Between work, family life, social obligations, routine, stress sets in. To balance its negative mental and physical effects, it’s important to think about how to relax, find the one that suits your temper the most, and create some time to take a break. For a decompression appointment.

Stress induces disordered breathing, short, rapid breaths and the whole body is disturbed. Breathing is essential, numerous studies have shown that its mastery has very real effects on physical and emotional balance. Deeper, slower breathing decreases the production of norepinephrine, one of the hormones responsible for stress. Changing the rhythm of your breathing causes relaxation, slows down the heart rate, and stimulates the nerve that runs from the brainstem to the abdomen, part of the parasympathetic nervous system, responsible for “rest and digestion” activities.

Breathing has advantages: it can be practiced anywhere, at home, in the office, on the bus, in the subway, standing, lying down, sitting, and especially as soon as you feel the stress coming.

Exercices

Put a hand on the stomach, a little below the navel and inhale deeply through the nose while inflating the stomach well. Breathe out quietly through your mouth. Do this exercise several times. Then let the air come into the chest. Exhale deeply, starting with your stomach and then your chest.

Simple, practical, this technique, which is more than 5 years old, can be used by anyone. In particular, it helps to reduce and transform daily stress into a feeling of physical and mental well-being. No need to take a retreat or install an application on your smartphone to meditate. 

To meditate is to immobilize oneself, to breathe, to come into contact with oneself, to take the time to watch one’s thoughts “slip by”. You just need to get into a comfortable position, the important thing is to have your back straight in order to properly deploy the spine and free the solar plexus, for maximum breathing, with relaxed shoulders. Pick a spot you like, forget about the laptop, and start with a deep breath. To help you, you can focus on an object, on an image or just on your breathing. Then watch your thoughts stir for a minute or two. 

As the days go by, increase the duration of meditation. As your meditation sessions progress, a distance from emotions and thoughts will set in. This is when the real relaxation occurs. Since the 60s, scientific studies on meditation have followed one another. Scientists including the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine, Phillip Sharp and Richard Davidson, director of the Brain Imaging Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin, have studied the effects of meditation, particularly on health. They showed that twenty and thirty minutes of meditation per day for four to eight weeks were enough for the first positive effects on health to appear, especially on anxiety.

Art is one of the oldest means of healing and an excellent relief valve. When you can afford a little more time, creative hobbies are a great way to relax thanks to their soothing, comforting virtues by freeing the mind from negative thoughts. 

Drawing, painting, sculpture but also knitting or “tricotherapy” which finds a new youth, DIY (women have started to do it and if screwing, retyping is a pleasure, it’s good for morale), coloring, notebooks are very popular, strap booking, but also singing, theater, etc. All these activities allow to concentrate, to forget the worries, the stress. 

Creation activates areas associated with emotion, self-awareness, identity and imagination, the same areas that release hormones of happiness, such as serotonin, oxytocin and dopamine , a neurotransmitter that promotes memorization and at the same time slows down stress networks. The benefits of art therapy on confidence and self-esteem are strongly demonstrated: people who participate in an artistic activity are more resistant, have greater emotional control and a significant decrease in the levels of the hormone cortisol. associated with stress.

The relaxation can also go through the nose. In recent years, various studies have revealed that olfactory stimulation by inhaling perfume has various psychophysiological effects on humans. Electrophysiological studies have shown how certain smells affect spontaneous brain activities as well as cognitive functions. The smell turns into a chemical message which is processed by the olfactory cortex. Good smells activate the circuit of well-being, the frequency of breathing decreases, relaxation sets in. 

Three decompressing smells

An exhausting day? Put a few drops (5 to 6 drops) of essential oil (ET) in a diffuser for about fifteen minutes:

• True lavender, (lavandula angustifolia): studies (3) have confirmed the therapeutic effects of lavender essential oil on stress and anxiety;
• Ylang ylang (Cananga odorata): it helps to free oneself in the event of tensions, tensions, mental ruminations and promotes letting go;
• Marjoram with shells (origanum majorana): active on the nervous system, it balances and harmonizes emotions. Calming and powerful, it also helps to regain a little dynamism after a stressful moment.