5 Great Stress-Relief Activities

Unfortunately, stress has become a part of everyone’s lives. Whether it’s related to checking off the entire to-do list for the day or taking an important exam, you can’t completely get rid of stress in your life. However, you can surely manage stress effectively using different techniques to prevent it from drastically impacting your life and wellbeing.

It could be as simple as finding a new hobby or catching up with your old hobbies and replacing your anxious thoughts with something creative. For example, you can again start hunting in the wild and hone your skills by investing in the right firearms equipment like top 1-4x scopes. Or, you can attend a course of your choice online and get new skills that will help you become better.

If you want to explore more great stress-relief activities, keep reading this article!

exercise

1. Incorporate Exercise into Your Daily Routine

Moving your body regularly can help you manage stress significantly. Whether you enjoy running, walking, cycling, kayaking, swimming, or hiking, you must keep moving your muscles habitually.

When you work out, your body starts to release the feel-good hormones while diminishing the levels of stress hormones. This can immediately boost your mood and provide several health benefits in the long run too.

2. Give Yourself a Massage

As going for massage therapy at clinics or spas can be quite heavy on your wallet, you can give yourself a massage or invest in an affordable massage machine online.

Massage stimulates your nervous system to help slow down the electrical activity in your brain. This lowers your blood pressure and heart rate. Therefore, your stress hormones, cortisol, remarkably drop, making you feel super relaxed.

Of course, you can always light up soothing scented candles and play relaxing nature sounds in the background to further brighten up your mood.

3. Focus on Your Breathing

Stress and anxiety can increase your heart rate and breathing too. Consciously and slowly inhaling and exhaling will help you control your heart rate and divert your attention to breathing rather than focusing on the pessimistic thought.

You can practice this activity even in a room full of people or outdoors without anyone noticing. You should slowly inhale all the positivity such as relaxation and calmness and exhale all the negativity like stress and anxiety.

While practicing this technique, it’s imperative that you make your brain conscious of inhaling “positivity” and exhaling “negativity”.

4. Purchase Adult Coloring Books

Do you remember how we used to feel happy and relaxed while coloring or painting when we were little? The good news is that you can still feel the same irrespective of adulthood’s “never-ending” problems.

Whether you want to doodle on your sketchbook or fill the colors in adult coloring books, they can significantly help you in relieving stress.

Adult coloring books are pretty popular nowadays for a reason. Coloring the intricate designs is scientifically proven to combat feelings of anxiety and tension.  

5. Engage All Your Senses

Engaging all your senses, i.e., smelling, seeing, hearing, tasting, and touching, can help you stay mindful. Most of our stress is triggered by imagining the worst about the future or thinking about all the “what-ifs” instead of enjoying the present.

Whether you want to bake cookies or cook your favorite meal, you must consciously engage your five senses. This can also be applied to any other activity.

For instance, you should enjoy the smell of cookies being baked in the oven, feel the texture of the dough in your hands, taste the sweetness and richness of the dough, listen to the noise baking tools make, and admire how gooey the cookies look. 

Lana Martinez is a freelance technical writer living in the Santa Clara. She's a gadget and tech geek who loves to write how-to articles about a wide range of topics. When she's not writing about technology, Lana loves watching and reading mysteries, cross stitching, and attending musical theatre. She's also an avid Doctor Who fan.