cat relaxing and stretching There is no doubt that stress reduction and relaxation and good stress management help us to maintain a healthy lifestyle in today's fast-paced world.

It's also a worthwhile from a green living perspective, too. Less stress usually means less spending on distracting flim-flam destined for landfill! - Just my opinion of course :) - but I'm sure most people will agree that when we are stressed it's very easy to go for a bit of retail therapy.

And most of what we buy ends up either making us fat, or hitting our wallets where it hurts!

Killer stress

Stress is one of the biggest killers and one of the biggest challenges to our health and well-being in the 21st Century. So it's important to have some good stress-busting strategies are easily accessible and which don't impact on our precious environment.

Picture above: my role model for stress reduction and relaxation; our cat has achieved guru status!
for one easy approach to stress.

Seven easy steps to stress reduction and relaxation:

How natural is stress?

Stress is a natural response to life's problems and difficulties and to some extent stress is good for you. It is very noticeable that people who (apparently) don't have many stresses often invent stresses for themselves. This is a neurotic process and can throw up a lot of problems for people who suffer this way. The perceived stresses are very real to the person suffering from them and the outcomes are much the same as for people who are undergoing "real" stress (i.e. the kind of stress which most of us would recognise as such - workload stresses, relationship stresses, etc.)

Seven easy steps to stress reduction and relaxation:

What is the point of stress?

The physiological indicators of stress are hard-wired into our human systems.

Here are a few of the major indicators of stress: heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate and perspiration can all increase. Pupils may dilate and muscles become tense.

In bad cases some of these effects can be chronic (i.e. persist for days or weeks at a time.) If the stresses are caused by overwork, headaches may be a factor, too. There are considerable variations in how different people react to stress and which symptoms are most troublesome.

Seven easy steps to stress reduction and relaxation:

There is a positive side to stress

The stress response is a throwback to our hunter-gatherer past. Stress prepares the body for fight or flight. We carry these responses into the modern world where they may serve to help us cross a busy road safely or help us get a vital business document in on time.

Having stresses and then rising to the challenges they pose is one of the most exhilarating things and leads to self-esteem and a sense of fulfillment. It also generally pays off in terms of work progression and promotion, at least sometimes.

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