3 Ways To Create Immediate Energy

3 Ways To Create Immediate Energy

Stress and anxiety may be doing more than just wearing you down. In fact, these everyday feelings could be adding unwanted weight to your waistline! Stress is our body’s response to change, and its fight-or-flight automatic response is genetically coded within us. When we feel stress, our heart rate picks up,  our blood pressure heightens, and the blood is shunted away from our stomach, causing us to experience poor digestion. Today, I’ll show you 3 simple ways to de-stress your life so you can re-gain your energy. 

1. Do the BLT (Breathing Listening Technique)

The first step in combatting stress is managing your reaction to situations around you. You can do this by practicing a BLT, a simple 30-second process of breathing and listening.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Begin by inhaling slowly.
2. At the top of the inhale, hold your breath and listen for sounds…do you hear the air conditioner? Somebody talking in another room?
3. Exhale.
4. Repeat 4 times.

After four simple breaths, you’ll notice a wave of calmness wash over your body.

 2. Reduce Stress and Re-Enrgize With Bridge Pose

Studies show that simply moving into an inverted yoga pose, such as Bridge Pose (demonstrated in the video below), helps lower your heart rate, decrease your fight-or-flight responses, and strengthen your diaphragm to help you breathe easier.

Here’s how to do bridge pose:

1. Lie on your back with your feet parallel to one another, hip distance apart on the floor and your ankles in a straight line.
2. Place your palms down and your arms next to your body.
3. On an inhale, lift the tailbone and the hips off the floor. Do your best to slowly lift the breastbone toward the chin.
4. Keep breathing easily.

For Advanced:

1. If you’re more flexible, interlace your fingers and slowly move from side to side. As you roll your shoulders underneath you, start pressing down through the inside of the upper arm.
2. As you move deeper into the pose, it’s the upper back that’s moving toward the chest. Keep your head in the center and feel that the more your press down through the upper arms, the more pressure this takes off the neck. You may even feel that the neck starts to float.
3. Feel the tailbone raising toward the ceiling, and keep pressing down evenly through the soles of your feet.
4. Inner heels press down firm so the the tailbone raises.
5. On an exhale, slowly lower your body and let your breath adjust.
6. Hold the posture for a minute or two and exhale as you gently release the pose.

3. Progressive Relaxation

Another method I use for immediate relief is called “progressive relaxation.”  The technique involves learning to observe tension in each specific muscle group in the body by deliberately inducing tension in each muscle, and then releasing it. When you pay attention to the contrast between tensing and releasing, you’ll start to understand where you’re holding tension. By practicing this technique, you can immediately release tension throughout the day.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Sit in a chair and spend a moment tightening and relaxing each of your body parts.
2. Begin by squeezing with a light, then medium, then strong hold.
3. Release all of the tension out of that muscle group.
4. Progress through tightening then relaxing your whole body.

Next time you’re feeling stressed, try one of these techniques to see what works for you to help regain your energy and put you in a better frame of mind.