Natural Ways to Beat Anxiety and Lower Cortisol During High-Stress Times

Natural Ways to Beat Anxiety: During times of stress and uncertainty, we can get ourselves worked up into a constant state of ‘fight or flight’. This fear wreaks havoc on our health. It can impact our mood, sleep, sex drive, appetite, and ability to function normally.

Anxiety can impact our ability to handle everyday stressors. It affects our memory and cognition and can impact our work performance. We can get more on edge towards our loved ones as well.

What are some ways we can manage our stress and get ourselves into a parasympathetic or relaxed state so that we can tackle each day with more clarity and understanding?

Here are few free things you can do to help lower your cortisol and get yourself into a better headspace! Let’s start with self-awareness.

Develop an Awareness of How You are Reacting and Responding

Do you find yourself on edge with those you love? It’s challenging right now because many of us are being forced to spend more time at home with our children and spouses. It’s not such a bad thing, but it is a new stress. What strategies are you utilizing to care for yourself during this time? Are you reaching for alcohol as a coping mechanism? How are you responding to your children?

It takes quite a bit of work to develop an awareness of how you are responding to day to day stressors. If you find yourself feeling anxious, your responses can either soothe you or make it worse. Take a few deep breaths and think before you react. Harsh feelings are going to come up during tough times. Times of stress and uncertainly can bring up past traumas and set you back on your healing journey. Show compassion towards yourself, and you will be able to show compassion towards others as well.

Try Tapping!

Tapping is a free, self-administered/self-empowering form of therapy that can help ease anxiety naturally. You don’t need formal training, just to learn where to tap. Tapping can help with a wide range of emotional issues.

Tapping itself is the act of gentle touching on specific energy points on your body to harness your body and release anxiety. Unresolved emotional trauma can get in the way of your life, and increase your stress levels. Through tapping on nine specific points, also known as an Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), you are helping to release unresolved trauma and “trapped” emotions.

The places you tap are known as acupuncture points. These points are stimulated through the tapping, rather than an acupuncture needle. While you are tapping, you want to focus on the emotional issue you are experiencing, and picture yourself releasing it.

Work Your Way Through Each of These Nine Points:

1. The outer edge of the hand: using four fingers from the opposite hand, tap the side of your outer palm 
2. Eyebrow: The inner edges of the eyebrows, closest to the bridge of the nose. Use two fingers.
3. Side of the eye: The hard area between the eye and the temple. Use two fingers.
4. Under the eye: The hard area under the eye, that merges with the cheekbone. Use two fingers, in line beneath the pupil. Use two fingers. 
5. Under the nose: The point centered between the bottom of the nose and the upper lip. Use two fingers.
6. Chin: This point is right beneath the previous one, centered between the bottom of the lower lip and the chin.
7. Collarbone: Tap just below the hard ridge of your collarbone with four fingers.
8. Underarm: On your side, about four inches beneath the armpit. Use four fingers.
9. Top of the head: The crown, center, and top of the head. Tap with all four fingers on both hands.

Get Grounded!

I talk a lot about grounding on this site. It’s my absolute favorite way to bring myself into a parasympathetic/relaxed state and ease my anxiety and tension. Grounding is free, and it’s backed by science as a legitimate way to find instant relaxation.

Our modern lifestyle has us pretty much cooped up indoors, sitting throughout most of the day. We are disconnected from our planet more than ever before. We wear thick, factory-made rubber-soled shoes (which we start wearing as infants), we have hard floors and desks. We are keeping our body off the earth, when touching the ground, aka grounding, has impressive health benefits.

One of the many benefits of grounding? It reconnects us with our natural earth environment, through a transfer of electrons from the earth, into our physical body. The earth’s surface possesses a limitless and continuously renewed supply of electrons.

Grounding possesses impressive health benefits, and it’s free of cost! Connecting with the earth decreases feelings of depression and anxiety, reduced pain, improved immune health, cardiovascular health, and sleep. Another fantastic benefit of grounding? Grounding shifts the body from a sympathetic (fight or flight) to a parasympathetic (relaxed) state. The only requirement? Go outside and walk barefoot.

 

Somatic Therapy (AKA Somatic Experiencing)

Somatic Experiencing is a therapy that is body-focused and helps people suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) through the integration of body awareness. It’s a unique form of treatment that creates an awareness of inner sensations you may be experiencing. These internal sensations are considered to be carriers of traumatic memories. Through activating and releasing these sensations,  you can help dissipate the trauma that might otherwise present during stressful times.

The goal of somatic therapy is to release this ‘traumatic activation’ in the body. Somatic therapy is different from exposure therapy methods, as the person does not need to relive or re-experience the trauma to move through it. Instead, you learn how to monitor and downregulate the sensations in your body, through body awareness. The goal being decreasing distress and somatic symptoms to help you function better in daily life.

You can find a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner here.

 

Natural Ways to Beat Anxiety: A Quick Anxiety Reducer

The more you activate your parasympathetic system, the less anxiety you may feel.  A drop of the Parasympathetic™ oil (affiliate link) placed on the vagal nerve (behind the earlobe on the mastoid bone) can help promotes a feeling of safety that helps to shift you out of anxiety.

 

 

 

 

 

 

References:

Oschman, James L et al. “The effects of grounding (earthing) on inflammation, the immune response, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.” Journal of inflammation research vol. 8 83-96. 24 Mar. 2015, doi:10.2147/JIR.S69656

Gaétan Chevalier et al. “Earthing: Health Implications of Reconnecting the Human Body to the Earth’s Surface Electrons” Journal of Environmental and Public Health. Review Article | Open Access Volume 2012 |Article ID 291541 | 8 pages | https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/291541

Brom, Danny et al. “Somatic Experiencing for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Outcome Study.” Journal of traumatic stress vol. 30,3 (2017): 304-312. doi:10.1002/jts.22189

Brom, Danny et al. “Somatic Experiencing for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Outcome Study.” Journal of traumatic stress vol. 30,3 (2017): 304-312. doi:10.1002/jts.22189