Stress. We all experience it, usually on a daily basis. But what is it exactly and what’s the best way to deal with it? Stress is basically the body’s response to potential threat or injury. On a physical level, when we’re stressed our muscles tense to prepare our bodies to react to the threat. We are essentially poised to run, or jump and our heart rates, pulse and blood pressure increase demanding more oxygen and blood for our muscles. Flash forward from the Paleolithic era to 2006 when stress is the reaction to work, traffic, arguments with partners and rearing children, and not what our bodies are prepared to confront, kill or run (in fight-or-flight mode) from. Instead we remain relatively idle feeling the increased blood pressure and heart rate, feeling anxious, worried and uneasy. In short, we feel stressed!

So what can you do to release all the pent up, useless stress? Ultimately, you’ll need to relax to bring your nervous tension, blood pressure and heart rate back to normal. If you can, perform some sort of cardiovascular or aerobic activity, take a kick boxing class or punch something (not recommended, by the way),for 30 minutes or more. If you’re not near a gym or can’t break a sweat where you are, try to relax by taking deep breaths and concentrating on slowing your breathing. When you take deep diaphragmatic breaths with long, slow inhales and exhales you are reducing stress and moving from “fight-or-flight” mode to a state of relaxation. Taking a walk, stretching, listening to relaxing music, taking a warm bath and doing something creative (like painting or gardening) help as well.

All of those suggestions are great ways to reduce stress. But what do I recommend most? Get a massage! As you may already know, a full body massage is by far one of the most powerful health care modalities used to reduce stress. Just one hour of massage can release musculoskeletal tension that you may not even be aware of, while bringing your body to its rightful state of homeostasis (internal balance and physiological equilibrium). If you include regular massage (once a week or every two weeks) into your wellness routine, you will notice that you visit the state of stress less and less.

Of course I could go on and on about the benefits of massage but nothing compares to the experience. You owe it to yourself to treat your body well so don’t neglect it when it’s crying for attention. It’s not normal to live with low back pain and neck and shoulder tension but we oftentimes do. And that hip pain and headaches, those can be treated with massage as well. We’ll spend hours working on our cars, computers and entertainment systems it they are having problems but hesitate to take the time to work on ourselves. It’s silly, actually, to not set aside one hour twice a month to fine-tune our own hardware. When was the last time you scheduled a stress-relieving maintenance session (aka: massage)? Chances are you’re due.


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