure Goes Down. Stress hormones can speed up your heart rate and tighten your blood vessels. That temporarily raises your blood pressure.
- Your Digestion Gets Better. When stress causes the "fight or flight" reaction, your digestion gets put on hold as blood moves toward your larger muscles.
- Overview
- How Stress Affects Your Body and Mind
- How to Relax Your Body
- How to Relax Your Mind
- Benefits of Relaxing Your Body and Mind
- When to Get Help
- Takeaway
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Stress can take a serious toll on your well-being. Finding ways to keep stress levels low can have benefits that resonate throughout your whole life. To protect your physical and mental health, finding ways to relax your body and mind is essential.
Techniques like deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation can help you calm the stress response when dealing with an acute stressor, which can provide short-term stress relief. Other strategies like spending time with supportive people, practicing meditation, and doing yoga can help combat symptoms of chronic stress.
At a Glance
Stress creates both physical and psychological tension, and these tensions can feed off of one another. Feeling physically tense can increase your psychological and emotional tension and vice versa.
Conversely, relaxing your body physically can help relieve psychological stress, and relaxing your mind can help you physically relax and release tension in your body.
When your stress response is no longer triggered, it becomes far easier to approach challenges in a proactive, peaceful way.
Learning to master techniques that enable both types of relaxation is a highly effective route to stress relief. Many people try to ignore stress and hope that stressors pass quickly. It's not uncommon to be caught off-guard by stress. It's important to know when you have too much stress and need to relax.
Physically relaxing your body interrupts and reverses the stress response and can stop a negative-feedback cycle where your mind responds to stress by signaling a physical stress response. The tension in your body that can result from this response increases the levels of stress you feel emotionally.
Your experience of stress involves your thoughts and emotions. You may think that you can't adequately handle the stressors you're facing (thoughts), and experience fear (feelings). These can accompany and even perpetuate your stress response. Often, reexamining your thoughts can help you to relax emotionally.
You can better understand your thoughts and alter this cycle if you learn how to relax as you face your stressors. Techniques to achieve this include:
•Changing negative self-talk to positive
•Creating a gratitude list to gain strength from the blessings in your life
•Determining your cognitive distortions, such as all-or-nothing thinking, overgeneralizing, jumping to conclusions, focusing on the negative, labeling, and "should" statements, as well as how to correct them
•Engaging in daily spiritual practice to support your mental well-being
Relaxation can have many positive effects. It can help promote better memory, positive thinking, and stronger concentration.
It can also have physical effects, including lowering blood pressure, reducing muscle tension, and slowing heart rate. Practicing relaxation techniques can also help with pain, anxiety, depression, and headaches.
If you find it challenging to relax emotionally and mentally, consider seeking professional help. Your healthcare provider or therapist can help you explore different ways to manage your stress. They can also work with you to develop new coping skills that can help keep your stress levels in check.
For example, your therapist might utilize cognitive-behavioral therapy to help you learn to identify and change negative thoughts that play a role in causing or worsening stress. Once you become better at recognizing these types of thoughts, you can practice challenging and replacing them with more helpful and less stress-inducing ways of thinking..
It's important to learn how to manage your stress in a healthy way. If you're feeling stressed out or you're struggling to make stress management techniques work for you, consider professional help. A licensed mental health professional can assist you in learning relaxation strategies that can work for you.
- Elizabeth Scott, Phd
Apr 3, 2019 · Breathe in to a slow count of three, and then breathe out to the same slow count of three. Feel your belly rise and fall as you breathe in and out. Repeat five times, or as long as you need to ...
When we’re relaxed our breathing is deep, our heart rate is steady, and our mind is clear. Physiologically, relaxation is the activation of our parasympathetic nervous system. Our nervous system is divided into 2 branches: the central nervous system, which includes our brains and our spinal cord, and the peripheral nervous system, which ...
May 20, 2022 · lower stress hormone levels. relax the muscles. lower blood sugar. lower blood pressure. lower heart and breathing rate. reduce inflammation. increase the immune response. When you mentally relax ...
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Aug 20, 2020 · Go from there. 2. Be intentional about your rest time. Intentionality is kind of the golden rule of rest. In order for relaxation to be effective, you have to commit to it. “Six hours of half ...
