Practical Tips for Dealing with Stress [VLOG #104]

Click above to watch my VLOG – Practical Tips for Dealing with Stress. Or, feel free to read the transcript below instead!

Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Hi Beauties,

Our vlog topic today is Practical Tips for Dealing with Stress. If you have ever felt stressed out, you’re stressed out now, or you’re looking for some stress relief, raise your hand. Myself included, I’m sure we are all raising our hand right now even mentally because we have such busy lives and there’s so much going on.

Why It’s Important to Reduce Stress

Let’s dive right into some amazing research and tips for helping you and your body feel more resilient against stress. The reason we care so much is that there’s so much research correlating stress with very detrimental effect on our bodies and our organs. In addition, stress hormones like cortisol, which we know can break down the collagen in our skin and contribute to belly fat.

There is a study from 2017 where scientists claim that chronic stress is linked to all sorts of disease and health issues – including allergies, asthma and irritable bowel syndrome. Stress very much does affect our digestion. Our digestion is key to elevating if we want to be in our truest beauty and we want to feel our most well and most energetic.

Tip #1: Adaptogens

My first practical tip for dealing with stress is to incorporate more adaptogens into your life. Adaptogens are these incredible intelligent plants that adapt to your body and help your body deal with stress.

A lot of these come from Ayurvedic medicine and traditional Chinese medicine. They’re ancient and have been used for millennia by these ancient medicinal systems to really help protect people and to fortify their bodies against stress.

Now these days we have more stress than ever from over-scheduling, overworking, and of course all the chemicals and all the unnatural compounds in our water supply and food supply and environment. So adaptogens are even more important than ever to add in. I’ll list a few such as maca, ashwagandha, reishi mushrooms, ginseng.

You can put these in tea and even cook with some of them. You can also add them to smoothies like maca. If you’re interested in learning more about how to get stress relief from using adaptogens, we have a whole adaptogen series that we did not too long ago. You can search for these smoothie options under our Recipe/Smoothie section of our blog, and type in your adaptogen choice in the search bar.

Tip #2: Meditation

The next practical tip is meditation. As you know, I am a huge fan of meditation and I think it’s an important practice that we incorporate regularly in the morning as part of our morning routine. Ideally, you would incorporate meditation in the evening as well, as your calming down evening routine.

There is more and more research emerging about meditation, including this study from JAMA Internal Medicine journal, founding that meditation helped in stress related conditions and reducing overall levels of psychological stress.

So yes, the ancient wisdom and techniques are being studied now in a modern context, which is amazing.

Tip #3: Diet

My next tip is really dialing in your diet. Diet has a huge effect on helping to reduce our stress levels. The food that we put in our mouth doesn’t just affect us physically. It also affects our gut health, our emotional wellbeing, our moods, everything is a cycle. Everything is so interrelated.

Alkalizing foods like spinach, lemon, both in our GGS as well as avocado with healthy fats also helps to fight inflammation, and can help your body deal with stress. We really want to avoid refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup and junk food, which contributes to inflammation in our body.

It can actually exacerbate conditions and symptoms of stress. You want to make sure that you’re eating whole foods, eating simple, and nourishing yourself. This in and of itself is anti-stress.

Tip #4: Stretching and Yoga

My fourth tip is stretching and yoga. Also huge fan of yoga, of course. There was a study from the Complimentary Therapies and Medicine that found that one hour only of yoga per week over the course of ten weeks was found to reduce stress and anxiety and improved mental health over relaxation alone. You can do a little bit of yoga at home.

We have some yoga tutorials on YouTube or you can check out our yoga DVD. You can get out your mat and just feel your body, incorporating some basic poses. Or, you may choose to go to yoga class locally. One hour a week is super beneficial.

Tip #5: Friends and Community

And my last tip is friends and community. A study published by the American Psychological Association found that friends lower cortisol levels and increased feelings of self worth. So finding a supportive community is super important to our wellbeing.

One of the reasons I created the Solluna Circle is to go deep into talk about how we feel, and practices, foods, around the monthly theme and to use these practices to better ourselves, to know ourselves better and to improve our health and wellbeing.

Part of that is a community where we share and we talk and I post videos and people have comments and we really go deep together and I think it’s just a wonderful way to help ourselves heal and to connect.

In Closing

I’m excited for you to try some of these tips. Let me know which ones help you with your stress and help you feel better in your body. The main thing is small, simple steps applied consistently can add up to big results.

Thank you so much, Beauties, for tuning in to today’s vlog. I will see you next week. Until then, sending you lots and lots of love.

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