Although stress is unavoidable, it need not control your life!
The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, part of the National Institutes of Health of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, recently published an explainer on how to Press Reset on Stress. The PDF covers the basics of the different types of stress and offers tips for invoking the relaxation response to counter them. These recommended strategies for “hitting the stress-reset button”—slowed breathing, progressive relaxation, and mindfulness—will sound quite familiar to those who know yoga!
In honor of National Stress Awareness Month in the United States, below are yoga therapy helpers to bolster your stress-resilience and coping skills.
As you explore, remember that although yoga is strong medicine, it’s slow medicine! You may—in fact, likely will—experience some effects of yoga right away, the very first time you try it. This is true regardless of whether you’re doing physical postures (asana), breathwork (pranayama), or meditation; studying yoga’s ethical and spiritual precepts; or working with any of the other techniques that together all make up the complete practice of yoga. And the effects can be even more profound when the practices are individually tailored for you by a well-qualified yoga therapist. In the end, though, the greater the dedication to the process over time, the greater the rewards.
- Bolster your stress hardiness with ideas and practices from Beth Gibbs, MA, C-IAYT.
- Finish the stress cycle with yoga therapy: Part 1—learn just how yoga therapy can help us manage stress through the panchamaya kosha model with Monica Le Baron, MBA, C-IAYT.
- Then, try a few practices yourself with Monica in Finish the stress cycle with yoga therapy: Part 2—Four tools to try today.
- Finally, Stress-fest lists a few interesting research studies on the effects of yogic practices on stress parameters; see also the “stress” category on the Research page of this site.
