HELP WITH STRESS MANAGEMENT, RELAXATION & WELLNESS

Most of us know that, while some stress is good for most of us – it keeps the engine tuned and makes life interesting, chronic, unmitigated stress wears down the immune system and organ systems, impedes peak functioning, muddies thinking and decision making, and doesn’t exactly make maintaining relationships a walk in the park either.
And it seems that being stressed kind of feeds itself, so that pretty soon there’s a self-sustaining momentum to it, and it’s harder to pull yourself back to relaxation and wellness.

And from the look of some of the mail I’ve been getting, it appears that some people are further stressing themselves over their inability to relax and manage their stress! Hey come on now!! It’s hard enough being tense. No point in tensing up over it!

I certainly can get as crazed as the next person, as anyone in the office can attest. But the encouraging thing is that, in all of us there's always this concurrently running "calm channel" that's just a flip of the dial away. We just keep forgetting it’s there, and that we can use the tuner to get back to it when we "drift" off toward our twitchier stations.

Anyway, enough of these radio metaphors. Learning to be calm is really a matter of practice. Anything that absorbs and stills the mind will do it. So, for instance, yoga is ideal for very tense people. Between the necessary focus on the movement and the coordination of the movement with the breathing, your attention is captured, and you get very peaceful. It also isn’t half bad for your joints!

We have some wonderful yoga resources, too. Susan Winter Ward has created some fine starter yoga instruction on her video, Accessible Yoga for Every Body. And we also have some wonderful beginner or intermediate yoga by the legendary Cyndi Lee with her Om Yoga in a Box; and sophisticated yoga instruction for aficionados, by the very skillful Ken McRae – Sadhana Yoga I and II.

So too with walking meditation. (There's one on our HJ Relieve Stress audio set that's pretty effective, we’re told. In it, attention is brought to the breath, to the sensation of the feet touching and lifting off the ground, and, best of all, to taking in all the sights, sounds and smells of the environment. That will capture your attention and get you calm too, if you just keep bringing the mind back to those 3 things whenever it starts to wander…. simple but effective.

Any movement meditation is also very good for tense people who have trouble relaxing. I recommend Ken Cohen’s superb Qigong videos, Qigong, and Qi Healing, and he also has a wonderful CD on A Beginner’s Guide to Healthy Breathing, which is yet another way to relax and de-stress.

Equally excellent is Andy Weil’s Breathing: the Master Key to Healing, and his CD set on mindfulness meditation, Meditation for Optimum Health, co-presented with Jon Kabat-Zinn is another superb choice that has wide-ranging appeal.

And of course, many people respond beautifully and deeply to guided imagery, with its immersive richness and soothing narrative and relaxing music. We offer quite a variety, including our Relieve Stress, Relaxation & Wellness, and General Wellness; and of course, Emmett Miller’s brilliant 10-Minute Stress Manager, as well as his and Steve Halpern’s powerfully relaxing Letting Go of Stress.

The key is in developing a regular practice, so that you have a baseline skill to fall back on when the going gets rough and you start to re-wind. It’s really not that hard – it just seems that way when you’re stressed!

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