What are the best ways to use exercise to reduce stress? Exercise is a practice we all need to improve our daily lives. Without performing regular exercise, the mortality rate can skyrocket. Sadly, not many people partake in physical activities, one of the best ways to relieve stress.
Interestingly, chronic stress is one of the deadliest conditions known to man. This can lead to several harmful conditions like heart disease, high blood pressure, and many others. It can also negatively affect your mental health and make you susceptible to mental disorders like depression and anxiety. About 33% of people feel extreme stress daily.
You’re in luck if you want to learn more about how exercises relieve stress. This article will highlight seven crucial ways to reduce stress through exercise.
Try Some Yoga
The first exercise on the list is yoga. Yoga is more or less an ancient practice since the Indus-Sarasvati civilization in Northern India invented it in 2700B.C.
Yoga helps to reduce muscular, intense pressure since
most of the movements involve stretching the muscles and limbs. By doing this, it helps your body to relax and get that much-needed rest it deserves naturally.
Additionally, several studies show yoga’s ability to reduce high blood pressure. If migraines accompany your stress, there are many medicines you can use for it. However, one of the best in cannabis. It would help if you try nuken strain to manage migraines.
Walking
Walking is another exercise that can help to reduce stress. This exercise is even better because you can do it without taking classes. It also doesn’t require any special equipment.
It can also help keep specific ailments at bay, such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and high cholesterol levels.
Hence, try as much as possible to incorporate swimming into your routine. You can start by waking for about ten minutes each day and then increasing the number of minutes as time goes on. It even gets us out of our drab routines and puts us into nature, which is way more relaxing!
Swimming
Swimming as an exercise has been beneficial for centuries. Many cultures know its benefits and actively practice swimming for exercise, sport, and leisure.
Swimming helps the body’s muscles relax due to the natural relaxation properties of water. The strokes you take involve breathing in rhythms that naturally trigger the nervous system part that helps you relax and stay calm.
Gardening
Did you know that weeding alone can make you burn about 200 calories an hour? Gardening is one of the most demanding exercises to perform, which naturally relieves stress. It relieves stress by putting you in contact with the earth and breathing in that grassy smell.
It is also straightforward and does not require a lot of cognitive functioning. Doing this task would allow your brain to rest and let your body get closer to nature.
Dancing
Dancing is enjoyable and can be highly rewarding. Firstly, it increases your heart rate and helps you burn many calories. You may think this will not help you, but you couldn’t be more wrong. Reports show that dancing rigorously can reduce the chances of several diseases like dementia. This is because, after dancing, the muscles in your body relax, and the “happy hormones” in your brain increase.
Pilates
Pilates’ primary focus is strengthening, stretching, and generally developing muscles. However, it also allows you to pay enough importance to awareness, your core muscles, and the proper alignment of your body. This helps reduce mental stress levels immensely and puts you in the moment.
After completing pilates, all that stretching will lead to the natural relaxation of your muscles in an attempt to recover. Ultimately, this suppresses stress levels safely and healthily.
If you’re new to performing pilates, try to start slow. Time yourself and make sure you don’t exceed that as a newbie. As you get used to the strain and body movements, you can increase the complexity of body movements and the time you spend doing them.
Tennis
Tennis is an entertaining sport to partake in. It fosters community, which is good for your mental health. Tennis is also a great cardiovascular workout that prevents many stress-related conditions, like high blood pressure and heart diseases.
It also facilitates the release of endorphins on your body, chemicals that let you feel happiness and peace.
Take some time to learn the rules and techniques used to play the game. Also, start slow. You can play for ten minutes as a start and then begin to increase the number of minutes you use on the court as time goes on.
The Verdict
Using exercise to manage stress is a challenging task. Admittedly, some activities only add even more stress, not reduce it. Fortunately, reports and research have proven that the seven exercises above help reduce stress and promote healthy lives.
References
https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/mental-health/stress/related/stress-statistics/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5267615/#:~:text=Results%20suggest%20that%20participation%20in,over%20longer%20periods%20of%20time.