Doorway To Freedom

Hello and Happy 2023!

I am wondering if besides all of your New Year’s resolutions you have thought of reducing your stress levels, or as we say, maybe managing your stress levels better, and if you haven’t I would really love you to consider this because no matter how many goals we set for ourselves, how many things do we on average actually accomplish by the end of the year?

We know very well that maybe we’re going to accomplish only about half our initial amount of goals, and the reason why is probably not because we are lazy or whether we were serious enough about our intentions, it’s probably because we get overwhelmed quicker than we thought and quit way quicker than we would have imagined, and so besides organizing and planning for goals or resolutions, whichever applies in your case, I would invite you to look at becoming more stress resilient in 2023 .

Stress is easily felt in the mind but no only, it’s also felt in the body and by the body too so you might not even realize you’re stressed, yet you can’t find a way to keep going or to get even started on what you want to do. Or you might start becoming sick more often than you normally would.

So let me help you with that because there is a simple thing that you can do, and it would be great if you could do it every day, if you could spare 15-20 minutes every day to do some deep relaxation; and if you only really have time twice a week or even once a week, if possible then spare a half an hour for deep relaxation.

Deep relaxation has amazing benefits on your nervous system because when you let yourself relax to a certain depth the nervous system starts to automatically release stress.

You probably have experienced in the past being in bed, let go more and more with an intention to relax and with an aim to fall asleep.  And as you get closer and closer to sleep your body jerks suddenly, sometimes it jerks so hard you can literally wake up from that cocoon-like state. That is the body releasing stress and if you ever wondered what’s going on with you, now you know,  it’s your body releasing stress.

So you want to take 15 minutes a day or a half an hour a week to just sit down comfortably, with good back support, maybe lie on the couch or in bed with the intention to literally have a power nap, that’s exactly what you’re doing.

Everyone knows how restorative that can be. What most people probably don’t know is that you don’t necessarily sleep with in that 20 minutes, half an hour time-frame, because it’s usually not enough time to fall asleep, but you can relax very deeply and when the alarm goes off you’re completely restored.

So 15 to 20 minutes is probably the perfect amount of time that you can take off even every day even during your work hours. You might be lucky to have some relaxing facility in your work. But you might do it in your car as well, once you’re safely parked, or on public transport, just ensure you have an alarm set off at least 10 minutes before you’re stop so you have time to come back to full awareness and cognitive functions.

If there is noise in your environment you can start with some meditation, labelling whatever you can hear and just letting go of what’s going on around you,  and even if it might take you a full ten minutes to start relaxing because of all the noise that’s going around, you will have a 10 minutes of deep relaxation and that will also do.

So this is my tip for the new year and I’m really hoping you will give it a go, and don’t get discouraged if the first few times that you do it you don’t feel any particular benefits or you find it difficult to let go of what’s going on in your environment. You just keep doing it and it won’t be long before you can really experience the benefits of more energy and more stress resiliency.