It’s natural to hope that each new year turns out better than the last. Maybe we set New Year’s resolutions to improve our health and wellness—perhaps we even make promises around diet, weight loss, or exercise. And while these are important steps in improving one’s health, we should really start by learning to balance the stress in our lives.
Daily stress is detrimental to both our physical and mental health. Managing stress and restoring balance in your daily life can deliver marvelous benefits, such as improving your personal sense of well-being, establishing a more resilient sense of calm and inner tranquility, getting better sleep, and overall wellness. This blog post outlines a few activities you can try out to balance daily stress in 2022—please remember that this is for informational purposes only, and that before embarking on any new exercise program, it’s worth consulting a healthcare professional.
Make Balancing Stress a Priority
The first step to relieving stress is to make balancing stress more of a priority in our lives. We can start by identifying and reducing some of the major sources of stress in our lives. And then breathe! Breathing—namely taking deep breaths—allows the mind and body to focus. Perhaps this sounds too simple, but breathing is the most fundamental aspect of our living bodies, so aligning your body and mind to your breath is a great way to discard unimportant worries and relieve tension.
The old adage to “stop and count to ten” comes down to reducing stress through deep breathing, as counting makes us more conscious of our breath. In fact, stopping and breathing deeply and slowly is the first step to meditation.
Developing a daily meditation practice is something anyone can do. Building a daily habit around any kind of meditation practice that works for you—even ten minutes a day—can do wonders for managing stress and internal balance. Meditation is a great tool for detaching the mind from external stressors and feeling more relaxed and in touch with your body.
In addition to your new meditation practice, Elixinol offers calm stress support capsules that feature both CBD and ashwagandha to help you relax.
Calming the Mind for Physical Health
Managing mental stress leads to physical benefits and vice versa. Making time for light physical activities that help with balancing stress pays off in the long-term as it can make us more focused and productive. For example, doing some light yoga—even for 10 to 15 minutes—can help you manage daily stress. Studies show that a yoga practice can reduce stress, anxiety, and chronic pain, while improving well-being and quality of life. Researchers have found that a regular yoga practice can actually interrupt the stress response, leading to a sense of balance and union between the mind and body.
Some may assume that yoga is not their cup of tea, but remember not all yoga is the same. Yin yoga, or yoga nidra, is a deep state of consciousness between waking and sleeping. With sustained poses and deep breathing, yoga helps stretch the body slowly into a deep form of stress-free relaxation. Learning some of these techniques can help balance the stress of everyday life, and yoga is also an excellent way to improve your balance.
If your new yoga practice leaves you sore, try our Active Body Comfort capsules that feature CBD and Boswellia which are known to help muscle soreness and provide anti-inflammatory benefits after exercise.
Try Tai Chi
Tai chi is another gentle way to improve your balance and reduce stress levels. Developed in ancient China as an “internal martial art”, tai chi helps cultivate one’s inner calmness by practicing a slow and mindful form of mind-body meditation. By “letting go” in the body and repeating graceful movements, tai chi helps eliminate extra stress from the body.
Despite its origins in China, tai chi has become a very mainstream activity all over the world. Whether outside in public parks, in gyms or studios, or at home, people of all ages enjoy tai chi and the benefits and balance the activity brings to their lives. As an activity, tai chi evolved to help ancient warriors remain calm and focused when dealing with conflict and stress. The whole principle of tai chi is that a centered, balanced, calm and focused warrior can “flow” around any obstacles they confront.
Though we may not see ourselves as martial artists, practicing tai chi helps improve the kind of focus and inner calm that we need to balance our mood and cope with the stresses of modern life. When practiced correctly, tai chi can help us relax and keep calm in any daily situation. Moreover, tai chi also aligns the whole body, which leads to improved physical stature—or balance. Research shows that tai chi helps improve your balance while helping to reduce stress and anxiety.
Walking the Dog
Don’t laugh—taking your pet (or pets) on a walk not only reduces stress; it also is known to maintain a healthy blood pressure. Dog owners (and dog walkers) are shown to get more exercise than their non-dog-owning counterparts. Walking the dog forces us to take a break in our day and to walk a route at a slower pace, which is a type of meditation. Even if you don’t have dogs, taking a short daily walk on your own is a wonderful stress balance activity that you can do every day. Even a short, 10-to-15-minute walk becomes an important break, allowing the mind to settle down and reconnect with the body.
To support your new daily dog walking routine try introducing your furry friend to Elixinol’s new line of pet CBD products. These products were designed to support the everyday health of your pet, promote calm and relaxation, and help support joint health and mobility.
How Daily Stress Balance Activities Can Improve Overall Wellness
Any meditative practice—whether deep breathing, meditation, yoga, or tai chi (or even taking a walk)—makes a great daily stress balance activity. No matter the medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment plan you may be following, taking steps to balance our stress levels and stay active can improve our overall immune system. Learning to reduce stress—and reduce our reactions to stress—can pay us back with healthful dividends to both body and mind.
Thus, taking daily steps to balance stress in your life becomes a preventative approach to help steer away from bigger problems down the road. Remember that balancing stress builds a strong foundation for long-term health. Finding a daily activity that you enjoy and that helps us maintain focus and calm can lead to overall improved well-being.
