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Give inner peace a chance.

Relaxation doesn’t always come easy. But by making concerted, consistent efforts to calm your mind, you can and will get better at handling both long-term stress and sudden patience-trying situations. Take a mental load off by learning to:

Practice basic meditation or prayer to relax and focus your mind
Transport yourself via aromatherapy, visualization, and other techniques
Use stretching, yoga, and massage to calm your body and mind

Relaxation Basics

Whether you’re reading a book on the beach as waves break in the distance or unwinding by having a conversation over a glass of wine, you’re restoring your mind, body, and spirit to equilibrium. In other words, you’re relaxing.

Reducing stress, easing tension, and creating peace of mind do not come easily. We each have our own worries, be they financial, social, or career related, and they can take their toll on us in the form of nail biting, high blood pressure, and even memory lapses. The good news is that the range of relaxation techniques you can use to combat negative stress is just as broad.

Four Benefits of Relaxation

Relaxation is the tranquility and peace you feel when you’ve eased the stress of daily life with positive mental, physical, and emotional energy. But you must act to bring about that calm. After all, “relax” is a verb—something you do to relieve tension. To relax a muscle, you stretch or elongate it. To relax your breathing, you inhale deeply and exhale slowly. Regardless of the technique you choose, you’ll find that the benefits of relaxation are great.

Improved health and immunity: Research has shown that extended periods of negative stress make people more susceptible to high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome, and other maladies. There is also evidence suggesting that chronic stress weakens a body’s ability to fight disease. Relaxing can stave off these symptoms, and according to the Mayo Clinic, it can also improve energy levels and reduce headaches, back pain, anger, and frustration.
Improved memory and productivity: The moderate, short-term pressure of taking a quiz or competing in a sporting event can improve your memory, for the brain receives a jolt of glucose, which energizes neurons and boosts your recollection abilities. But chronic stress or extended trauma has the opposite effect: it promotes forgetfulness, distractibility, impulsiveness, and impaired judgment.
Peace of mind: Learning to relax is a vital skill because our instinctive responses to stressors (stimuli that bring about stressful feelings) are often more harmful than the stressors themselves. We are prone to overreact and feel tension that’s grossly out of proportion to the situation. Think of the times when you’ve worked yourself into an agitated state by thinking about something that might happen. Has your heart raced or have your palms gotten sweaty from worrying about missing a connecting flight? The mere thought of your travel plans falling through can be enough to inflict your body with physical ailments. Relaxation provides peace of mind in place of anxiety.
Higher self-esteem: It’s hard to feel good about yourself when you are sleep deprived, overweight, or irritable. Seeing your fatigued reflection in the mirror or observing others’ guarded reactions to you can reinforce that stress. Taking action to eliminate these symptoms through meditation, exercise, visualization, journaling, prayer, massage, or sleep can help you rebuild your body, mind, and self-image.

You Need to Relax If . . .

Everyone needs relaxation, but if you’re experiencing any of the following mental, emotional, physical, or behavioral symptoms, you should make it a priority: