Action Steps:

1. Practice Belly Breathing

Learning to breathe into your belly, rather than your chest, is one of the simplest and most powerful things you can do to reduce stress, not to mention get more energy and build a healthier body. Breathing into the chest, which is  how most people breathe, is actually highly unnatural. We only do it because we spend so much time seated and hunched over, which compresses the diaphragm - the muscle in the abdomen that is meant to control breathing. This forces us to breathe by using the muscles of the shoulders and neck to draw air into the chest. Since we aren’t meant to breathe into our chests, our lungs are a lot less efficient at extracting oxygen from air when we chest breathe. The upper lung, which is what fills when you chest breathe, has a lot less blood flow than the lower lung, which fills when you belly breath. The purpose of the lung is to move oxygen from air into our blood. Breathing into the chest compromises this purpose. What this means is that if you do chest breathe, you end up spending the whole day subtly starved for oxygen.

Low oxygen levels send your brain into panic mode. When oxygen levels are chronically low, the result is chronic stress and anxiety. Learning to belly breath quickly reverses the stress associated with chronic oxygen deprivation.  Check out our Breathing Tutorial for a step by step guide.

2. Eat Real Comfort Food

Many of us turn to sweets in times of stress. There are chemical reasons for this. Sugar and white flour exert drug-like effects on our brains that help calm us down. But as with most drugs, there is a rebound effect. While sugar and flour can make us feel a bit better in the short term, in the long term, they deplete the very brain chemicals that we need to cope with stress, not to mention being disastrous for general health. A number of foods can help rebuild the brain chemicals that help us cope with stress. Butter is great for this. It is a rich source of a chemical called butyric acid, which your body turns into a neurotransmitter called GABA (Gamma Amino Butyric Acid). This neurotransmitter exerts a powerful calming effect on the brain. Alcohol actually works partly by mimicking the effect of GABA on the brain. Of course, alcohol acts like a drug – you feel better in the short term and worse in the long run, whereas eating butter (preferably organic and grass fed if you can find it, commercial dairy is really full of junk) actually builds up GABA levels. Free range turkey can also help supply nutrients that your body turns into comforting brain chemicals (turkey supplies a chemical called Tryptophan, which your body turns into the neurotransmitter serotonin). Beyond butter and turkey, eating healthfully in general (and especially maintaining stable blood sugar, see Controlling Appetite and Cravings for more) will help mental and emotional health as much as physical health, enabling you to cope better with stress.

3. Realize That Stress is Within Your Control

Deadlines, traffic jams, other people, and even little things like malfunctioning appliances can all stress us out. But, critically, this only happens because we allow it. The stress response is a natural reaction to a situation that we perceive as pressured or frustrating. But just because it’s natural doesn’t mean that it’s inevitable. When confronted with a situation that seems stressful, we can give into irritation, anger, disgust, and/or the other emotional manifestations of stress, or we can step back and choose to take control. We can simply accept the present situation as what it is, and look for an optimal course of action. The increased energy of the stress response can then be channeled in positive directions. The next time you feel stressed, will yourself to focus your energy on finding positive ways to address your circumstances, rather than letting yourself become upset by them. If there isn’t an immediate solution, just recognize that the stress response is useless, and make up your mind to simply accept the current situation and relax. Critically, make up your mind that you will take control of the stress in your life. Just making this decision is a powerful thing.