De-stress

I’ve touched on stress before when talking about using meditation to combat it, but I wanted to revisit the subject and hopefully someone tense and overwhelmed in Davis will take a second to read this and de-stress.

When you’re stressed or anxious, your body releases cortisol, adrenaline, and norepinephrine which is good in certain circumstances, but can take a toll on your body if it’s chronic. Too much cortisol can suppress the immune system, increase blood pressure and sugar, decrease libido, produce acne, contribute to obesity, etc. And if something stresses you out, it could take anywhere from half an hour to a couple of days to return to your normal resting state after these hormones are released. 

UNC Campus Health Services has a list of things you can do to deal with stress better including asking for help, taking a break to exercise or take a warm shower, and breathing or meditating. Another de-stress list from Huffington Post suggests 20 scientifically backed things you should try right now if you’re stressed:

1. Go for a 10 minute walk
2. Breathe deeply
3. Visualize
4. Eat a snack
5. Buy yourself a plant
6. Step away from your screen
7. Pucker up
8. Apply pressure in certain places on your hand
9. Turn off your phone
10. Eat a piece of candy
11. Try web based stress management programs
12. Chew a piece of gum
13. Watch a viral video
14. Progressive muscle relaxation
15. TURN OFF YOUR PHONE
16. See your best friend
17. Eat a banana
18. Try eagle pose
19. Craft
20. Put on some music

For time management especially during finals, CHS suggests making a master schedule and a to-do list that is *prioritized*. That’s the best advice about to-do lists I’ve heard in a long time, because they can be daunting. Prioritizing your tasks can help you focus less on the endless things it seems like you have to do and more on the one thing you should be concentrating on first.

Good luck everyone! Keep in mind you won’t remember this one test that you’re stressing about, or even this one class. There are much bigger and better things going on in your life- this one exam is just a drop in this ocean.

Open Your Third Eye

On my drive down to Charleston with 3 lovely ladies, we started talking about meditation and the book “The Experience of Insight.” I’ve heard from several people meditation is pretty hard to do, but super helpful. Maybe this week I’ll try it on some beach or at the front of our cruise ship, Titanic style.

“Meditation deepens through the continuity of awareness”

Campus Health says meditation is the regular, systematic training of attention to turn inward and dwell continuously on a single focus within consciousness. They have a lot of info and resources about meditating and there’s even weekly meditation in the Union! Campus Health also has a number of resources at your disposal for emotional wellness, which I’ve taken advantage of recently. Someone recently told me that college students don’t realize how many opportunities they have so easily available (not to mention free). So I’d encourage you to attend their meditation sessions or any of the other resources available to increase your well-being.

Franklin Street Yoga has free meditation every week as well. Their yoga teachers are phenomenal, and I can only imagine they would be great at fostering a peaceful meditation environment.

This picture lists some great benefits of meditation that could help anyone, even if you don’t think you need to destress or aren’t trying to resolve any of these issues. Stress can have a much larger impact on your health than you might realize, and you could have many background stressors in your life (anyone else not excited for the real world in 2 months…). Meditation can also help anxiety and depression better than medicine can, and can help cancer patient have a better quality of life.

So meditation = world peace?