Stress

You wake up late, dive into the shower, scramble into your clothes, grab a stale muffin from the kitchen, dash out to the car, roar out of the driveway and drive smack into the middle of a massive traffic jam. At the office, your boss and two impatient clients wait for you.

Welcome to the world of stress, an inescapable reality of modern life that has been linked to many disorders ranging from allergies to asthma, from stomach problems to heart disease. In fact, some physicians estimate that at least 80 percent of their patients have stress-related symptoms. The natural remedies in this chapter, used with your doctor’s approval, may help ease stress, according to some health professionals.

Aromatherapy

To melt away stress at the end of the day and ease the transition between work and home, aromatherapist Victoria Edwards, of Fair Oaks, California, recommends clary sage and lavender, two essential oils that relax. “If you have a long commute, put a drop or two of the oil on a tissue or napkin and let it heat up in the sun on your dashboard,” says Edwards. “The heat diffuses the fragrance and helps you unwind. It’s like the old after-work martini, but without the alcohol.”

For information on preparing and administering essential oils, including cautions about their use, see page 19. For information on purchasing essential oils, refer to the resource list on page 633.

Flower Remedy/Essence Therapy

“So much of the stress in our lives comes from adjusting to change,” says Eve Campanelli, Ph.D., a holistic family practitioner in Beverly Hills, California. For anyone whose life has been turned upside down by a major lifestyle change (a move, a career change or a new baby, for example), Dr. Campanelli recommends daily doses of the flower remedy Walnut.

Flower remedies are available in some health food stores and through mail order (refer to the resource list on page 635). For information on preparing and administering flower remedies, see page 37.

Herbal Therapy

Siberian ginseng tones the nervous system and increases your resistance to stress, says Mary Bove, L.M., N.D., a naturopathic physician and director of the Brattleboro Naturopathic Clinic in Vermont. She suggests taking this herb in either capsule or tincture form, following the dosage recommendations on the label. Siberian ginseng supplements are available in most health food stores.

Imagery

Imagine that you are a feather floating in the air. You become more and more relaxed as you drift downward toward the ground. You finally glide to the ground, gently and softly touching down. As you’re lying there, all stress has left your body, and you feel totally and completely relaxed, says Dennis Gersten, M.D., a psychiatrist and publisher of Atlantis, a bi-monthly imagery newsletter. He recommends using this imagery for two to five minutes three times a day.

If you’re stressed out from work, Dr. Gersten says to try this imagery as you leave your job at the end of the day: Imagine that your stress is liquefying and running out of your body so that with each step, you leave on the ground a colored footprint or impression that represents your stress. As you walk farther away from your job, the footprints begin to fade, and any stress that you felt when you left work diminishes.

Massage

Stress results in tense neck and shoulder muscles, leading to stiffness, headaches and even more stress, says Dan Bienenfeld, certified Hellerwork practitioner, massage therapist and director of the Los Angeles Healing Arts Center. You can stop the cycle with a 15-minute Hellerwork self-massage (page 575). Do the massage every day, even if you’re not feeling stressed, Bienenfeld says. “That way, you can stop the knotted muscles before they even start,” he says.

Reflexology

An overall reflexology session, touching all of the major points of the hands and feet, will help relax you and ward off stress, says St. Petersburg, Florida, reflexologist Dwight Byers, author of Better Health with Foot Reflexology. To deal with extra tension, Byers suggests paying special attention to the diaphragm, the spine and the pituitary, parathyroid, thyroid and adrenal gland reflexes.

To help you locate these points, consult the hand and foot reflex charts beginning on page 582. For instructions on how to work the points, see “Your Reflexology Session” on page 110.

Relaxation and Meditation

Any of the relaxation and meditation techniques, such as mindfulness meditation, autogenics, progressive relaxation and stretching, will relieve stress, according to Steven Fahrion, Ph.D., director of research at the Life Sciences Institute of Mind-Body Health in Topeka, Kansas. It’s a matter of finding the one that works best for you. See page 113 for a brief description of each of these techniques and how to do them.

Sound Therapy

To wash away stress, try taking a 20-minute “sound bath,” says Steven Halpern, Ph.D., composer, researcher and author of Sound Health: The Music and Sounds That Make Us Whole. Put some relaxing music on your stereo, then lie in a comfortable position on a couch or on the floor near the speakers. For a deeper experience, you can wear headphones to focus your attention and to avoid distraction. Dr. Halpern says you should bend your knees slightly and support your neck by placing a folded towel underneath it.

As the music plays, Dr. Halpern says, allow it to wash over you, rinsing off the stress from the day. Focus on your breathing, letting it deepen, slow and become regular. Concentrate on the silence between the notes in the music; this keeps you from analyzing the music and makes relaxation more complete.

Here are some suggested pieces of music: Seapeace by Georgia Kelly; Spectrum Suite, Inner Peace and Comfort Zone, all by Dr. Halpern; and any recording of Gregorian chants. For mail-order information, refer to the resource list on page 642.

Dr. Halpern also says that listening to the sounds of nature—ocean waves or the calm of a deep forest, for instance—can reduce stress. Try taking a 15- to 20-minute walk if you’re near the seashore or a quiet patch of woods. If not, you can buy tapes of these sounds in many music stores. For mail-order information, refer to the resource list on page 642.

For another stress-reducing experience, try the simple toning exercise described in “Hum Yourself to Health” on page 125. The sound of your own voice can bring a tremendous feeling of relaxation that can cut stress in just a few minutes, says Don G. Campbell, director of the Institute for Music, Health and Education in Boulder, Colorado, and author of Music: Physician for Times to Come.

Vitamin and Mineral Therapy

To help offset some of the damage caused by stress, try these daily supplements, says Alan Gaby, M.D., a physician specializing in preventive and nutritional medicine in Baltimore and president of the American Holistic Medical Association: 200 to 400 milligrams of magnesium, 10 to 100 milligrams of B-complex vitamins and 500 to 3,000 milligrams of vitamin C. “The magnesium blocks the damaging effects of excess adrenaline,” says Dr. Gaby. “It’s not exactly clear how the B-complex vitamins and vitamin C protect the body, but animal studies show that the physical damage caused by stress is minimized with these vitamins.”

Yoga

Yoga really shines here, according to Alice Christensen, founder and executive director of the American Yoga Association. If you want a portable stress buster, Christensen recommends the complete breath exercise (see page 152), which you can do at your desk, in the car or anywhere else when you start to feel stressed out. Meditation (see page 153) helps calm your mind, she says, teaching you to relax at will and giving you a quick mental vacation whenever you need one. And daily practice of three or four yoga poses, chosen from the Daily Routine, which begins on page 606, will help ease knotted muscles, according to Christensen. She suggests varying the poses daily to keep your interest high and to strengthen different parts of your body.

See also Burnout