i. Improve the physiological state.

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i. Improve the physiological state. The tools and skills that I will talk about here provide perhaps the most immediate benefit for feelings of moderate to overwhelming stress; however, it would be a terrible mistake to only focus on this information. The rest of the information here is essential for both prevention and long term reduction of stress. As we become more and more stressed the physiology of our bodies change. There are numerous signs that this change has or is occurring. Some of the possible signs are: sweaty hands, cold hands, ringing in the ears, dry mouth and sometimes a resulting clicking sound, increasingly rapid movement and speech, less coherent speech, higher pitch in speech, louder speech, anger, withdrawal, muscle tension, and quick short breathing. When we become stressed, our body reduces the amount of blood it sends to the brain and sends more to the large muscle groups in our extremities. This is an adaptive change called Fight or Flight and helps us to run away or fight off an assailant or wild animal if needed. It is less adaptive in the work setting as less blood in the brain equates to a diminished ability to learn, think. and speak coherently. One organization that has provided great information and training for many years in helping others who are in crisis, while better managing ourselves, is The MANDT System. When we have a physiological change due to stress, in order to de-stress, we have to have another physiological change. The most important and beneficial thing that we can do to create this physiological change is Aerobic Exercise. The second most important thing is deep breathing. As stated previously, one of the signs of stress is short shallow breathing. Many of us have also adopted more shallow and chest breathing to hide a protruding stomach. There are a number of things you can do to change your breathing:1. Pay attention to your breathing. (Focus your attention to your breathing in and out. You may want to visualize a ball moving up and down a pole or a balloon getting larger and smaller. Eventually after you are better practiced, you may want to count your heart beats as you breathe in and then count them as you breathe out, starting over with each in and out breathe.)2. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth.3. Put your hand on your stomach and feel your stomach going up and down, in and out and try to get your stomach to go out as much as comfortably possible as you are breathing in. Consciously expand your stomach as you are taking in your breath. (Notice the stomach movement of a baby as s/he breathes in and out. Babies generally breathe more correctly than adults.) See your doctor if you have any breathing problems.4. To teach this to young children, blow large bubbles. Sometimes a large bubble blowing contest will work with the right age of children. In order to blow a large bubble, you have to take a deep breath and breathe out slowly. The third thing that you can do is muscle tightening and relaxing. There are many muscle stretches you can do, breathing in as your tighten or stretch the muscle and breathing out as you relax. Minding The Body, Mending The Mind teaches a number of these that can be fun to do with children. (Do not do the neck exercise where you roll your neck all the way around.) Some additional exercises can be found here.