Posts from — December 2008

By: Sara Mendez

Stress is brought about by many different things. Learning to manage stress is vital to leading a healthy happy life. Your body’s reaction to stress is just as different as the next persons’. Stress can cause many different reactions such as overly emotional, aggressiveness, anger and anxiety. Your body might react more physically, maybe through a heart attack, stroke, love immune system, or high blood pressure. Stress is how your body reacts to the outside world and its situations, and sometimes those situations get out of control. You need to learn how to control your reaction to stress as well as what triggers your stress to learn successful stress management.

Triggers can be many things. It could be something that happened to you immediately such as physical danger, getting ready for a date or an accident. These are situations that happen and are over quickly. The stress will get you on your toes but will return to a normal feeling quickly. Then there is long term stress such as a divorce, moving to a new neighborhood or planning a wedding. Long term stress can wear on the body and cause many health issues, some of which very serious.

Learning to deal with triggers is crucial to stress management. Hypnosis can assist you on your path to inner peace. It will help you to learn what your trigger is and it can change your body’s response to that trigger. Some people know their triggers but others might require help finding them, hypnosis can do this. Hypnosis is a highly effective treatment for stress management.

By: andrew chin

Stress management does mean putting work down and stopping for a while. It entails clearing your head and freeing it of unhealthy distractions, in order to jump back on track. Some stress management programs emphasize the value of relaxation. That is, learning to savour one’s time alone and use it to restore the mind and the body.Stress management relaxation programs include meditation, progressive relaxation, autogenic training, and biofeedback. Several other techniques exist, but, for this article’s purpose, we will tackle only the cited four briefly. There are several ways to cope with stress. Relaxation is one technique which generally refers to the calming of the mind, the body and the sense, to help a you regain your ‘center’, even in the middle of a highly stressful activity.

Before we begin with any of the four techniques, we must first acknowledge that they are merely part of a bigger and much more comprehensive stress management program and that each will work to its best extent when combined with other techniques. Two very important points should be considered before taking on any stress management relaxation technique.

First, since a relaxation technique results in physiological changes, anybody under

medication that affects any physiological parameter might be exploiting that parameter too hard, and Secondly, that people with medical conditions, like hypertension, heart problems, etc. should first seek medical permission, to be on the safe side.

Once you have gotten these out of the way, you may want to try out each stress management technique first before you determine which one to use regularly.

While there is no scientific and medical way to accurately decide which one will work best for you, you will be able to determine which is a most comfortable fit.

Here are the Top Four Stress Management Techniques:

Stress management technique 1: Meditation

Meditation is a mental exercise aimed at getting control over your attention, in order for you to choose what to focus on, instead of being subject to the unpredictable turn of environmental events. This is best done in a silent place and involves set breathing methods.

Stress management technique 2: Progressive Relaxation

This technique stimulates nerve-muscle relaxation. It requires the contraction and

release of a muscle group, then slowly moving to other parts of the body. Progressive

relaxation is usually used to treat migraines, tension headaches, and other illness.

Stress management technique 3: Autogenic Training

This technique utilizes a series of exercises aimed at bringing body warmth and

heaviness in the body and the limbs. It can be done lying down or in a sitting down.

Relaxing images are also used to nurture mind relaxation.

Stress management technique 4: Biofeedback

Biofeedback uses certain machines and instruments to observe body movements and occurrences, which will then be used to study ways to control them. It is often used in combination with another relaxation technique.

Practice your chosen technique as recommended, with the right environment, attitude, time and frequency. Keep a consistent routine and you will be harvesting their benefits in no time. Just always keep in mind that the above four stress management techniques are simply instruments to a greater and more comprehensive method. You may choose to do them individually or adopt a combination of two or four. However which way you decide, make sure that it is done at comfortable pace. Otherwise, you will be creating more  stress than what you get rid of.

By: Sammy Chim

It can be quite daunting taking part in stress management course if you are not sure what to expect. A lot of people do not approach with an open mind - which is vital for success.

Many people will assume that stress management courses are not necessary because they perceive stress management as common sense. My experience suggests that these people are, in fact, misinformed and they could benefit greatly from attending this type of course.

The reason for this is that a stress management course is not just about managing personal stress. It is also about learning to identify, control and benefit / reduce the stress of others.

If you are thinking of attending or recommending a course on stress for your organisation or small business, my advice is to make sure everyone (including yourself) approaches it with an open mind.

The content covered in the course will vary but the course outline will largely contain the same topics. Here is a brief outline of a typical stress management course:

- Why it is important

- The cycle

- Internal and external influences

- Optimising your state

- How to tune your state up and down

- Building resilience through exercises and nutritional awareness

- Problems vs outcomes and how to deal with both

- Awareness - How you make other stressed

- Building minimum stress teams

In the first half of the course will cover topics that will go over the definition of stress, recognising the symptoms and understanding why the management of it is important.

The second part of the stress management course will begin to focus on the factors of stress and how to recognise influences of stress (internal and external) using a variety of methods and techniques.

Following this, the stress management course will begin to help you develop skills on how to handle stress for yourself and others around you (employees, staff, etc). This part of the stress management course is very important because it gives you practical methods that have been to proven to relieve stress. From experience, members usually find this part of the course most exciting due to active participation.

The final part of the course focuses on some advanced methods of stress training such as building minimum teams, improving awareness and how to deal with problems and outcomes.

By: Ashish Jain

When you talk about the stress management tools, am I to presume that you know the root cause of your stress? When you take the tool kit to repair something, it is presumed that you have the capability to know the fault and you will use the tools to the needful end. Stress management tools are somewhat like that. They work better for you when you know about your stressors.

However, if you do not know the cause of your stress, the tools discussed in this article will still assist you in managing your stress. They will mainly help you reduce the level of stress.

You generally obtain stress at two places- at your office or home. Stress at one place reflects on the quality of life at the other place. Mind it, no one can provide you with total relief from stress. The tools and techniques to manage stress can only help you reduce the stress. But many of these techniques will help you substantially. Deep breathing is one such exercise.

Fill your chest completely, by inhaling deeply. Retain it for a while and then begin the process of exhaling slowly. Empty the contents of air completely. Do this exercise many a times.

Close your eyes gently. Bring before your mind’s curtain, a pleasing sight, may be a waterfall, a snow-covered mountain, a green forest and concentrate on such images for several minutes. A surprising calm dawns in your mind.

To cope with stress, you need to understand what stress is? Stress is caused when you are thinking too much about a particular thing or situation. You are worrying over a matter, over which, actually you should not worry at all. Therefore, try to change your outlook. Stand near the door or a window, or move to the terrace of your building, and try to focus on something that is very far off. Think only about the object and nothing else.

Redirect your thought process away from the situation that has stressed you the most. When you change the thought process, action process is also changed. Take it towards a diversified subject. Take out the family album and scan through the pictures. Try to talk to your best friends, and engage in a long purposeless conversation. Do not discuss any serious topics.

As for the office, work with a relaxed approach. Know your limitations. You can work beyond your capacity for a day or two, but not on all days. Know the art of getting the things done through others, by delegating responsibilities.

Have a fresh and delightful approach. On each day, think that you are living a new life. Look at or imagine the glorious sunrise. How he comes afresh every morning forgetting the dark night of yesterday. Look at the sun and the moon. How they are working in tandem.

By: Ashish Jain

For managing the stress, there are two types of methods such as temporary methods and the permanent method. Temporary methods are many, but the permanent method is only one–meditation! That is the ultimate stress management product.

Meditation leads to a state of supreme happiness. But in this mad race of materialistic world, many say that they don’t have time for meditation. What a strange paradox! Meditation leads you to happiness. And you don’t find time to become happy! Don’t feel alienated with stress and be in the know of stress management balls.

Coming to the contemporary methods of stress relief, one of the popular one is–achieve stress relief through stress balls. When you are under stress, to remain without activity will add more to your stress. You are restless, and to find a way out, take something in your hand, and squeeze it. Play with it in style. It will take care of your tensions and concerns. It is a sort of diversion from the brooding state of your mind. You have something else to do than the useless thinking that goes to increase your stress and tension. Stress balls are found to be good at their limited stress relief act.

Why these stress balls do what they do- to relieve stress to some extent? Before answering this question, let me tell you the common reasons for your stress. Motivated desires are the cause for your stress. When such desires are not fulfilled, you begin to worry and this mounting worry is the cause of your stress. You expect your particular wish to fructify in a particular manner. When that does not happen, you are frustrated and the stress process begins.

The stress balls are available for the asking. You get them in departmental stores, job fairs, business/industry gatherings. They perform their job well, and you feel good handling them. You feel, as if you are engaged in some creative activity. You enjoy that unique, relieving noise. You feel some good activity is happening. It is plain joy, no reward of punishment activity. In fact, to play with it is equivalent of doing some exercise. So, it gives the benefit of an exercise and reduces the level of stress.

Another variety of stress balls is liquid balls. They too are excellent to relieve your worries. You will not get much resistance as you work out on them, but the unique feel good experience, will relieve you of the stress. You get stress balls in pairs also. This is a Chinese variety. Rub and bang the balls against each other. The peculiar noise and the physical activity work like a double benefit scheme. The desired object, stress management is achieved.