Reduce Stress with Qi Gong, Gratitude and Perception Shifts

Have you ever had days where one stressor seems to pile upon another?

Before you know it, you lose your connection to the things in your life that you value most, and feel overwhelmed
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How do you regain your balance and reconnect during stressful times?

Assess the True Level of the Stressor

Often times, we snowball our stressors in our minds, allowing them to become much bigger than they really are.
Our perception of stress and how we choose to approach it makes a difference in how stress impacts us.
For example, if there is a task that you simply do not like and you choose to approach that task with negative feelings, dreading it and anticipating it being exhausting, it will feel more stressful and will drain you.

However, you can immediately diminish your perception of stress and take more control over your energy by engaging in self talk and planning proactively for moments of relaxation.

For example, you might say,”I don’t like this task and find it tedious. I’m going to plan proactively for moments of deep relaxation as I work on this task by engaging breath work and movements such as Five Treasures, for at least 5-6 minutes every hour that I am engaged in this task so I don’t feel as stressed.”

This integrative way of using qi gong to help you move through experience not only improves productivity, but is very empowering because while we can’t always avoid stress, we can find ways to create mini-breaks or vacations from stressful experiences.

Reconnect Instead of Isolating Yourself

When we feel stressed, we may isolate ourselves with a belief that we are alone in coping with stress. We wind up creating a cocoon centered around dealing with the stressor and recovering from stress, such that we unconsciously push other things out of our life.

Now, sometimes we need to unplug from everything and everyone. This is healthy especially when we communicate this need to people in our lives and also actively plan for times to reconnect.

It becomes unhealthy when we simply unplug and push people away, treating supportive people in our lives as if they are an extra burden or load, taxing our already stressed systems. This behavior simply isolates and prevents us from receiving support that can actually help us diminish stress.

When we choose to isolate ourselves, we also disconnect from joy. Have you ever noticed that when you are more isolated, you laugh less? When someone makes an attempt to joke or lighten the moment (a form of stress relief), your response might be a dead-pan or silent response.

Yet, at other times, when you feel less stressed, you might laugh more easily and see the humor in life’s challenges.

Take a few deep breaths and reflect on your style of handling stress
• Do you take on the “It’s me against the world,” attitude and push support away?
• Do you perceive support as a gift and honor it by allowing stress levels to diminish?
• Do you get caught up in “life must be stressful” mode, and refuse to allow stress to lower even when support is offered, finding new reasons to feel stressed although solutions have been provided to relieve stress?

Taking a few moments to acknowledge gratitude for the supportive people and experiences in your life can be a first step in reconnecting to others, and diminishing the sense of isolation that often exacerbates stress.