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Tag: Stress

The Body Retreat Top Ten Stress Busting Tips

Stress Busting…

Do you really need to relax?  Do you feel a bit overwhelmed?  Perhaps you have been feeling the negative impact of stress for a while now…but you are so in the zone that you can’t really even give yourself the time to focus on what you might need.  Just keeping on, keeping coping, keep moving, fearing that if you stop you might never be able to start again.

We hear this time and time again from the women who choose to join us on our Stress Reset Retreat.  They reach the point where they know that something has to give and so before they go quietly mad, or fall into the abyss or burnout they come to us and reset.

We are here to support busy women reclaim a sense of balance, a natural energy,  a positive outlook and for some most important of all a good nights sleep.

If retreat resetting isn’t right for you right now then perhaps our  Stress Busting Tips can help.

Top Ten Stress Busting Tips

  1. Plan your week so that you can factor in rest time. Not just time when you are not working.. because so often that gets filled with other peoples stuff very quickly. But actually, plan in some non-negotiable me time. Time to read a book, take a bath, practice yoga…whatever. But it has to be just time for you. Start with just planning in 30 mins of you time. That’s just 30 mins out of an available 10,080 minutes in the week. That’s doable, isn’t it?
  1. Get Outside. We can spend days if not weeks racing from our front door to our transport, to work, back through the transport and back inside. Never taking time to just be in nature. Aim to spend 15 mins a day outside. You can walk, sit, jog, practice some yoga or mindful meditation…but you cannot read the paper, watch your tablet or catch up on social media. This is a time to unplug and reboot. You will be amazed just how much better you feel after even just a few minutes in the fresh air.
  1. Eat Green. We often think of our mind as the organ most affected by Stress but actually, it’s our liver…by the time you are conscious of the negative impact of stress your poor old liver has spent months trying to keep your toxin levels in check. When your liver is overloaded you feel sluggish, tired, headachy, prone to infection and virus. By eating a clean diet that is low in processed food (more work for your liver) and high in Greens (supportive and cleansing for the liver) this means your liver is in better shape and so ultimately you are better able to cope with your stress reactions.
  1. Know your energy curve and start to manage it. We all have an individual energy curve, by which I mean the amount of time your body takes to completely use the fuel you have provided until it reaches empty. On average it takes between 2 – 4.5 hours for this process. But it depends on the food type you eat.. for example if you have a coffee and a muffin and you will be flying for about 45 mins then you crash and burn. Your energy levels are rock bottom and you’d sell a kidney for a sweet treat. This energy crash adds to your biological stress. Focus your diet on high quality proteins and vegetable carbs for sustained energy and no crashes.
  1. Have a Cup of Tea…not just any old tea. I’m talking about having a mindful cup of tea. Almost all of us have a hot drink at least once a day, but often its taken on the go, drunk without any thought. While at the same time we are so time poor we tell ourselves that we haven’t got time to be mindful. Turning at least one cuppa into a Mindful Tea every day can bring about amazing stress relief. ( I have written a whole blog on this.. Put The Kettle on its time to Relax)
  1. Learn how to say no. Its such a small word isn’t it. No. But if you feel a surge of guilt, angst, fear or any other negative emotion when you say no to people then it really is time to learn to say no your own way. Saying no isn’t saying you don’t care, it isn’t saying you aren’t capable, it isn’t saying you are superior. Too often people shy away from No and add too many unnecessary Yes requests into their already busy schedule bringing unnecessary pressure into their lives. Just say no.
  1. Embrace Tech. Technology should be enhancing our lives not sapping them. Are you using technology to make your life simpler? Online shopping and baking are given these days, right? You are doing that aren’t you? Using apps to streamline tasks, act as reminders, even using your phone voice record app to get stuff out of your head without the worry of forgetting it.
  1. Reject Tech. (Tech is great…see point above ) but the problem arises when technology begins to encroach into every hour of our lives. When we are expected to be “ON’ logged in, contactable, engaged at all times. It takes it toll…mentally, physically and emotionally. How many of us cannot claim to have become a little bit addicted to some form of tech, be that checking work emails at midnight or a quick look at Instagram the moment we wake. Tech was always supported to make our lives easier so that we could spend time doing other stuff…the problem is we just spend our time using other tech. So for just one day each week, give yourself a digital detox. No surfing, no social media, no gaming. If that sound like the most ridiculous thing you have ever heard then you really need to detox digitally as it’s a sign that you might be addicted to tech. Just one day per week off the hamster wheel will give you time and perspective.
  1. Forget About Sleep. It seems like the most ludicrous thing for someone who specialises in sleep and stress to say. Here’s the thing.. sleep is the first casualty of stress. When sleep becomes elusive then it quadruples your stress perception. You send hours through the night tossing and turning worrying about your inability to sleep, worrying about your ability to work the next day. You brain is so active with all the thoughts about elusive sleep that the last thing it can do is relax let alone sleep. So focus on rest instead… sleep will come in time..maybe not as much as you want right now…but it will come. As you begin to focus on rest and relaxation you mind begins to still, you re breathing begins to slow, your muscles begin to unwind and guess what? you begin to drift off.
  1. Focus on Done rather than DO. There is always so much to do these days but that doesn’t mean you have to the person to Do it all. What matters is that its all gets Done..so its time to outsource, delegate, share the load and maybe even relax your standards a little. Cut yourself some slack.. you don’t need to the person to Do every chore, every report, every task. Share the load.

Let me know in the comments below which of these stress busting tips feels most relevant to you right now.

You don’t have to embrace every tip, you will know which are just right for you right now.  Start there and begin to create a cycle of calm and balance … you may just surprise yourself with how much more you can achieve without burning out.

How Stressed Are You?

How Stressed Are You?

Admitting that you are stressed is not admitting weakness or failure… in fact it shows mental and emotional strength that you can be honest with yourself and if you need it,. seek help.

Stress develops when you have more pressure on you than feel you are able to handle. Stress is part of everyday life. By itself, stress is not necessarily bad or harmful. In fact, some stress may be necessary to help get you motivated and mobilized. High levels of stress over a long period can be seriously bad for our health. It’s when stress turns into distress that you can begin to really suffer.

So, how stressed are you?  Test Your Stress Levels with our quick quiz.

Take a few minutes to really consider the following questions and answer truthfully.

  1. Is your energy level lower than usual?
  2. Do you feel guilty when relaxing?
  3. Do you have a persistent need to achieve?
  4. Are you unclear about your goals or purpose in life?
  5. Are you very competitive?
  6. Do you feel you work harder than most people?
  7. Do you anger easily?
  8. Do you often try to do 2/3 tasks at the same time?
  9. Do you get impatient if people or things hold you up?
  10. Do you have difficulty sleeping?
  11. Do you find it difficult to switch off?
  12. Do you rely on coffee, sugar or other stimulants to keep going through the day?
  13. Do you eat on the run as you don’t have time to stop and eat?
  14. Have you lost interest in many aspects of life?
  15. Do you feel anxious and nervous a lot?

 

If you answer yes to more than 5 of the questions above then it may be that you are experiencing a period of high stress.

You can’t completely eliminate stress from your life, but you can control how much it affects you.

Improving your ability to handle stress

The food you eat can improve or worsen your ability to cope with life’s stressors. Eating a diet full of processed and convenience food, refined carbohydrates, and sugary snacks can worsen symptoms of stress while eating a diet rich in fresh fruit and vegetables, high-quality protein, and omega-3 fatty acids, can help you better cope with life’s ups and downs.

Upping your activity level is something you can do right now to help relieve stress and start to feel better. Regular exercise can lift your mood and allow you to break out of the cycle of negative thoughts that can feed negative stress.

Relaxation techniques such as yoga, meditation, and even simply deep breathing activate the body’s relaxation response, a state of restfulness that is the polar opposite of the stress response.

Sometimes you find yourself so deeply in the vicious cycle of stress that it seems hard to help yourself.  When you feel that you cant move forward.  If this is you and you ready to break free of the negative impact of stress, to regain a sense of control,  reclaim a good night’s sleep and feel a sense of balance and calm then do get in touch.  Our Stress Reset Retreat has been supporting busy professional women just like you for 5 years now and we are confident that we can help you to overcome stress.

 

Want to Sleep Better Tonight

Would you like to Sleep Better Tonight?

Women may be more susceptible to the negative effects of poor sleep quality.

The most common culprits threatening your sleep-wake cycles are unregulated blood sugar levels or poor nutrition and/or chronic stress….not to mention how biological conditions unique to women, like the menstrual cycle, pregnancy and menopause, can also affect how well a woman sleeps. or maybe its a mixture of all of the above.

It is estimated that women are three times more likely to experience poor quality sleep than men.

It’s not surprising that the number one reason why women join us on our Stress Reset Retreat is to gain a better nights sleep.  Often the women who join us have not slept well for years, sometimes decades and they are literally worn out.

They choose our Stress Reset Retreat as we have our exclusive nightly SleepHypno sessions…at the very end of the day..just before you retire helping the brain to regain the habit and pattern of sleep once more.  So night after night the quality and quantity of sleep improve.

When your sleep improves your health improves and often your waistline decreases without any effort too. Which is in part why our Stress Reset Retreat is the retreat with the highest % inch loss.

So if this sounds like you then get in touch and come and join us for our Stress Reset Retreat to experience for yourself what a difference this change can make.

But if you cant join us on retreat, don’t panic, follow our seven tips to sleep better tonight.  Put them into practice and you will begin to feel a difference in your sleep quality night after night.

Seven Tips To Help You Sleep Better Tonight and Every Night

1.Eat on time. Cut out all munching no later than 2- 3 hours before bed.  Eating a heavy meal prior to bed practically guarantees a bad night’s sleep.

2. Write your worries down.  One hour before bed, write down the things that cause you anxiety. Make plans for what you might have to do the next day to reduce your worry. It will free up your mind and energy to move into deep and restful sleep.

3. Befriend your circadian rhythm. Develop regular rhythms of sleep. Go to bed before 11p.m. and wake up at the same time each day, even at the weekend.

4. Take a Cold Shower…cooling down tells our body that its time to retire, so take a cool shower about 30 minutes before you turn in.

5. Let there be NO light. Create total darkness and quiet. Consider using eyeshades and earplugs.

6. Avoid caffeine. A big cup of coffee or another caffeinated beverage may seem to help you stay awake through the afternoon but actually makes your sleep worse at night.

7. Avoid alcohol. It might help you get to sleep, but alcohol creates interruptions in your sleep patterns and overall give poor-quality sleep.

 

 

It’s The Most Stressful Time of the Year

Women and Christmas Stress

Sing along …”it’s the most “stressful’ time of the year…there’ll be parties for hosting, marshmallows for toasting and carolling out in the snow….”

You know how the song goes I’m sure…

But for many people, the festive season can be more frantic and frightful than festive and fun.

If you’re a woman, and particularly if you’re a working mother, then it’s even more likely that your stress levels will be higher than average as the days count down towards Father Christmas’s arrival

Indeed, a recent study found that women are more likely to be up to 10% more stressed than men by Christmas.

It doesn’t take much imagination to understand why women suffer more from ‘Christmas stress.’

Despite the facts that women are now just as likely to work full time as their partners they still carry the bulk of domestic duties, including the tasks of merry-making.  From present buying, menu planning, food shopping, present wrapping, even down to writing the Christmas cards women tend to have much longer Christmas-related “To Do” lists than the men they spend their lives with (regardless of whether they work similar hours).

Next on top of the work stress and the festive pressure women are also under pressure to look “special” too and fit into that little black dress for the party season. No one is telling the guys they need to be a size smaller for Christmas, but the Party Outfit pressure is just the norm these days.

Not really surprising that so many women then “look forward” to the upcoming festive season with a slight feeling of dread.

What these women really need to help them at this time of year is …. A Wife !!

I’m joking of course, but image having someone in your corner to plan, prepare and make your Christmas special… at the end of this article, I’ll share Three Top Tips for Beating Festive Stress.

But what if you have already been experiencing high stress and anxiety before the festive seasons kicks in? What if you have already begun to feel a little overwhelmed with life in general? Then Christmas stress can add a whole other level of panic and pain.

If that is you then don’t suffer on in silence, you can still regain a sense of balance and strength before the additional festive burdens pile on. If this is you then pop over to our Facebook Page where you will find my video of my personal top tips to get your sleep back on track, support your body and mind through a stressful time.

Top Tips for a Stress Less Christmas

  1. Drop Perfect.

There is no perfect and you can literally drive yourself made in the searching. Its ok to have standards but if you start to feel anxiety rising at not being able to meet those standards exactly then it may be time to take a step back. Think about good enough, think about great, think about suitable. Can you be happy with these as your standard in some circumstances?

  1. Side Step Should

Drop the word Should from your vocabulary. There is only what you might and can do. Feeling like you Should behave in a certain way only leads to guilt and shame if you haven’t reached the mark. So instead think about what you would like to do, think of how you would feel if someone you loved and cared for was making themselves unhappy or worse unhealthy by trying to do what they “should”.

  1. Make Me Time

This festive season I’m sure you will have a long list of gifts you want to buy for friends and family. ..but what about adding your own name to that list? What about giving yourself the gift of time out this Christmas? This might just be a 15 minute guided meditation, an early night with a good book, a full body massage to ease out all the unnecessary tensions or even dare I say it a few days away to really clear your head?

Whatever you do make sure that you get to enjoy the whole of the Christmas season without the stress.

 

Signs That You Need A Holiday

Do You Need A Holiday?

We all know the feeling.

You have been working for months now, working longer, harder and trying to work smarter but are beginning to feel a little jaded.  You enjoy your work but you feel listless, tired and generally, dream of a lottery win that would allow you to jet off and have some time to relax. You feel you need a holiday but you seem stuck.

Getting away can be restorative and help counterbalance our busy work lives. In fact a recent survey by DWP said that in the current economic times that work levels and work stresses growing bigger that taking time off work should be seen as a necessity, not a luxury.

10 Signs That You Need A Holiday.

  1. You feel your temper rising.  You find your anger rising in small situations like a queue in the supermarket not moving or someone stepping in front of you as you board the train.
  2. You feel exhausted on Friday afternoon.  But just as tired on Monday morning.  Sleep just doesn’t seem to be helping to lift you feeling of general fatigue you feel.
  3. You get tearful at silly TV shows or adverts.
  4. Your to –do list leaves you cold.  You once were enthusiastic about the challenges in front of you …now they just feel like a never-ending uphill struggle.
  5. You cannot remember the last time you had fun.  When did you last really let your hair down and have a big old belly laugh?
  6. You can’t face the phone.  When you get home from work you feel all talked out, so you switch your personal mobile to silent.
  7. Comfort eating is your crutch.  You can’t seem to get through the day without some little treat
  8. Caffeine is your saviour. There is just no way you would make it through a whole day without caffeine.
  9. Your hair/nails/skin is a mess.  You have little time or interest for self-care, even shaving your legs is a chore.
  10. You have begun to notice health niggles. Over-working depresses your immune system, making it more likely you will catch a cold or the flu or develop aches and pains and struggle to sleep.

 

Getting away, even for a short period, can do wonders for both body and mind.
But sometimes just getting away isn’t enough.

Did you know that according to a recent survey by the Post Office that men also find it easier to leave it all behind than women, who take longer to relax once they do get away? Women find it harder to just switch off and do nothing…so lying by a pool with a book sounds like a great break but the reality is that after a day or two the stress levels start to rise again.

The answer could be to have an active healthy holiday, when you are able to get away from it all, have time to relax and recharge the batteries but not so much time that your head starts to whirl round that to do list on a loop.

This is a big part of what brings women to our Healthy Holidays in France, Spain and Wales each year.  It’s about having a mental and physical break.  It is the perfect balance of structure and freedom, fun and fitness, relaxation and time to refocus on what is important to you in the long term.

Still not convinced? Here are 5 great reasons why you need to break free from the daily grind and book yourself a Healthy Holiday.

5 Great Things that happen when on a Healthy Holiday.

  • You get some sleep.  You might feel tired, but a physical tiredness not mental, and this tiredness leads to natural restful sleep.
  • Your stress levels reduce. Stress is a true physiological response originally meant to help us and keep us safe. It releases hormones such as cortisol and epinephrine for the fight or flight response that was necessary for early man. However, in modern society, chronic stress can be destructive to our bodies. Getting away and leaving your everyday stresses gives you a break from the constant high levels of these hormones and a chance to repair some of the damage
  • You meet new people and have fun. Travel allows you to meet people from all over the world. Socialising is great therapy.  Spending a week with a small group of like-minded women, who have no expectations or demands for you is liberating.
  • You can get outdoors and be active.  This means you’ll be out in the fresh air, enjoying the outdoors and breathing more deeply, re-oxygenating your blood.  You’ll also gain benefits from the exposure to sunlight,  An added bonus is that most women leave us a dress size smaller at the end of their holiday.
  • You get your spark back. Travelling to new locations gives you an opportunity to spend quality time to focus on yourself, without the intrusion of day to day responsibility.

 

If you need a holiday then why not join us.

We still have availability on selected Healthy Holiday dates in France & Wales this summer.

If you fancy a holiday with a difference where you don’t feel you need another holiday to recover from your annual vacation then this is the holiday for you.  As experts in women’s health and with 6 years experience of residential retreating under our belt we promise that you will return home lighter, brighter and tighter with energy and enthusiasm restored.

Don’t delay, our next three retreats are sold out, so if you like the sound of this healthy holiday or just want to know more then Click Here and arrange a call back at a time that suits you.