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Maybe this has happened to you. You find yourself faced with an issue that you are not able to resolve the way you’d like. Your shoulder’s tighten, your patience shortens, and you begin to feel stressed. Instead of treating your loved ones with respect, you snap, yell or grow irritated. As you analyze your own behavior, you start to feel depressed at your inability to control your emotions. Discouraged that you can’t do it all, you doubt yourself and your ability to achieve your goals.

Welcome to the stress, anxiety depression lifecycle. One way of interrupting this circular struggle is to reduce stress and increase your ability to accept, adapt or change the way you view the problem.

Numerous studies by health professionals and psychologists alike have confirmed the importance of exercise in reducing symptoms associated with stress, anxiety and depression. UT Southwestern Medical Center studied adults aged 20 to 45 on the effects of exercise on depression. They found that “depressive symptoms were reduced almost 50 percent in individuals who participated in 30-minute aerobic exercise sessions three to five times a week.” This is a fairly significant reduction in mild to moderate depression.

At Heavensfield, I have implemented short walks to both treatment facilities as a means of promoting health and wellness.

What type of exercise will you introduce into your life that will help mitigate the effects of stress?

Notice how you breathe.

Do you take deep belly breathes throughout the day? With each breath? Or are you a shallow chest breather?

During my professional massage training years ago, I’ll never forget how often our instructor would remind the class, “BREATHE, you are NOT breathing.” I’d catch myself and realize that while concentrating, I’d take quick shallow inhales. I actually believed that this was the correct way to breathe, having never taken a class on breathing before. I couldn’t have been more wrong. 

I also discovered that I held in my stomach as I inhaled. In a moment of reflection I noticed that I felt self-consious when my stomach was extending. Sometime over the course of my life my brain picked up on the social pressure to be thin and translated it to keeping your stomach firm, and tight even while breathing. Anectdotal research has shown that I am NOT alone. Countless woman feel the same way, and breathe in a similar fashion. An example of social conditioning at its worst.

To infuse your body with the life giving properties of oxygen, you should be able to feel your breath deep down in your belly. The stomach should extend outward, rather than being constricted inward. The inhale ought to feel natural, not forced (unless your stressed), and your belly filling with space.

This type of breathing does many things for you, but I’ll just name a few.

• An increase in energy. Picture a helium balloon that is on its last day of a three week stint, flat and lifeless. Refill it with and it will once again rise and soar. So too will you as you acquire this new method of breathing. You’ll find you have more energy just by changing and being more aware of the way you breathe.
• Less stress and anxiety. The fight or flight system is less activated when we breathe deeply. In many cases, the stress response is actually reversed by breathing deeply. Researchers note that people are able to connect better with their cognitive reasoning part of their brain when they are less stressed than when a person feels anxious.

 Just a quick note. When you first start changing the way you breathe, it may feel forced, contrived and even uncomfortable. You may even feel light headed, especially if you are a typical shallow breather. This is normal and will resolve itself as you continue to practice breathing the way our bodies were designed.

Stress is cultivated when our thoughts or behavior are misaligned with our internal values and beliefs. For example, when someone makes a request of you and you reluctantly agree when your intuition tells you otherwise, the resulting effect may be increased stress and tension. Psychologists refer to this phenonmenum as “cognitive dissonance” which arises when people hold multiple thoughts in their mind simultaineously.

Trusting your intuition means honoring your unique life course and aligning it with your internal values and goals.  It reduces dissonance and its accompanying tension. When you make choices based on your inner wisdom, you are more able to live life on purpose. Your purpose, not someone elses. This inner grace fosters a sense of self-worth and efficacy which reduces stress and tension both in the mind and the body.