Breathing exercises and physical exercise are important for reducing stress. Practicing a deep breathing exercise can be calming and energizing and can even help with stress-related health problems such as panic attacks or digestive disorders.

The following is an excelent breathing exercise for stress reduction:

1. Sit up, with your back straight or lie flat on a padded floor.
2. Place your tongue against the roof of your mouth just behind your upper front teeth and keep it there throughout the exercise.
3. Exhale completely, and slowly, through your mouth, making a whoosh sound
4. Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose, to a count of four.
5. Hold your breath for a count of seven.
6. Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound, to a count of eight.

Repeat this cycle three more times for a total of four breaths.

Try to do this breathing exercise at least twice a day. You can repeat the whole sequence as often as you wish, but don't do more than four breaths at one time for the first week. You can build up as your body becomes accustom to the new technique. This will help keep you from hyperventilating as you begin to practice the technique.

This exercise is fairly intense and has a profound effect on the nervous system -- remember, with this exercise, more is not better). This exercise is the best and easiest tool I know for stress management.

Five Steps to Remedy Stress

1. I always recommend regular exercise to help reduce the build up of daily stress. A brisk walk for 15-20 minutes is sufficient. But if you can only do five minutes at a time start there. Work up to exercising for thirty minutes, five days a week. Biking swimming, jumping rope, or bouncing on a trampoline, are alternatives for keeping your exercise routine from becoming boring.
2. Also, try to get at least 20 minutes of sunshine a day. Try gardening or walking the dog to get some sun. Even on a cloudy day the sun's uplifting rays can decrease your stress level. Decrease the amount of caffeine you take in each day.
3. Caffeine can make a stressful situation feel much worse than it is, reducing your ability to cope.
4. Time management is one of the best ways to decrease daily stress. If you can manage your time properly, you will eliminate the stress of worrying about being late or becoming stressed in traffic. You will make fewer mistakes because you will not be in a rush to finish a project.
5. Do your best to get enough sleep and to maintain a regular sleep pattern. Most people need between 8-10 hours of good undisturbed sleep every night. Studies have also shown that taking a 15-30 minute nap in the middle of the day can reduce the stress level of employees and improve their productivity by as much as 25%. If you stay at home during the day, take a nap when your children take theirs. Resist the urge to do the housework during that time.

Attitude is half the battle. Over and over studies have shown that those who deal with stressful situations the best are those who have a positive outlook on life, those who don't catastrophise stressful situations; and who keep their wits about them and attack a problem head on instead of going into denial or panic mode.

Attitude is a choice; and a positive attitude is a habit that anyone can achieve. But like any positive change it requires acknowledging that one's attitude needs changing. After recognizing the problem, you can begin to change the way you think about difficult life situations and begin to change the way you handle life in general. And like any life change, it isn't likely to happen overnight just because you wished it so.

It will take time and a determined effort to stop in the middle of your negative thinking and begin to think positively. It will feel strange and even fake. But that is because you aren't used to thinking that way. If you give it a tenacious effort, positive thinking will become your new habit and will no longer feel strange at all.

Example:

A child knocks over a vase while playing indoors:

Negative thinking - "I just paid $30.00 for that vase and now look at it!"
Positive thinking - "Oh, I'm so glad you didn't get cut."

In the first example the parent focus's on the negative - the loss of the vase. In the second example the parent realizes that the material possession is not worth stressing over; focus is placed on the child's safety and the positive outcome. Both parent and child have a good feeling instead of feeling angry/guilty or stressed.

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