For every work or school day, people have expectations and requirements for us, and we also have expectations and requirements for ourselves. The following two stress-reducing techniques are must-haves to deal with the overwhelming pressure daily.
Before I discuss these, I must first explain what the mental pressure we feel every day really is.
First, when the brain interprets the current situation as a threat, the alarm in the brain will sound. When the body receives this alarm signal, it will release stress hormones (including adrenaline and cortisol), putting us into a combat state. At this time, we will feel “stressed”; these feelings include emotional tension, anxiety, and anger. The reaction of our mind is to maximize our vigilance and deploy our brains non-stop to deal with current threats. Our body’s reactions include accelerated heartbeat and breathing, increased blood pressure, and muscle tension. In terms of behavior, one is to fight; the other is to run away and escape. If you predict that you can neither win the fight nor escape, you will be scared to death and freeze up. I believe that everyone has experienced these physical and mental reactions at least once during daily work and school days.
A strong mind and body help us deal with stress, and this strength can be gained through exercise. Everyone should try the following two tricks daily, just like people practice martial arts every day. As the saying goes, practice makes perfect.
Embrace nature with your eyes
There is a discipline called Ecopsychology, which brings people closer to nature mentally to treat people’s mental pain.
In today’s world, Ecopsychology is becoming more and more important, because our daily life is increasingly occupied by indoor environments, electronic products, and even virtual worlds. The smart thing to do is to proactively restore our connection with nature to improve our physical and mental health.
Eyes are the windows to the soul, so looking through our eyes can effectively help our brains connect with nature. Medical research has found that being in nature, looking at nature with your eyes, and the light of nature entering the eyes can promote the transfer of serotonin in the brain, especially for the part of our brain that controls intelligence, the prefrontal cortex. The serotonin transfer between the prefrontal cortex and the alarm bell in our brain (the amygdala) can stop the alarm, so the anxiety and panic gradually dissipate. The transmission of serotonin in our brain is very important to our mood. In depression, the transmission of serotonin in the brain is weakened. One of the functions of antidepressants is to promote the transmission of serotonin in the brain to improve mood. Therefore, contacting the eyes with the light of nature is a natural antidepressant.
When talking about getting close to nature, everyone would question the possibility of spending time in the countryside when being busy at school or work. As long as we absorb a bit of nature every day, we can accumulate enough nutrients from nature beneficial for mental health. Research has found that accumulating 120 minutes of time in nature every week can significantly improve physical and mental health.
Even in urban Hong Kong, we can still see many trees in parks and even in public spaces in commercial districts. I have a habit of wearing anti-UV glasses to look up at the leaves, along with the sky and clouds hiding in between. Take 10 minutes before work, or take 10 minutes during lunch, plus a few minutes on weekends and Sundays, and you’ll get your 120 minutes a week.
As for another stress-reducing technique worth doing daily, it’s abdominal breathing.
The abdominal breathing exercise means that when you inhale, expand your belly, and when you exhale, shrink your belly. Take each breath deep and slow.
How does belly movement actually affect our brains? The reason is our nervous system, not just our brain. I mentioned before that when the brain judges that there is a threat in the surrounding environment, the alarm bell in the head goes off, and then the heartbeat speeds up, the breathing speeds up, the blood pressure rises, and the muscles tighten. This series of reactions is due to the alarm in the head activating our sympathetic nervous System. When the threat is removed, the parasympathetic nervous system is required to take action to slow down our heartbeat and breathing and relax our muscles. This sympathetic nervous system extends from our brain and spinal cord to the entire body.
When we are threatened too frequently and for too long, the sympathetic nervous system is overactive, but the parasympathetic nervous system is dormant for too long. These two systems with opposite functions will lose balance. For example, even after work and school, even after leaving the stressful environment, the mood still cannot calm down. The heartbeat and breathing are still quick, and the panic feeling persists.
The abdominal breathing exercise makes every breath deep and slow (6 to 10 breaths per minute), stimulating the parts of the heart and lungs that detect blood pressure and air pressure, thereby activating the parasympathetic nervous system, and helping the body relax.
You may wonder again about the problem of business, when will there be time to do breathing exercises? It is the same as being close to nature. If we do a little every day, it will add up to noticeable results. I am used to doing abdominal breathing at least 10 times in the morning, and then 10 more times at night. This way, it takes only about three minutes every day. Don’t take a long time for the exercises, the key is to do it every day. It’s better to spend less time than to miss a few days because this is the most effective way to train our nervous system. If we do these two sets of exercises daily, we can effectively relieve our mental stress.
Written by: Dr. William Chui
Translated by: Cheuk Long Chan
This video is a transcript of the following video:
