When you’re stressed, the body actually contracts, muscles shorten, and the breath becomes shallow. Movement counteracts stress: it reduces anxiety and depression, lowers blood pressure, and alleviates back pain, PTSD and asthma. Establish a regular movement practice to experience greater flexibility, creativity, vitality and better quality sleep! Gardening, golfing, walking, laughing, dancing and yoga all qualify as movement practices. So pick one! Simply become mindful of moving your body: it could mean a two minute-dance party every hour, or committing a dedicated chunk of time to a daily movement practice. Twenty minutes is all it takes.
If stretching or yoga is part of your movement practice, imagine you are stretching to create more space in your bodymind. Then visualize new ideas flowing into the new space you’ve created. The purpose of Asana in yoga is to sit in perceived discomfort and breath through it until you become comfortable. The ability to breathe through discomfort forms a habit of soothing the nervous system, which builds resilience to everyday stressors. Try this practice from yogaXdesign’s Facebook page. If you like it, sign up for unlimited access to live streaming and video-on-demand. Listen to your body, and only use medium effort.