How to Make Stress Go Away

Today I’m going to share with you about how to make stress go away.

Can I share something with you?

I didn’t realize that I needed to complete my stress cycle. I actually didn’t even know what a stress cycle was until a couple years ago. I didn’t know that your body holds onto stress and needs your help with letting it go. Like did I miss that day in university in both my biology and nursing classes?!

I’ve done so much reading and learning about stress since I first realized that I was experiencing burnout almost 3 years ago. I thought that I was handling my stress well but boy was I naive. I not only wasn’t managing my stress well but I wasn’t actually doing anything about it aside from wishing it would go away. If your stress has become too much for too long, check out my eBook "A Way Out of Burnout".

I mean I knew I could feel stress in my body if I slowed down long enough to listen to what my body was saying, but I honestly thought it magically disappeared when the stressful event was over.

I was also surprised to learn that movement, of any kind, is the best way to complete your stress cycle. Moving your body automatically tells your body that it can finish its stress cycle. Pretty neat huh? I dive deeper into this in my blog post "Stress Free: Completing Your Stress Cycle."

I knew movement was healthy for my body, but my knowledge stopped at the benefits of it to my organs (healthy heart, lungs, digestion system, etc). I never learnt, or likely I didn’t bother to remember, that extra layer of knowledge about the other health benefits movement can do for you. I had heard about the “runner’s high” but am not a runner so never fully appreciated what this saying meant.

So when I learnt that movement was needed to complete my stress cycle I had to figure a couple things out (after I got over my initial ignorance for not knowing this). I need to figure out:

#1 - what movement do I enjoy doing

#2 - what movement can I include in my daily life so I don’t have any excuses not to do it

Can I share something else with you?

I’m not a fan of gyms. This type of exercise has never appealed to me. I’ve had opportunities to use gym facilities for free and cannot will myself to take advantage of this.

And that’s okay because there’s so many options for movement, that going to a gym is just one option. Again, any form of movement will complete your stress cycle, not exercise that can actually have the opposite response and increase your stress. 

I’ve found the movement I enjoy to do and can easily include in my day is: walking, gardening, dancing, shooting hoops, riding my bike and doing yoga. I have a sit stand desk for work and I often have music playing in the background while I work so when I feel the tension of stress build up in my body and the right song comes on, I take a dance break (I sometimes even film these and share them on my IG stories if you need a good laugh at my “sick dance moves”).

So I’m curious, what movement do you enjoy doing?

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