Move Your Body

The Fourth Stress Management Approach

in Your Relaxed-and-At-Ease Guide to
Stress Reduction Approaches

Move your body to prevent the stress response from activating or to deal with the stress hormones in your body once you're already stressed.

One of the reasons why we unnecessarily get stressed is because we inaccurately perceive a situation to be a threat and activate the fight or flight response. This is a physiological response that is genetically imprinted in our cells.

We are hard wired to do this and secrete cortisol and adrenaline - hormones that we need in normal amounts. However, too much in the body can cause problems.

Stay centered and relaxed
You can use mindful movement or gentle movement practices to help you increase body awareness and decrease the likelihood that you will activate the fight or flight response at anytime.

Other movement forms people use to stay relaxed and centered are yoga, tai chi, and chi qong.

Already stressed?
Once the stress response has been activated it's important to either process the stress hormones by moving your body or trigger the relaxation response which will activate hormones that counteract the stress hormones.

Some people have a hard time relaxing if they're feeling tense and irritable.

If that's the case for you, you can use exercise or expressive movement to let your body work through the biochemical explosion that's happening inside.

If you're already fit - you probably have your favorite forms of exercise.

If you're not, then walk, swim or dance - just put on some music that feels good to you and let it rip!

Go to How to Express Your Feelings from Move Your Body