Your 4 Most Effective Stress Busting Techniques

Problems like fatigue, poor sleep, digestive issues, hormonal imbalances, weight gain and more serious problems are all downstream effects of stress and anxiety. For example if you’re stressed, you’re going to burn up all your energy and feel fatigued. Stress impacts your ability to get deep restorative REM sleep. Stress hormones are preferentially repaired before sex hormones causing hormonal imbalances in women and lack of drive in men. Stress impacts your ability to resist junk food and sugary foods which causes weight gain and fuels disease.

The more stressed and anxious you are the more you slide down the happiness scale from joy and love to despair and depression. So doing something about it is critical which is why, today, we’ve brought you Your 4 Most Effective Stress Busting Techniques.

#1. Coaching

There is nothing more effective than collaborating with a coach to kick your lifestyle stressors into touch. What do we mean by lifestyle stressors? Basically things that are bothering you right now. Things that are happening in your life right now. Typical lifestyle stressors might be a poor relationship with your boss, worries over your finances, family issues, or concerns over your health. These problems will not go away if you just ignore them and the quickest way to get over them is to work with an experienced coach who will help you either tackle them directly or help provide you with a new perspective to handle them with more resilience.

Pros

the quickest solution by far. A good coach should be able to get your stress levels down from a 9/10 to a 3/10 in a couple of months.

Cons

not in everyone’s budget
you must be aware and willing to tackle the issues.

Check out Levitise's coaches here.

Awareness and a willingness to do something about it are the most difficult first steps to dealing with stress and anxiety. From then on just stick with the process and the magic WILL happen!

#2. Meditate

Meditation does not make the things going on in your life, which are causing you anxiety, go away. Well not entirely anyhow. What it does do is to increase your mental resilience for dealing with these lifestyle stressors. It helps to create emotional stability, so you are less likely to react negatively to situations and remain more relaxed. For example imagine you’re driving to work, and someone cuts you off in traffic. The more naturally stressed you are the more likely you are to react with anger. The less stressed you are, the more likely you are to brush it off. The event still happened – you just dealt with it differently at a mental level.

Pros

it’s free

Cons

meditation takes time to see the results which is why so few people do it. Do it daily for 100 days. 3 mins a day is better than 20 mins once a week. After all is eating healthy only once a week good enough?

You can learn how to get cracking with meditation with our dummies guide here.

You don't actually have to sit cross legged. Use a chair, lie back, whatever floats your boat as long as you do it. 3 mins a day to start with.

#3. Reprioritise your life

Most people have their priorities topsy turvy. We follow the philosophy of...

I

WE

ALL

First take care of yourself, the “I” . If you’re not taking good care of yourself, both mentally and physically, then how can you be of any use to your family?

Then you can focus on your “WE”. That would be the people in your life that you love the most: kids, spouse, parents etc. Everyone who is on your dream team. When you’re happy, they are happier and vice versa.

The you can look at the “ALL”. That’s your job, your colleagues at work, your clients, people in your community, charities. They are all LESS important than you and your family.

Now take a look at your weekly calendar. What goes in first? Work stuff? Family stuff? Or me stuff?

Pros

easy to do in theory, just rip up your calendar and start a new one refocusing your life

Cons

harder to do in practice - ingrained lifestyle habits, guilt over putting yourself first, a value system based on financial rewards will all sabotage this reprioritisation. So in that case it’s back to step 1 (above): working with a coach.

STEP 1. Write down your top 10 priorities in life. STEP 2. Write down how many hours a week you spend on each one. STEP 3. Review and you'll quickly find out where your reality doesn't match your desires.

#4. Heat Therapy

Heat therapy, such as using a Full Spectrum Infrared Sauna, increases production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF is diminished in people suffering with stress and anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Alzheimer's disease and dementia. Sauna’s boost BDNF and make you happier (Kojima et al. 2017).

In a randomised controlled scientific trial (Masuda et al. 2005) involving 28 people diagnosed with stress and anxiety (aka mild depression), participants who received four weeks of regular sauna sessions experienced 34% reduced mental issues and reported being far more relaxed than those that received traditional therapy.

In another study by Masuda in 2005 they found that patients who received repeated infrared sauna thermal therapy had a significant reduction on self-rating depression scales and anger score.

In a randomized, double-blind study of 30 healthy adults diagnosed with depression, participants who were exposed to a single session of whole-body hyperthermia in which core body temperature was elevated to 38.5°C experienced an acute antidepressant effect that was apparent within a week of treatment and persisted for six weeks after treatment.

Full Spectrum Infrared Saunas relieve stress and make you happier. They may not, however, make you handsome and give you a 6 pack!

Pros

can sit there, do nothing, and let the magic happen
who doesn’t enjoy some “me time” in the sauna?
can be a good place to start, to increase mental energy and vitality, before taking the next step with a coach

Cons

immediate results can be had with 1 session but need to stick with regular sessions (2 to 4 a week) to get more permanent lasting results

Could sitting in a sauna be more effective than working with a traditional therapist?

Wrapping Up

So there we have it. 4 very different ways for tackling stress and anxiety in your life. 2 and 3, meditation and reprioritisation, are really good for those who want to get cracking on their own. 1, coaching, is formidable if you’re ready to make FAST progress with a coach and 4 (sauna) is if you want to boost your mental and physical energy first, easily, before committing to something more demanding.

If you’re looking for more DIY tips on handling stress and anxiety do check out all of our mental resilience blogs here.

To your health, happiness and longevity,

The Levitise Team

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