How To Trick Your Body Into Thinking You Are Relaxed

Hey, guess what? Another blog post about relaxation! You would think I am stressed or something!

I am finding that I physically handle an unknown, uncertain future better than a known (overwhelming) checklist of all that must be done before I move out of one house and town to another house and town.

So I am calling on things I know to do to when stress threaten to cause me to feel awful. I find it difficult to breathe, my stomach stays upset, my chest is chronically tight. Not good.

You know many of these things, so in times of high stress, here's a quick checklist of how to un-do the effects it has on your body.

1) Head and Neck: Check that your head is pulled back over your neck, not sticking out. In times of stress, many of us will jut our head out, putting up to 10 pounds of extra pressure on the spine. Pull your head back.

2) Mouth and Jaw: This is one place the body takes on stress (anyone a tooth grinder/ jaw-chewer?) Relax your jaw, being sure that your teeth are slightly open. Relax your tongue. Relaxing your tongue signals to the rest of your body (I am NOT making this up) to relax. It also allows for greater air flow (about to discuss this in greater detail).

3) Shoulders: Roll them to the back, then down. If they are pulled forward (how most of us spend our days even not under stress) our chest cavity is pressing on our lungs, preventing us from taking adequate breaths. The end result is oxygen deprived organs and muscles, creating an overall fatigued feeling, especially if you couple it with high adrenaline throughout the day. If your shoulders are high (around your ears!) then your neck is too tight, eventually leading to cramped muscles.

4) Hands: Many of us also carry stress in our hands, gripping pens and steering wheels entirely too tightly. While you are relaxing those other places, stretch out your hands.

5) Belly breath: As mentioned above, most of us walk around oxygen deprived throughout the day and wonder why we yawn starting at 6 p.m. Take a deep breath, picturing the very bottoms of your lungs filling, so that it causes your belly to poke out. Do this as often as you think of it.

Stress is HARD on a body. If you can't undo whatever is stressing your brain, try to undo the stress on your body first with these quick tips.

Do you have any other ideas of quick things you can do to de-stress your body?