Healthy & Natural Solutions for Stress Management
By NaturalGuidance Staff

When our hectic lives get the better of us, we are apt to place the blame on the challenge of the moment-the demanding boss, the needy children, the unresponsive spouse. Others attribute their constant worrying and frantic thoughts to a mental or emotional disorder.

The trials and tribulations of everyday life are the cause of stress, but whether or not we become victims of anxiety depends greatly on the approach we bring to our lives. The various stressors in our world may have no easy remedy, but what we do have the ability to change can bring calm to even the most tempestuous of storms.
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Natural Supplements for Stress Relief

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The first step is to develop an exit strategy for situations that bring about a panic reaction. Often enough, a few minutes of breathing room and perspective can diffuse a rapidly degenerating grip on your center.

Excuse yourself briefly, retreat to the some private place such as the restroom until you've regained your composure...and then return immediately to the fray that brought on the anxiety, hopefully to find that it wasn't as bad as you've feared. Few things in life real are as bad as imagination and dread can make them.

Breathing is central to controlling anxiety and stress. The internal biomonitors of the body are partially governed by the rate of breath, especially the "fight-or-flight" reaction which controls the biological reaction to threatening encounters. Humans are equipped with an automated emergency system triggered by the hormone cortisol, which springs into high gear whenever danger looms.

The accelerated breathing patterns we experience in times of stress are part of the quick-response state of readiness that has saved the life of many an ancestor. Since a heightened rate of inhalation is both a cause and effect of anxiety, hyperventilation can become an intense and dangerous cycle.

While perfectly appropriate to wilderness life where any moment might bring a deadly predator into camp, our more mundane lives usually don't require unscheduled mile-long sprints out of the jaws of death. Instead, we feel threatened by attacks-or perceived attacks-on our social identities.

Chronic anxiety is a serious psychological condition in which individuals are unable to buffer this reaction to stress. Symptoms include insomnia, nervous twitches, an inability to concentrate, and panic attacks, which may require medical attention.

The single most important strategy for controlling stress is meditation. This doesn't need to entail long, silent contemplations while contorted in unlikely poses, although the ancient traditions of yoga and various martial arts are time-honored and tested systems to harness an excess of energy.

Aside from psychotherapy, guided meditation groups or recordings bring peace to millions, and the most exciting forms of brain relaxing aids may be electronic...an increasing segment of the population is using fractal imagery and binaural beats to help dissolve stress.

With anxiety we see the intimate connection between mind and body. Ultimately, there is no firm boundary between the two when it comes to reacting to stressors. The mind tells the body that a threat is imminent, and the body prepares for a life-and-death struggle.

Over years, this can become toxic and bring on the effects of aging long before they are due. Stress can lead to nutritional deficiencies, because it occupies the body's ability to properly process nutrients, and many cases of anxiety are correlated with a diet high in caffeine, salt and fat, while lacking the basic ingredients of life.