Stress Free Mama

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Spiritual Ways to Manage Stress: Reconnect with Yourself, Spirit and Nature

There are many ways to manage stress but without a solid spiritual connection, those ways are just surface fixes. You must know who you are, and what your life is about to live a life of ease and peace.

As a mother, you give and give. You are the caretaker of those around you and while this can be extremely satisfying, it can also deplete you.

When you become so busy that you make compromises of yourself, your very nature, you begin to erode that which you bring to others–your love, your beauty, your excitement. It is as if you have spiritual credit card debt.

And, as you can imagine, spiritual credit card debt is stressful.

 

Diagram of natural stress management cycleStress is a cycle which move from stressor to stress response back to stressor. The bowl in which this cycle sits is your disconnect from self, from God, and from Nature. If you stay connected with self, God and Nature, the stress cycle never gains momentum. You make choices which nourish you, you receive strength from the Universe, and you rarely get so busy that you can’t remember why you are doing all your activities.

Spiritual Ways to Manage Stress

1. Break the stress cycle where you can.

Relieve your symptoms of stress–do what you need to reduce headaches, settle your stomach, get some sleep. If your head hurts, you can’t meditate, so first get the symptoms under control.

Take care of your body–Begin, slowly and gently, to do the things that you know are good for you. Eat well, exercise, sleep. You must reduce cortisol, and increase serotonin for your body to have the capacity to find quiet.

Watch your reactions–observe your reactions to stressors and whether they are appropriate for the situation. Are you overreacting? Is there some other way to respond to the stressors in your life. Start by simple observation. Don’t try to “fix” yourself, just observe what is happening. Observation alone is a great way to manage stress.

2. Look for grace. Keep an eye out for little miracles.

3. Find quiet. God talks when we listen. But its more like a whisper than a shout. Find quiet so you can hear.

Woman taking a relaxing nature walk4. Do that which makes you feel close to God. Put yourself in the environment where you feel God, and if you don’t feel Creator now, go where you remember you used to feel sacredness. If you go to church, go back to church and just sit. Go to your most sacred places and sit.

One of my ways to manage stress and feel close to the Divine is to walk in the trees. I have had many sacred moments among trees.

When I am in tune with the Divine, I feel a light moving through me. I am expansive and without borders. For others, God is a presence nearby. The ways to manage stress spiritually include finding opportunities to feel God.

5. God is the Creator so do “creative” things. Find passion again.

6. Remember what you love. For mothers, loving our children can reconnect us to the Divine. But don’t forget to love nature, love life, love your partner. Being in love can reduce stress.

7. Find a trusted person or persons to support your desire to reconnect. This person could be a priest, minister or friend or grandmother. Talk about the sacred. Remember it. Discuss ways to manage your stress spiritually.

8. Remember when you used to be connected and make it a practice to remember that every day. When stress approaches, recall that peaceful time and imagine actually being there. Remember the trust you had. Remember how protected you felt.

9. Mindless to mindfulness–Practice being fully present and mindful. Give yourself the assignment of being mindful for 1 day, 1 hour or 1 minute. Really be present. Observe yourself and the events around you and fully participate with your heart.

10. Choose to change your patterns–Make a choice to find yourself again, but make that choice like an open window catching a breeze. Don’t force it, don’t make a “to do” list, don’t stress about it. The best ways to manage stress don’t involve creating more stress.

11. Pray. Meditate. Take time to talk to your Higher Power.

12. Be grateful–Remember to say thank you everyday for the gifts you have.

When you reconnect with your self, nature and your Higher Power, the ways to manage your stress naturally appear.

When we are connected to the Divine, there is such a vast reservoir of help and support that our little human worries seem inconsequential. They drop away.

We feel stress when we take on the world as a human and try to put our will against it. When we give in to our inability to use our will, and use the Divine instead, our struggle ceases.

Plus, as people who remember our true nature, we make choices which nurture us and don’t deplete us. Materialism drops away and we can truly decide if we are living a full life, a life worth living or just spinning our wheels. Don’t be surprised if, during the process many changes take place. But don’t worry if they don’t. In either case, you are realizing you purpose and your life will become meaningful and not stressful.

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Meditation Tips: Seven Great Essential Oils to Ground, Focus and Uplift

Your sense of smell is closely linked to your emotional center. Enjoy these aromatherapy meditation tips to deepen your practice.

Incense burner for meditationThe use of aromatherapy to ground, uplift and focus practitioners for spiritual practice is a very ancient tradition.

People have been smudging, anointing, and inhaling scent for centuries. Churches and temples around the world burn incense.

In a most interesting case of scent connecting spiritual practice, William J. Broad, in his book “Oracle”, describes how the ancient oracles of Delphi derived some of their prescience from hallucinogenic vapors from faults in the earth.

While most of us won’t inhale sulphurous gases to prepare for meditation, aromatherapy can still play an important role.

  • Essential oils can bring oxygen to the brain which can increase alertness at the same time increasing focus.
  • Certain scents have long been recognized to ground practitioners or to remind them of their Divine Purpose.
  • Many spiritual masters will use scent to link a memory to them; scent and memory are closely linked in our brains.

The next time you meditate, try inhaling an essential oil before you begin and notice any changes that come to your practice. After you have found an oil that you enjoy, use it regularly until you have the scent firmly associated with meditation. You will find that merely getting a whiff of the smell will quiet your mind and put you in a meditative frame of mind.

Meditation Tips: Seven Great Essential Oils

In the story of Jesus, the wise men brought frankincense, gold and myrrh. Gold obviously is useful to an honored baby to give wealth. Frankincense was known as a powerful cure. At times it was more valuable than gold in the ancient world. It was used for healing many health complaints. And myrrh was used to prevent evil spirits, heal the mother after childbirth and to prevent infection of the umbilical cord. The wise men brought health and wealth in these 3 gifts.

I have had the experience that certain ancient essential oils feel deeply familiar to me–almost encoded in my DNA. Try it yourself. Experiment with the ancient oils and see if you recognize them.

  • Frankincense. Frankincense is a very ancient oil and it has been used in spiritual practice for centuries. It is both uplifting and grounding. It plays a major role in Christian religious practices.
  • Rose. Rose has the highest frequency of all the oils. Many spiritual teachers from India use rose to lift your vibration and prepare you for meditation. For me, rose has the smell of being completely and totally loved by the Divine Mother.
  • Sandalwood. Another ancient scent, and common in many traditions from Christianity to Hindu, sandalwood is often used for meditation. Sometimes people are anointed with sandalwood paste to remind them of their true nature.
  • Cedar and Sage. These two scents are used in Native American traditions, although most often one burns the dried herbs and smudges with the smoke. However, in at least one Native American meditation group, the essential oils are used in an effort to address some people’s sensitivities to smoke. I have not found that the essential oils feel “right” the way the smoke does, but it still creates a sacred vibration.
  • Rosemary. One of the best meditation tips is to prepare a room for meditation with rosemary. Mix a few drops of rosemary in a spritzer bottle of water and spray a room to raise its vibration, and to prepare it for sacred practice. It is also good just to make a room smell nice.
  • Ylang Ylang. This is an interesting oil to experiment with meditation. It balances male and female energies, filters out negativity and attunes one to the Divine. It is very balancing to a meditation practice.

A true meditation practice is about being present and quiet. These meditation tips are not meant to substitute the quietness, yet for centuries, great teachers have recognized that certain tools help people to get to the quiet state.

Try using essential oils and see what effect they have on your thoughts.

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Managing Stress

Learning to manage and relieve stress can be a life-long process. Just as you find what works one time, circumstances change and you need a new plan.

Usually stress management comes from a multi-sided approach. It can include:

  • Reducing/altering the stressors
  • Avoiding the stressors
  • Accepting the stressors
  • Adapting to the stressors

And you usually need to care for, heal or improve:

  • Your body
  • Your emotions
  • Your spirit
  • Your relationships
  • Your environment

Notice that for complete stress management, you must address both your exterior world (what is stressing you) and your interior reaction to it.

All of the tools below provide stress relief from many angles. They heal the body and the soul. They help you adapt to and accept your stress. Experiment with many techniques and see which one provides peace and space in your life so you can become vibrant. And have fun. Managing stress doesn’t have to be work.

Two Friends Chatting Together to Relieve StressStress Management Help

Need Stress Management Help?

This is the place to get stress management advice.

Tell your story. Talk about what bothers you.

Share you worries and symptoms and get support from others.

Sometimes when you are stressed, what you really need is a good friend. This is the place to get that help and start managing stress.

Lavender bundleAromatherapy

One of the best and most pleasant ways of managing stress is with Aromatherapy.

The distilled essence of aromatic plants, essential oils, can be used in many ways to reduce stress emotionally and mentally.

In addition, the essential oils contain the healing essence of plants. You can use pure, well-made essential oils therapeutically. They can increase oxygen in your blood, reduce cortisol, and help balance and heal.

Articles on Aromatherapy:

Aromatherapy for Stress Relief

A woman giving herself a massageSelf Massage

Getting to a massage therapist is nice, but what about managing stress if you can’t get a massage?

When you are stressed, your stress is transmitted to all parts of your body. Soon you notice that you are holding your shoulders near your ears, your back aches, and you are so tight that normal daily movements feel like you are encased in rock.

Luckily, there are many easy techniques for releasing your tight muscles, increasing blood flow to rock solid shoulders, and helping relieve your achy back.

Articles on Self Massage:

A woman in triangle poseYoga

Yoga has been long recognized as a great tool for managing stress.

By practicing yoga regularly, you can unravel the knot of tension stored in your body. Your muscles will relax and your joints will become more limber.

In addition, if you practice in a steady, quiet and focused way, your mind will quiet. Too often stress will “wind you up”, creating a habit of thinking and worrying which prevents you from stepping back to see that you are obsessed with the unimportant. This can disrupt your sleep, create havoc with your creativity and feed general crabbiness. By focusing deeply on your yoga pose, your mind has something constructive to do besides worry. It will fall back in line and you will find yourself much more centered and relaxed.

Articles on Yoga:

Yoga for Stress Relief

 

Meditation

Woman meditatingLearning to watch your thoughts can be a boon to managing stress.

Quiet. Release. Acceptance.

Meditation can help to quiet your thoughts, to make clear what is real and what is illusion about your life. It can teach mastery over your reactions.

And best of all, it can be a sweet haven to the chaos of your modern life. In the midst of the storm of stress, you have refuge in meditation.

Articles on Meditation:

  • Meditation Tips: Aromatherapy meditation tips to help you ground and focus your mediation practice.

Woman taking deep breath in sun.Stress-Free Living

What if you have taken care of your body, learned to say “no” to unimportant activities, practiced skillful time management and done 9 of the 10 things on everyone’s top 10 “stress reducing” activities?

What if you are an expert at managing stress–but you still feel stressed out?

Many times your stress is not from the external circumstances of your life, but from your internal state. Many times you need to look deeply, not just at the exterior of your life, but at the interior state of your heart. How spiritually connected are you? What do you know is your purpose in life? Do you waste time and energy shouting at the clouds? Can you find a place of quiet acceptance while still working to live in beauty?

At other times you just need a fresh perspective. Maybe a good laugh. Maybe a good cry.

Articles on Stress Free Living:

  • Smart Goals: Can SMART goals save your life? What a broken leg, a cut rope and a blizzard can teach us about setting goals and managing stress.
  • Spiritual Ways to Manage Stress: Reconnect with self, God and Nature to break the stress cycle and restore peace in your life.

Managing stress, especially as a busy mother, is an on-going endeavor. Form a plan to give yourself the care you need, so that you can care for others. Find support, and make stress reduction a regular routine in your life.

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Daily Essential Oils: Banish Stress, Restore your Health, Regain your Sanity

When using essential oils to banish stress, you take advantage of the essential oil’s unique ability to enter the blood stream and go directly to the emotional center of the brain. There they can reverse the sympathetic nervous system’s stress response and restore a more restful “rest and digest” state. Hormone levels return to normal, the cardiac system slows, digestion regulates and your body can resume its normal functioning.

Learn a stress treatment which uses oils daily.

The Cycle of Chronic Stress

Chronic stress involves a cycle of metabolic destruction. Stressors cause a reaction. A prolonged, major reaction to stress can cause wear and tear on all our body systems and this reduces their overall ability to function. Our weakened condition leads to increased sensitivity to stress and the cycle repeats.

This cycle can be interrupted at any point.

The most long term solution is to decrease or eliminate stressors. In our modern life, the may not be possible.

The next most root solution is to readjust our reaction to stress. Not all stressors are a “red alert” situation.

And finally, we can support our bodies so that they are in peak condition to handle what stresses come.

Aromatherapy interrupts this cycle in two important ways. Essential oils readjust our reaction to stressors by calming our nerves and clearing our head. And aromatherapy supports out body to maintain its optimum health, regardless of stress.

To use essential oils to banish stress, follow this routine of aromatherapy and essential oil enhanced supplements everyday. This routine relieved my stress and even more importantly, restored my sense of well-being.

Vital Essentials

6 Key steps for More Energy and Vibrant Health

Do these steps everyday and you will feel a subtle, deep blossoming of your inner strength and well-being. Following this list will build a healthier body, a happier and more stable emotional body, and will prepare you to reach your highest potential.

The steps are divided into two parts:

The Oils

Step 1: Put 1 drop of VALOR on the bottoms of your feet and rub it in. If you can’t get to your feet, put the drops on your wrists and hold your wrists together for a few seconds. Notice if you feel any different.

Step 2: Put 1 drop of HARMONY on your solar plexus, above the belly button.

Step 3: Put 1 drop of JOY over your heart. Take a deep breath and smell the lovely aroma.

Step 4: Put 1 drop of WHITE ANGELICA in one hand, rub your hands together and brush over your head, face, chest, shoulders, down the body, as though you are creating an angelic shield-because you are!

These four oils balance, uplift and ground.  They are excellent for stress relief.

The Supplements

Step 5: Drink 1-6 oz. of NINGXIA RED. 1-3 oz is appropriate if you are in good health and are maintaining it. If you are healing, recovering from illness or under a large amount of stress, 4-6 oz. is appropriate.

Step 6: Take the Core Supplements as recommended three times daily. Each pack contains the supplements you need for morning, noon and night, and is pre-labeled so it is easy to tell what to take when.

The Core Supplements include Longevity, an all essential oil capsule containing thyme, orange, clove and frankincense essential oils. Thyme oil supports brain function and cardiovascular health. Clove oil is a powerful antioxidant, useful for repairing damage caused by stress. Orange has been shown to be anti-tumoral in the laboratory. And Frankincense oil supports cell regeneration and healthy immune function.

True Source is an food-based supplement which provides the vitamins and minerals. Because it is food based, your body can easily absorb the nutrients.

Omega-Blue is an Omega-3 supplement with essential oils to both keep the omega-3 oil fresh, and to boost the effect of the omega-3.

Life 5 is probiotic which builds intestinal health, improves immunity, reduces yeast and increases your energy.

Thank you to Vicki Opfer for teaching me this routine.

If someone asked for a the single best, easiest treatment for stress–something which would benefit anyone and which uses essential oils to banish stress–Vital Essentials would be the routine.

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Coping with Financial Stress

Financial stress is one of the hardest to shake. Constant, low grade, background worry can melt into every part of your life. What are some tips and strategies for coping with money worries? How can we face financial stresses and free ourselves from them?

In hard economic times, we all know what financial stress is.

  • Wondering how we will pay the bills
  • Worrying if we will loose our job
  • Worrying about how to find a new job
  • Playing “musical bills”, paying only the most pressing bills
  • Strategizing how to sell your house in a soft market before you go into default
  • Choosing between taking a job which takes you or your spouse far away or risking no job at all
  • Having to say “no” to your children because you don’t have the money for their clubs or activities

What do we do about it?

All of these decisions result in huge, on-going background stress. Even when you are relaxing and having fun, you can never totally let go.

Obviously, it is ideal to not worry. Living in total acceptance of whatever happens is always the best way to avoid stress.

After that, you can manage the stress. Take a walk. Go to a yoga class. Try to get your mind off of stress and onto fun.

And finally, you can improve your financial situation. How can you have some extra money so that you don’t need to worry?

Reduce Your Financial Stress and Mother at the Same Time

As mothers, we need to both gain financial freedom and have the flexibility to care for the people we love. Sometimes it seems like these two goals are mutually exclusive.

You can do both of these things by running an internet business from home. Working at home, and by leveraging the internet for its ability to communicate and reach people all over the country–all over the world, you can build a business which stabilizes your finances and relieves your financial stress.