How To Release Stress Quickly and Easily with Three Simple Tricks Anyone Can Use Anytime Anywhere
These three simple spiritual practices take only a few minutes, but are powerful tools you can do anytime and anywhere when you need to release built up stress.
Photo Credit: Chinmayan
We can all agree that the demands of daily life can be very stressful, even without the additional stress and strain of financial, medical, relationship, work or other problems that can happen unexpectedly.
We live in a fast paced world that seems to be getting crazier and harder to navigate by the day.
No matter where you live, how much money you may have or how well you have arranged your life, the stress and strain of daily life is almost certainly part of your reality.
Everyone around us is being impacted by it, so it is part of the shared environment in which we all live, and no one is immune.
In fact, in these turbulent times, we are having a pandemic of stress and strain around the world.
Stress, like the recent Covid 19 outbreak, is deadly and highly contagious.
You can’t ignore it, wish it away or use alcohol, drugs or any other element to get rid of it.
In fact, the built up stress and strains of life are often the very things that drive people to these harmful addictions which, at best, only provide temporary, short lived release at great cost to your body and mind.
Medical science tells us that at least 75% of all diseases and chronic illness is directly caused by built up, unaddressed stress.
Its no accident that the majority of suicides, strokes and fatal heart attacks happen to people on Monday mornings, when the impact of having to return to a stressful work environment is too hard to bear.
Two of my dear men friends lived very stressful lives and, even though myself and their wives repeatedly asked them to take time to relax and deal with their stress levels, they ignored our pleas and advice.
When stress is not released, it keeps building up pressure, and causes increasing strain to every level of our bodies and minds.
On different sunny Monday mornings, each of my friends dropped dead from heart attacks while walking out to their cars to go to work. It was tragic and unnecessary, as they both had loving families, were in the prime of life, and probably would have had long, happy lives if they had not ignored their high levels of stress.
Photo Credit: Chinmayan
Most people view stress as an inevitable part of life that they have to bear and put up with…even when stress causes headaches, back pain, tight shoulders and irritable, tense minds and cause ever more serious illness.
Stress is one of the most common root causes for getting angry, “losing it” and doing or saying awful things which we later regret.
The good news is that stress is not necessary and there are simple spiritual practices that you can use to reduce or eliminate stress in your life. Here are three powerful ways you can release stress, naturally and easily.
First, closely monitor your own stress levels and tell yourself the truth about how much you are carrying and its effects on you. You cannot become free of stress as long as ignore the stresses and strains in your life.
Most people ignore the effects of stress and believe that they have to put up with it and endure it, but this “sweeping it under the rug” attitude will not make it go away. Ignorance in this case is definitely not bliss, but being stupid. It’s stress that is ignored that continuously builds up to ever more dangerous levels.
If you want to free yourself from stress, you must be willing to be absolutely honest with yourself so that you are aware of where the stress is coming from and how it is affecting you.
This honest self awareness and self monitoring is so important as the first step because you can’t do anything about your stress levels if you are not aware of how much stress you have, but once you are aware, then we can use the next two steps to clear it.
Since the sources of strain in your life will tend to create more stress, its important to constantly monitor your body, mind and emotions until this monitoring becomes an automatic habit.
Doing this will allow you to see for yourself that stress causes so much of our unnecessary physical, mental and emotional suffering.
Once you see this, the best response is to form a fierce intention to do whatever you need to do to let go of stress and become free of it.
This knowing that you can be free and total intention to become free of stress will become a powerful force that drives your healing.
Photo Credit: Chinmayan
Second, give yourself the gift of doing the 3 R’s Meditation practice as many times as you can every day…
Here in brief are the instructions for this amazing practice which will make a huge difference the more you do it.
…take a five minute break from whatever you are doing, telling yourself that ‘for the next five minutes I am giving myself a total break to take care of myself!” Set the timer on your phone to five minutes with sweet music to signal the end of your 3 R’s session…
…sit comfortably with your back straight and your eyes closed.
…concentrate solely on simply taking slow deep complete breaths and feel the air filling your lungs to capacity and then slowly letting the air out…
…while breathing deeply, very gently keep your thoughts on thinking of something very pleasant, such as someone you feel tremendous love for, or a special place that you love going to, or your favorite music or anything else that will help you relax and come into this very present moment…do not allow thoughts of anything stressful or hurtful intrude in to this five minutes of sanctuary
….close the session with three conscious deep full breaths, while saying to yourself:
Relax …as you breath in Release..as you pause to hold the breath and Receive…as you gently exhale
At the end of the session, say to yourself lovingly “Thank you for taking care of me.”
Photo Credit: Chinmayan
Third, always give yourself something to look forward to that you love and enjoy doing at the end of your day, everyday!
This is very important to practice in concert with the first two steps.
Consciously choose to make looking forward to rewarding yourself part of your everyday routine…You will be amazed at the difference this makes when you frequently think of whatever you are looking forward to doing.
It doesn’t have to anything spectacular or even cost money, but something you will definitely enjoy…such as going for a walk in the sunset, having tea with a treasured friend, taking a long uninterrupted hot bath or dancing or lying down while listening to your favorite music.
In closing, I want to suggest that you re read this story and save it where you can easily refer to it.
The three practices I am recommending have already helped thousands of stressed out people that I have taught and will definitely make a major positive impact on your life.
These practices are so powerful that they may very well not only save you from illness, disease and death but dramatically improve the quality of every area of your life!
Image credit: Inner Resource Institute’s Still Mountain Meditation Center
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