7 Mini-Meditations to Relieve Stress |

I have a guest blogger with us today, Ida Jones, and she writes about ways to decrease stress and improve your overall health and well-being. As the mom of two little ones, she’s successfully found several outlets for stress and the overall craziness of motherhood. Today’s topic is meditation. As I’ve written many times in my posts, the connection between the brain and the body is powerful beyond words.

God tells us in His word to “be still…” and meditation is one way we can obey this command in his word. While we can be still and pray, we can also meditate in other ways and God can still communicate with us since we are just being still. Satan loves to use the “busy” in our lives to keep us from communicating with God and allowing Him to communicate with us. Through meditation, we are simply being still, and God can use this time to help us relax and allow our brains to communicate with our bodies as He so perfectly designed. So enjoy Ida’s post and give meditation a try!

7 MINI-MEDITATIONS TO RELIEVE STRESS

Meditation is all about mindfulness of the present situation. But, can it take as less as 60 seconds to relieve you of any stressful situation? Definitely yes! Mini-meditations perform miracles in moments by shifting your thought patterns. You need to only breathe deeply and become fully aware of whatever is going on inside you. Once you get the key of stress, you can unlock immense potential of your mind by letting thoughts float free without limitations.
7 mini-meditations have been compiled here based on research and work of different authors for you to celebrate a stress-free life ahead:

1. Identify Your Stress:

Become aware of stress responses of your body including elevated heart rate and fidgeting hand movements. Once you are able to identify it at the right moment, you can command your brain to relax. Identifying stress can also take you to roots of your stress so that you can remove them. Simply question your mind what’s stressing you? Wait for the answer to arrive and be ready to listen.

Stress and anxiety at their extreme force one to clench onto something hard as much as in anger. For such purpose inclined weight benches or Olympic weight benches can be utilized. Lifting weight can make you aware of the weight your stress is imposing upon your mind that you need to shake off.

2. Take Deep Breaths:

It only takes a minute to take deep breaths, so whenever tension and nervousness builds up in your mind, Stop thinking and slowly inhale deeply, and then exhale gradually and smoothly. Your mind will appear as a blank slate with lowered heart rate and stress responses. Instead of a ‘fight or flight’ response, you signal your body to ‘relax and restore’. Your thinking process will slow down and your awareness will shoot up.
From mental to heart health, it is the best meditation to maintain your well-being.

3. Express on Paper:

If focusing on every thought behind stress boggles your mind, write down every emotion along with every reason that you think of possessing at the moment on paper. After jotting them down, find out which ones are really true causes behind your stress. Then, seek out a way to get rid of those few causes.

4. Focused Activity with Complete Mindfulness:

Perform any single activity with total awareness but it need not be some forced exertion as it happens during study or management task. Cooking, Driving or other tasks that you complete mindlessly can be counted in, but the best option is exercise. Do some simple exercises and focus upon all the muscles that are engaged. Inclined and adjustable weight benches are comfortable and perfect to engage and stretch all your body muscles. Perform the exercise with complete awareness, as it is done in yoga and your energy level with shoot up without any energy drink. Stress will drop down, after your muscles will relax and breathing rate will normalize, after workout.

5. Relax and Smile:

Smile at your stress as if it is some crazy trick or act performed by an entertainer in front of you. Stress is play of thoughts in the garden of your mind, so, watch them from far away and smile at yourself for stressing over trivialities. Most of the times, we only stress over trivialities. Meditate on how small the matter is to stress over!

But beware, it doesn’t mean taking things non-seriously!!

6. Enjoy the Stream of Consciousness:

Stream of consciousness is a literary term for unending flow of thoughts going on through our minds. So, after weight lifts on your weight bench, lean back on it and relax. Focus on what’s going on in your mind for just two minutes, and you will be amazed to discover new facts about you, both good and bad. Don’t judge, just let them pass by and watch calmly every thought that arrives and leaves. Your self-awareness will be enhanced.

7. Be Grateful:

Whenever you are stressed, shift your attention on things you are grateful for. It will attract positivity in your thought processes that will relieve all your anxiety and stress.

Author Bio:
Ida Jones is a mother of two little ones. She enjoys home-based workouts, cardio exercises and long runs. She loves spending her vacations outdoors with her kids around nature. She believes in clean and healthy eating. She regularly writes about fitness tips and much more at Fitness Grit.