Stress relieving tips

Today I am  writing about relaxation and stress relief.  We are offering a class on April 11 to learn more techniques and practice these strategies.  See Below for info.
I am going to look at quick and easy things that one can do to reduce stress in our day whether at the office,at home, with the kids, sorting through  email and  phone messages  or whenever you need a quick break.  5 minutes to work on stress relief  is less than 1% of the day.
 Create balance by trying out some new things!
 Some quick tools to get you started.

Focus on your breathing taking deep breaths in and out,  breathing alone,  is a great and quick tool to instantly bring calmness.
 Meditate - sit quietly, back straight, feet  flat on the floor  for one minute focusing on  where in your body you feel stressed. Think about  releasing the stress out of  each muscle of each area working from the top of your body to the feet letting it go out into the ground replaced by a calm, serenity and peaceful feeling.  Don't stress about getting it wrong!  It is a technique that needs practicing.

Try eating a healthy snack or a drinking a cup of green tea.  Instead of turning purple with rage, get green with a cup of herbal tea. Green tea is a source of L-Theanine, a chemical that helps relieve anger, also try chamomile for better rest at night. Dark chocolate  has quite a few chemicals that enhance your mood.  Just knowing chocolate relieves stress-relieves some stress from me!  One study found that women who drank four or more servings of lowfat or skim milk every day were about half as likely to experience stress-related PMS symptoms than those who drank less than one serving a week.  Oatmeal is also great for releasing serotonin a great hormone which calms your body.  So start the day with breakfast which makes you feel better and is much healthier as we tend to forget breakfast in our rush then make poor food choices just because we are hungry all day.

Finally, create a Zen zone for yourself, filled with things that make you feel good, a comfy chair, some incense or candles, any place you can go to be alone for 5 minutes to get your mind together and see things perhaps in a new light and restore some perspective on any situation. Sometimes you have a meditation room and  sometimes you have a bathroom stall a storage closet an empty classroom, the point is alone time to refresh yourself and bring you back in balance- and of course you can always visualize a beautiful spring day!