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Stress surrounds us. Every person has stressful situation every day. How to rest after stressful situation and overcome stress?

What is stress?

Stress is a mechanism that allows us to decide in a split second whether to fight or run away. It increases our adrenaline, cortisol and other hormones. The result is strength but also loss of motor skills and shutting down the conscious part of the brain.

The triggering of this mechanism can occur for many reasons that are individual, but often occur after such situations:

• too many obligations at work
• too many exams at school or college
• breaking up a love affair
• death of a loved one
• dismissal at work
• unforeseen embarrassing situations such as traffic accidents
• insufficient hours of sleep
• use of alcohol, cigarettes and drugs

The most common reaction occurs when we are unable to fully control the situation. Many factors affect the creation of stress, which means that you need to learn how to relax and fight them in order to overcome all the problems ahead.

How to overcome stress?

Deep breathing

We suggest you learn and apply the rules of deep breathing. For this method of self-help, it is necessary to adopt the technique of deep abdominal breathing. 4-5 deep and regular inhalations and exhalations significantly reduce tension. Deep abdominal breathing brings a lot more oxygen to the lungs compared to normal shallow breathing. In this way, the circulation indirectly improves and the brain receives a new amount of “fresh” oxygen-enriched blood.

A short test should be performed first: place one hand on the chest and the other on the abdomen and monitor which of the two listed parts of the body is predominantly moving during breathing. It is very likely that the movement is very superficial, and the part that moves a little more is the chest. The deep breathing exercise should begin with sitting upright in a chair. The feet should rest on the ground and the back should be comfortably supported. Hands should be placed on the abdomen and chest, and first try to raise the arm on the abdomen.

Furthermore, one should inhale calmly and slowly through the nose and let the abdomen inflate until inhaled. When your stomach “bulges”, you should switch to filling your chest with air. Exhale is performed on the mouth, in reverse order. The air first comes out of the chest and only then out of the abdomen. As you exhale, you should relax your shoulders and rest your body. When practicing deep abdominal breathing, we suggest that you try to hold your breath for about 4 seconds after inhaling. Let the exhale last twice as long as the inhale.

Self-massage

In the period when we can’t even have a massage, we can learn how to help ourselves and do a massage. We can start a revitalizing self-massage by sitting on a chair by tapping our fingertips from the top to the bottom of the head. Typing should be as simple as possible. The same moves should be repeated on the neck to the shoulders.

You should then move from the bottom of the skull to the shoulders in firm, symmetrical strokes with the left hand along the left side of the neck and the right along the right side of the neck. With firm, symmetrical circular movements, it is necessary to massage the often painful and sensitive nape of the neck. After that, the kneading movements of the right half of the neck, shoulders and the whole arm should start with the left hand, ending with the palm. With the same hand, firm circular pressures should be lowered down the right shoulder blade and painful “knots” (myogelosis) should be massaged.

Then the procedure should be repeated with the right hand on the left half of the neck, shoulders and along the right arm, ending with the palm and down the left shoulder blade. The self-massage can be completed by applying strong pressure to the area between the neck and shoulders on the same side with the same hand, and the pressure is maintained for 3-5 seconds.

Visualization

Visualization is a useful technique that can complement any of the above self-help techniques or can be applied separately. For example, with our eyes closed or our eyes fixed on the floor, we can imagine that we have a defensive shield in the form of an impenetrable armor that protects us from coronavirus infection or some other threat.

Or we can visualize how we have within us a tiny but powerful antivirus army that successfully defends and protects us from virus attacks. Or, we can imagine the whole situation around us as an iceberg that melts and disappears giving us a sense of peace and security.