Relaxation Techniques
for a salubrious mind & body
by Jennae Mendoza
Presentation tomorrow at 8. Group meeting at 6. Two mid-terms and essay due Wednesday. Conference at noon, job interview at 2, parking meter expiring at 3 and work at 5. Did I remember to grab that assignment?
Does this sound like you? Well it’s a little more than you. If you’re one of many Americans whose schedule is an out of control race to get from one place to the next, your body also races out of control. In a recent APA poll, one third of Americans reported living with extreme stress, and half of Americans believe their stress has increased over the last five years. More than 30 percent of college freshman also feel overwhelmed most of the time and 10 percent of college students have been diagnosed with depression.
Stress. Just the word creates an anxious ache in the stomach. If you say it to yourself 10 times a day instead of focusing on relaxing you’ll probably feel more stressed. With stress, you’ll also feel more tired, dizzy, irritable, angry, nervous, sad, restless at night, have more headaches, upset stomachs and muscle tension.
While some stress for humans is healthy – like eustress, which helps people focus and pumps them up, like before a competition – the stress most Americans experience (mostly from money and work) is not healthy. The scary fact is, 79 percent of Americans find this kind of extreme stress “a natural part of life.” The truth is, there’s nothing natural about being anxious, scatter-brained and pumped for paranoia. Advice from relaxation experts can change this. The euphoria and clear mind you’ll get from these relaxation techniques will make you feel like you’re living – not just existing.
The Yin Yoga Instructor “The present is a gift.”
Yoga is not a religious devotion, said Faith Brandt, director of the Yoga Center at The Pulse.
“It’s a devotion to yourself.” We live in a very stressful world, and we’re not always aware of the amount of stress we carry,” she added. By practicing yin yoga, we have the opportunity to become aware of how we hold onto stress and how we can dissolve it.
Yin yoga opens up deep, dense areas of the body by stretching connective tissue through different poses for about five minutes each, which release of tension the joints – and in the head. When the muscles are completely relaxed and the connective tissue is stretched to this extent, many benefits follow, including meditation, the flow of Qi (energy, blood and nutrients) through meridians, an enhanced immune system and organs, as well as balance and well-being.
“The relaxation response is immediate,” Brandt said.
If you do anything, do this: breathe. “The breath can be used to anchor the mind.”
Sounds simple, but it isn’t. Why? Because of our wandering minds. Brandt suggests trying these two relaxation techniques:
Soft-belly breathing: Place hands on your belly and feel it become soft and relaxed, focusing solely on your breathing and feeling the free movement of your belly as you breathe.
Meditation: Find a comfortable seated position on a chair or floor so the body is in alignment. Make sure your ears are over you shoulders and your shoulders are over hips. Just focus on your breath. When your mind wanders off, go back to your breath.
“Don’t go off into drama in your head,” Brandt said. If you do, bring yourself back to the present moment.
“It’s hard to focus on the present. We spend a lot of energy outside of ourselves, in past and future thinking, and it’s exhausting for the mind and body. By just focusing on one thing –our breath, we disengage from the outside world,” she said.
Like most people, Brandt has a busy schedule with college, work and parenting. To keep herself centered and relaxed, between each transition of the day – such as getting out of the car, eating, brushing her teeth or getting back in her car – she takes three deep breaths before she goes on to the next thing. “It takes less than a minute,” she said, “but if you do that four times a day, it can really change your life.”
The Masseuse “Most people take better care of their cars than they do their bodies.”
Missy Quimby, a massage therapist at Cleopatra’s Day Spa on the corner of College Avenue and Prospect Road, said to look at spa treatments as bodily maintenance.
“I hate to use the word ‘pampering’ because it’s not really a want, it’s a need,” Quimby said. Quimby finds it scary that she has to call and remind people their gift cards are expiring. She asks these people, “You haven’t had one hour to yourself in a year?”
If you do anything, do this: Make one hour of your day “me time”
“We need to make time for ourselves, with no interruptions – just one hour each day,” Quimby said, whether it’s a bath, quiet time in the morning, gentle stretching or meditation. “If you can’t find one hour in your day, you need to realign what you’re doing,” she said.
Quimby also tells her clients who sit in front of computers all day or are hunched over books studying for exams to set a timer every hour or so to take a 15-minute break to help prevent strain on their eyes, neck and back.
Quimby has seen many of her customers coming in ill, stressed and tired. The good news is, “if they come in grumpy, they go out happy,” she said. I tell clients to take time for themselves and come in every four to six weeks. “It seems massages are the first thing to go with budget constraints, but as I tell my husband, ‘just eat less this week so you can get a massage,’” Quimby joked. Make relaxing your body a priority. “It’s not just de-stressing, you’re promoting health.”
The Acupuncturist “Shift your perspective for a balanced life”
“Acupuncture focuses on the underlying reason that you’re stressed,” said Kim Pettine, who works at the Rocky Mountain Acupuncture Center on Shields Street. Both through points in treatment and herbs she prescribes, Pettine said acupuncture speaks for itself.
This 3000-year-old Chinese medicine technique focuses on supporting Qi (pronounced “chee”) in the body. The body is viewed as a delicate balance of two opposite forces: yin (the cold and slow) and yang (the hot and active). An internal imbalance of yin and yang causes disease and blocks Qi.
“Qi gets stuck because we’re tight and we need to move it,” Pettine said. She inserts needles into the skin at certain points along the pathways known as meridians in order to restore the “balanced flow of Qi.” Western research shows acupuncture releases endorphins, stimulates the immune system, increases blood flow and affects electromagnetic fields in the body.
Pettine first became interested in acupuncture after having low back pains for nine years. She tried everything Western medicine had to offer. “Why don’t you try acupuncture?” her doctor asked her as a last resort. She did. Two months later, she was out of pain and stress.
“As a Western society,” Pettine said, “we’re way too stressed. We’ve lost all sense of balance.” Acupuncture focuses on restoring this balance, but we also need to shift our perspective so we don’t become so stressed. “We think it’s normal to work as many hours as we do and spend less and less time with family and friends – we don’t know how to bring life into a balance and moderation,” she said.
If you do anything, do this: Go to a mentally calming place
Focus on one thing. A pretty place in the mountains, a beach, wherever. Focus on this place and only this place for a few minutes. You don’t even have to close your eyes.
Not everyone can meditate like this because it’s hard, Pettine said. The reason is we’re not balancing our priorities. We think it’s important to be places at a certain time, cram 20 things into one day and feel “productive.”
“If we took away this belief that we need to be this way in order to have a meaningful life,” Pettine said, “there would be no road rage, no anxiety or need to push ourselves to exhaustion.”