Chronic stress can lead to serious health and emotional concerns. A healthy solution to reduce stress hormones and effectively deal with the body's response to stress is exercise. During exercise, the body releases feel-good chemicals called endorphins. These chemicals, coupled with an improved mood and strong sense of self-control, are potent reasons to use exercise for stress reduction.
Yoga
Yoga is an integrative practice where the mind and body work together in order to achieve peacefulness. The specific combination of breathing exercises and poses induce emotional calmness to reduce stress and anxiety. According to the Mayo Clinic, "Yoga has many styles, forms and intensities. Hatha yoga, in particular, may be a good choice for stress management."
Walking
Walking is a multi-sensory exercise that can calm and restore balance to even the most hectic life. Walk at a comfortable pace, in a peaceful environment and focus on releasing physical tension while breathing deeply as a way to relieve stress and anxiety, states ChiWalking creator, Danny Dreyer. Walking is "meditation in motion, just by using breath and awareness to target tension and trigger the body's relaxation response."
Gardening
People don't equate gardening with exercise, but this activity is relaxing, has many health benefits and increases strength, flexibility and endurance. "Elements of gardening such as digging, weeding, trimming shrubs and mowing the lawn can require the same energy [needs] as other physical activities such as walking, cycling, swimming and aerobics," according to Garden Fitness creator, Kimberly Ridout.
Pilates
Pilates exercises use balanced strength and flexibility to reduce stress, improve posture, strengthen the core and create long, lean muscles. This practice is known to relieve tension and boost energy through deep stretching. It is a whole-body conditioning workout that requires time and dedication in order to achieve the full benefit.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
This is a guided imagery exercise used to relax the entire body and reduce stress. Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) is a tensing and then relaxing of the body's muscle groups. It can be done either sitting or lying down and takes about 20 minutes. You can choose to start at the head or the toes and group the muscles from top-to-bottom or side-to-side. Arthritis Today recommends, "For each muscle group, tense for 10 seconds and release...before moving on to the next muscle group."
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