Stress Management Tips, Stress And Meditation

Stress Management Tips - Breath Awareness Meditation

One of the best Stress Management Tips: Breath awareness meditation.

What is stress and what is meditation? How meditation can relieve stress?
We are going to find out.

Even though there is no universally accepted definition that includes all aspects of stress, the most commonly accepted one is: stress is a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize.

You are stressed if you feel that you can’t cope up with a situation- may be lack of time, resources or your own personal capability. Or a combination of all. It is your perception- may be a fact or just your imagination.

Besides affecting physical and mental health, there are many secondary stress symptoms like irritability, anger etc. These can land you in certain embarrassing situations, affect relation ships and cause loss of credibility.

Stress in not always bad. A small amount of stress is, in fact, good. I have seen people, including me, get motivated better and perform better under pressure.
But constant stress is not good for your body and mind. You need to use some of the stress management tips for stress reduction.

The reasons for stress can be personal, professional or social. When you are stressed, you tend to think of the same subject, which you perceive is the cause for your stress. To come out of such stress, you need to come out of those thoughts- remove them from your mind. You can’t do this just like that. You have to replace the present thought with something different, something pleasant- something that you enjoy. This is where meditation comes to your help.

Good Health over rides any of the stress management tips any one can think of! How?

There was a time when I used to get frequently ill. That was in spite of drinking filtered water, following extreme hygiene and avoiding junk food as far as possible.

My fragile health used to worry me a lot- abstain from work, loss of credibility due to unfinished or delayed projects, increasing medical expenses and so on.

I used to get stressed whether I was sick or not. During sickness, my idle mind kept thinking of the bad health, piling up of work and expenses. When I was at workplace, I used to over strain myself to finish the pending jobs, which in turn affected my health.

That was past. Now I rarely get sick. How did I come out of such bad health phase? I am sure you are eager to know. We adopted new health principles. We completely changed our food habits, life style and thinking habits which made this possible.

What is meditation?

It is focusing your mind on one thing for a long period. Focusing on anything you want to. It is in your control.

Normally, our mind is busy thinking all the time, except during sleep. If you carefully observe the way your thoughts creep into your mind or the way your mind wanders, you will be amazed. Thoughts jump from one subject to another so fast. These are uncontrolled thoughts. Most of these uncontrolled thoughts are useless.

But, you can control your thoughts and direct them on the subject you desire- through meditation.

There are different types of meditation. One of them is breath awareness meditation and we can use it to get rid of stress. Of course, all forms of meditation involve good breathing techniques and breath awareness.

Let us proactise these stress management tips.

Simple breath awareness:

Find a quiet place. Make sure you will not be disturbed.
Lie down on your back on the floor. Close your eyes.
Breathe normally- no effort to breathe deeply. Just your normal breathing.
Be aware of your breathing- breathing in and breathing out.

Even though you don’t make conscious effort to change it, your breathing improves gradually with out your knowledge. Over a period of time, your breathing moves towards perfect breathing.
After some time, you may practise this in sitting position.

Controlled breath awareness:

Sit in on the ground or in a chair. Be comfortable. Your posture should not cause strain on your body. If your posture causes strain, your mind goes there, not where you want it to go.
Keep upright posture- keep your head, neck and back in a straight line. Close your eyes.
Slowly become aware of your breath- air going inside and coming out.
Now start breathing very slowly.
As you breath in, count 1-2-3..up to 10. As you breath out, count 1-2-3..up to 10.
Next, as you breath in, count 1-2-3..up to 9. As you breath out, count 1-2-3..up to 9.
Next, as you breath in, count 1-2-3..up to 8. As you breath out, count 1-2-3..up to 8.
............
............
Repeat the cycles until the count reaches zero.

Now, come back to take notice of your body and the sounds of the surroundings. Breath normally. Open your eyes.

Repeat the procedure. Do it for five minutes in the beginning. As you practise, you can increase the duration.

As your mind is on your breathing, no other thoughts enter it. During breath awareness meditation, all the negative emotions associated with stress are defused. It makes the mind and body relax and detoxify.

Instead of keeping your mind on your breath, you can keep it on any other object or sound. One of the popular sounds used is – OM. You can also focus your mind on any pleasant incidents or situations.

It is a good and easy way of managing stress and you can relieve stress very fast with these stress management tips.

Dealing with stress at workplace

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