Finding Solitude helps Reduce Stress and Anxiety

We can't always get away from this big world for rest and relaxation, but making an effort to find pockets in our schedule for solitude and rejuvenation is key to keeping a balanced life.

"I'll do it after the first of the year," you say, or "when the kids finish school."  But the truth is, those times are always in the future and the need for balanced relaxation in our lives is now.

If you aren't able to find a hut in the middle of nowhere to find peace and quiet, then try for a smaller, more reachable goal.

One woman finally insisted with her family that they must all arranged to cover for her so she could get away to the local Barnes and Noble once a week to sip some coffee and peruse the magazines and books for a couple of hours.  Another asked friends to watch her kids so she could go sit in a hot tub at the local recreation center now and then.  One man began taking that lunch hour he once worked through to go meditate at a facility he'd found in his area.

It doesn't have to be complicated or involve expensive trips away to even more expensive retreats in the mountains, which take time away from work, family, jobs and typically end up being even more stressful.  It's actually the little pockets of time, and little bits of relaxation during our day to day activity that add up to a more balanced life of stress versus relaxation.

Here are a few simple ideas for getting away for short periods of time:

*Find a local park and visit it during your lunch hour to eat or just walk or sit.
*Utilize your own back yard now and then to sit and watch the birds or clouds
*At home, run a hot bath and soak while listening to gentle music and/or using gentle aroma candles
*Go for walks in your area to relax the eyes from all the electronic stimulation
*Go visit your local library on a day when all the kids are in school.  They are fairly quiet places.
*Visit a Day Spa and get a massage in your area

Be creative and remember to listen to yourself.  When you find yourself saying "I'll do it later", you can be sure it's because you think it's too big of a task to get to right now.  Making the task smaller makes it reachable and doable.  You  can't put off your need for relaxation forever.  Your body and mind will eventually catch up with you and the stress by then will take so much longer to correct in order to bring balance to your life.

Thanks to Lain Merchant for the great photos
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Relaxing with Essential Oils

Essential oils are "volatile aromatic compounds", which means they are oils that can change states quickly from liquid to gas.  Many people use essential oils in a diffuser with water to disperse the aroma into a room in order to enjoy pleasant scents.

As you can imagine, this is a relaxing form of aroma therapy that has grown in popularity over the years.  It's a great way to relax and can make a wonderful addition to a meditative environment or spa-like room.

You can read more about aroma therapy here in my May 2015 blog entry.

If you are looking to create an environment that is suited for relaxation, using a diffuser to disperse your Essential Oils is a great idea.  But keep in mind, you can also disperse the aroma by many other means:

*Spray bottle
*Cotton ball or tissue
*Heated on the stove
*Used in the bath
*A few drops on your furnace filter
*In your Potpourri warmer
**Be sure to always read instructions carefully so you use the appropriate amounts in any of these
    given methods.

Introducing pleasant fragrances to any room can add to the relaxing environment, and we know that certain scents can trigger both memories and moods.

Thanks to Sulen Lee for the great photo

Feng Shui: A Creative way to Reduce Stress

According to the ancient art of Feng Shui,  how you arrange your living environment and how it works in harmony with you, has a strong influence on your level of well-being and relaxation.  This can range from the selection of a building's location, to the design of a garden or living room.  Everything from the choice of color, to the location where an item is placed may have an influence on the overall energy in a given room, building, office, or landscape.

Basically, it’s all about how you arrange, position, and design your surroundings and the things in the environment in which you dwell.  The belief is that you can improve the flow of energy in these environments and bring balance and harmony into the areas in which you spend time, which subsequently then influences other areas of your life—like relationships, health, and professional success.

There are some key things you can try that target stress reduction and ways to enhance relaxation.  For instance, it has been found that using the color blue in your room design can lead to a soothing feeling for occupants.  In addition, including aspects of nature results in a feeling of relaxation, such as including plants, water fountains, or canvas wall hangings of nature.

Be sure to de-clutter your rooms and put things away as the clutter is only a reflection of a mind cluttered with thoughts and worry.  Using candle or natural incense is very powerful as many scents have a strong influence on mood, memory, and thought.

When it comes to relaxation, your environment should be arranged so as to bring about a quiet and peaceful setting for everything from reading to meditation.  You will definitely see a difference in your level of stress and worry when you take the time to be mindful about arranging your surroundings.

Thanks to Tanaka Juuyho for the photo - Japanese traditional style house

Aroma Therapy: Enhancing Your Relaxation With the Use of Aromas

In the Native American traditions, there is a ritual called smudging in which the smoke from burning herbs (frequently sage) is waved over and around an area to remove negatively.  Those who are familiar with the ritual find they are more relaxed when the smell of the burning sage reaches them due to the memory association with the ritual and their belief that it is attaching to the negativity in the area and carrying it away with the smoke.

These kinds of associations related to aroma are emphasized in a form of therapy called aroma therapy, which is a natural way to alter mood, consciousness, and thinking patterns, while stimulating the brain and body (including memory).  For instance, perhaps each time you smell the distinct aroma of pine, you think of pine trees, which leads you to think of a forest where you once walked and all the related memories and senses attached to being there, such as the feel of the air in the forest and the sounds of the birds and streams flowing through your special place.

Other means to enhance forms of aroma therapy include the use of incense or candles, boiling potpourri, wearing perfume, using an aroma diffuser, or wearing a bracelet made of sandalwood or cedar.

It's true that some aromas can also remind us of negative things and even trigger unpleasant memories and trauma, but most people will refrain from aromas they know have a negative effect on them, and will instead be drawn to those that appeal to them.  In addition, always be sure to check the ingredients in any product you use for aroma therapy to make sure it is not toxic (or has the least toxicity as possible) and isn’t going to be more harmful to you than good.  Do your homework and find a preferred means for aroma disbursement that you can enjoy and that allows you to safely enhance your efforts to relax and reduce your stress level.

Photo credit: andrew@andrewyoungphoto.net