Do worries often keep you up at night?
You’re not alone. According to a recent study by the American Psychological Association, “an alarming proportion of adults reported that stress has an impact on their day-to-day functioning” and “around a third of adults (34%) reported that stress is completely overwhelming most days.”
Stress makes us forgetful, indecisive, and it leads to loss of sleep. Tossing and turning can leave you feeling tired and more stressed the next day, which leads to a vicious cycle of anxiety and insomnia that, over time, makes up what’s known as ‘chronic stress.’
Chronic stress is the kind we tend to ignore or push down – like stress due to bills, jobs, kids, and other responsibilities – and it especially affects your health. Chronic stress taxes your body and your immune system, leading to impaired cognitive and physiological functions. In other words, it makes you age prematurely.
That’s why today, on National Stress Awareness Day, we want to share a few tips on how to de-stress before bed so you can rest well, reset for tomorrow, and hopefully have a set of tools for managing stress in the long-term.
Keep in mind – there are plenty of tips for managing stress overall, such as writing in your journal, sipping on relaxing tea, and laughing at a good joke. But we’re focusing here on how to relieve your bodily stress, because we’re big proponents of the importance of helping your body to help your mind.
So how do you deal with stress hormones (cortisol and adrenaline) circulating in your body?
You slow down your heart rate and your breathing to calm both your body and mind down through a technique called ‘progressive muscle relaxation.’ The idea is to tense groups of muscles one at a time as you breathe, holding the tension as you inhale and releasing as you exhale.
- Sit or lie down in a comfortable position. You can do this in bed before falling asleep or somewhere quiet.
- Take a few gentle breaths, inhaling and exhaling deeply.
- Start from the top of your body, with the muscles in your head, neck, and face and then working your way down your shoulders, arms, etc. until your entire body feels more relaxed.
- End by tensing your toes, holding the tension and curling them in as you inhale, then releasing as you exhale.
- Repeat for any areas that are still tense.
Make sure to pause between each muscle group and enjoy the feeling of tension release.
By taking just a few minutes to mindfully release tension in your body, you will do wonders for the worries in your mind.
Here’s to a good night’s sleep.
