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?

How To Handle Prolonged Periods of Stress

Lord willing, my family will move to the area where my husband has been working at the end of May. That will be almost 7 months of our family living apart, making big decisions about relocation, with times of great uncertainties, that comes on the heels of 5 months of unemployment for my husband.

Yes, when we move it will basically be one full year of some form of stress that we have been living in. So I feel qualified to speak to living in stress. I'm not saying I have been a perfect role model, but I can still formulate a complete sentence most days, so I think I'm hanging in there.

We all have it in some form or another. It may be your job, your family situation, a health condition, financial stress... whatever. Society at large today lives with a certain amount of stress at one time or another.

I have found some things to do to lessen the effect that stress has on you and therefore your home.

**Get enough sleep. I'm a huge hypocrite in this regard. I know to do it, but I don't and it colors my entire world. It's a very simple fix: shut the house/ world down on time and get some sleep. If the stress keeps you from sleeping, talk to your doctor about medication for some short-term.

**Get some exercise. Whether exercise is "your thing" or not, going for a short walk can do all manner of things to release stress. When I interviewed a therapist for an article recently, he told me that the chemical that causes us to feel stress can only be released from the body 2 ways: through sweat or through tears. Go sweat it out. Also, the oxygen to the brain allows for clarity and helps problem solve.

**Spend time in The Word. Being reminded of God's control of my situation brings me immense peace. I include prayer time in this. I try to make it a non-negotiable start to my day -- why would I go into battle without being properly armed? Again, some days I fail. And I can tell...

**Extend grace to yourself. I have had to back way out of activities that I normally like to volunteer for and be involved in, because my first priority is maintaining peace in my home. I can't do that when I am scattered to the four winds. Also, allow yourself to collapse and cry every once in a while. No one is asking you to be SuperMom/ SuperDad. Just collapse, cry, head to bed, call it a day, and start over tomorrow. His mercies are new every morning.

**Extend grace to others. I get a LOT of advice, and it may or may not be in line with my family's plans and ideas. I appreciate that people are wanting to help, and Mike Cope one time offered these wise words, "People are bringing you the best they have to offer." However, I confess there are days that I get my fill and I just have to come home and go to bed.

**Maintain order and routine as much as possible. This one is tough when, in my case for instance, there is a disruption in the "order of the house" -- the daddy is gone during the week. It's hard to maintain regular dinner times and bed times for every one, but it makes the rest of the house go so much more smoothly. I recently saw a study that also mentioned that clutter is also a distraction and can have negative effect on your emotions. For this reason, I am thankful our house has been on the market much of this time -- clutter usually defeats me. A clean house truly is peaceful.

**Draw strength from others. This is a 2-parter for me. First, I am sure to seek out people who are encouraging and speak faith into my situation. Sometimes it's in a face-to-face situation, sometimes it's virtually (Facebook, Twitter, blogs that I read). I also limit myself to people who are demanding of my energy and efforts. Yes, it's selfish, but as God gives me strength, later I will be called to ministry. Now, my ministry is my family. I realize that for people who work outside of the home, you may be forced to be around energy drains -- but you don't have to absorb it.

**Seek out what makes you laugh. For me, I am blessed that my children are pure and utter delights to me. We truly have a great time at dinner and in the evenings most nights. Don't get me wrong -- they are teens and we have royal irritations and HUGE miscommunications (why does my spell check not recognize that word?). But, for the most part, a LOT of laughter. And? We watch a lot of Pixar. Riley and I have an entire Monsters, Inc. diatribe we go through. Love it.

Times of stress come in waves. Some of them giant, overpowering waves. Some of them constant crashing waves. However it comes at you, it helps to have a plan to get through that time.

Would love to hear from you. What would you add? (I know my dad is going to say: "Get on your motorcycle as much as possible." -- Truth. Do what you love when you can.) What about you?

Communication is Very Fragile

This is a phrase I heard at least a bajillion times -- give or take a million -- as a senior in high school. I went to a Christian high school and had Bible every year as an academic class. My senior year the entire class was about marriage. We had many different topics and assignments, but this phrase stands out more than any other: "Communication is very fragile."

Think about it. The WAY you say something can change an entire meaning. "Thanks a lot!" said sincerely with a smile invokes warm fuzzies. "Thanks a lot!" with an eye roll and sneer shows you honestly didn't appreciate my input at that moment.

You may have heard me say I struggle with migraines. Obviously, in the middle of a horrible migraine, not only do I not think very clearly, I don't express myself well. I try not to make any big decisions or business decisions, but when migraines start piling up, sometimes life has to carry on no matter what.

Last night we had a laughable miscommunication. When you have one party with a migraine and the other party happens to be a 13 year old boy, chances are good that communication will break down at some point. I made myself some dinner then crawled back to my bed. Trying to tell Riley to put my leftovers in the refrigerator, he evidently heard "throw them away" (it's a long story, but something was to be thrown away, too... just not my dinner). Communication is very fragile.

Things like this happen so frequently in relationships: marriages and/ or friendships alike. I'm still grieving a friendship to someone who understood me to mean one thing at one point when I meant something entirely different -- and let it go almost a year before I finally asked what the problem in our relationship was. At that point, a few more things had built up, and the relationship is beyond repair at this point. Communication is very fragile.

Ask. Clarify. What I usually say to Riley, when I don't feel as if my head is about to roll off my shoulders is, "Tell me what you understand you are to do." Then he will repeat to me what he thinks his task is (throw my food away) and we can clear things up then. I am thankful when people believe that our relationship is worth the asking and clarifying.

Very early in our marriage, leaving the house on a Christmas morning, I was complaining that the only pictures one ever takes of me was on Christmas and my hair was stupid that day. The way I worded made it sound (to Troy) like I thought he was being an insensitive oaf at the moment. Communication is very fragile. And I was so thankful he said something!

Oh -- and texting and emailing: throws a whole level of potential snafoos into communication! Ask and clarify. Ask and clarify. Communication is very fragile.

Relationships that are worth investing in don't just happen along. If you have any in your life: friendships, family, or a marriage, don't let a miscommunication trash it. Ask and clarify.