hey everybody it's Doctor Jo, and today I'm going to show you five ways to
relieve stress and anxiety. so let's get started.
And before we get started, if you haven't subscribed
already, make sure and click on the subscribe button down there. so one of
the five ways to help relieve stress and anxiety is using this really cool free
app, and I'm going to tell you all about it, but let's start off with some
breathing exercises. so the first thing is going to be breathing with your
diaphragm. some people call it belly breathing, but this is just a great way
if you're stressed out if you've got a lot of anxiety to help calm your body
back down. so the reason it's called belly breathing is because you're
basically breathing with your belly. so what I like to do is place one hand over
your chest and one hand on your belly. the hand on your chest shouldn't move.
when we breathe normally, we kind of breathe with our chest and it
rises and it comes back down, but we don't want to breathe here for breathing
with your diaphragm, your breathing with your belly, so when you breathe in, your
belly comes up, and then coming out. so just really nice deep breath and you can
see that the top hand is not really moving just the one at the belly. some
people also kind of like to place their hands on the belly one on each side, so
you can feel your hands kind of opening up and closing.
so either way is a great way a lot of times you need that kind of visual
feedback because learning how to breathe with the diaphragm it's sometimes really
hard at first, especially if you breathe up in your chest area a lot. but it
really just helps kind of relax the whole body. so you don't have to do it
for a long period maybe just one or two minutes, and then that's just going to
kind of relax everything for you. so the second thing is just going to be
some yoga type exercises. those are really good mainly the stretches. And my
favorites, as you know, are the upward dog and the downward dog. so these are really
great just because it stretches more than one thing. a lot of times when we do
stretches, we'll just focus on one thing. so when you go into the downward dog
you're gonna put your heels down on the ground. so you want to try and keep your
heels down and your hands down. so if your heels are coming up like that, you
might need to change your foot position. but the higher up you can come and keep
those feet flat on the ground. it's getting a stretch and your calves, and
your hamstrings, and your shoulders, and even at your hips. so this is one that I
really really like besides just that it's named after the dog. so maybe hold
it for about 30 seconds, take a little break, do that three times just to kind
of reset the whole body. so getting that nice stretch. if you can't get your heels
all the way down like mine, that's okay you can come up a little bit, but the
goal is to come all the way down. if you need to kind of pedal your feet back and
forth, you can that's great to do as well, but I do yoga on a weekly basis, so it's
pretty easy for me to get my heels down. If this first time you're doing it, then
it's probably not gonna be super easy. and then the upward dog is gonna be
coming over this way. this time your toes are going to be flat on the ground and
again your hands are kind of where your shoulders are. so maybe up a little bit
like that. you want them to be pretty even and then lift your chest in your
head up. so again this now stretches the front of my legs,
it stretches my core, it works my shoulders a little bit as well, so this
is nice good stretch. it is a little bit tough so if you need to come down on
your legs like this you can, and then stretch this is all
more of a cobra position, but if you can come all the way up, that's really just
gonna help relieve that stress and anxiety. so it's a great way to kind of
relax everything. And the third way to help relieve stress and anxiety is to
use an app to track all of that, and the folks at Welltory sent me, well they
invited me to try out their free app, and so just clicking on here you can see
that there's a whole bunch of cool stuff to try out, and what it does is it
measures your energy, your stress, and anxiety levels through the light on your
camera phone. and so basically you just place your finger over it, you sit kind
of nice and calm and comfortably, and it'll take your measurements. and it's so
cool because I know for me a lot of times I might not know if I'm stressed,
or have a lot of anxiety. sometimes you're just pushing through and you
don't really know. and so this here you can see shows you how focused you are,
shows you how much energy you have, what your stress levels are, and things like
that. so this is really cool to help keep track of it. and what I really really
like is for a lot of you all that have asked me questions of things like, when
should I do my stretches and exercises, should I do them in the morning ,should I
do them in the afternoon. it's really a hard question to answer if I don't know
you because it's a really it's different for everybody, and so sometimes people
perform better in the morning or in the afternoon. so what's great about this app
is you can test that out. so you can do maybe five days of measurements once a
day and do that. do your stretch in the morning. take the
measurements. see what your results are. and then the next five days just
measuring once a day, do your stretches and exercises in the afternoon. take your
measurements and see where your levels are. so see if you're performing well or
if you have a lot of energy. if it's decreasing your stress levels. and so
that will help you know is it better to do in the morning is it better to do in
the afternoon. and you can test this with anything. you know if you're a student
and you get stressed out when you're studying and stuff, and when should I
study. this is a great way to still do that same thing. you can test all these
things out just so you can have better body awareness and perform better. so
that's what I really like this. you can also put in your blood
pressure measurements, so it'll give you even better readouts. so the the free
version is really cool because you can check all those levels and keep track of
that, but they also have a pro version which they allowed me to try, which is really
cool because then if you want to know really a lot about your body and help
become more aware of these things, it gives you a lot of data. you can go to
your desktop and it has these charts and graphs that kind of show you how it's
going, and it's really easy to read. and they even have these awesome programs
that one of the programs that I watched was talking about taking the
measurements and then seeing which part of the day is better for you because
it's really different for everybody. for me I'm a morning person. I got to get it
done in the morning, get myself going throughout the day, and I have been it I
have those energy levels. but some people actually do better if they do at the end
of the day because they're stressed out after work and they need to kind of
de-stress. so this is super great to do if you are more aware of when you're
stressed out then it's better because sometimes you don't feel that and
sometimes you don't know that you need to take the time to do the stretches and
exercises and breathing techniques. and so you can even see here where it gives
you the measurement details which is really cool because it shows your heart
rate variability, which is how different your heart rate level is per each day or
each measurement and this is really important because that helps regulate
your stress. like if I'm always at about 55 beats per minute, which is what I'm
usually at, then measure is it one day and I'm up to like 70 or 75, and I
haven't done anything, then I know something is kind of out of whack. so
that one's a really good one, and then I'm not going to go through all of them,
but it talks about your nervous system, and your heart rate, and your blood
pressure, and a whole bunch of things, so it's really good to become more aware of
what's going on. and so let me show you the desktop really quick because those
are show you the graphs and this has the programs in it too which is really cool.
so I already have it opened up you can see here what is. another great component
of the pro version is you can link your data to like your fitness whatever
you're using to track your fitness, like a fitbit
or your Apple watch. for me I've got mine set up to my Apple watch, and so anything
that's tracked on there it plugs it in here. so you know what's going on and I
like this because once you take the measurements, it'll ask you a couple
questions of like when you took it, like before you ate in the morning after
coffee, after a run, stressed out at work, and so it puts all of that into account
too of knowing how you are in the day and what you've done. so again I'm just
going to show you a couple quick of the the graphs you know stress for stress
index. energy versus capacity. and so it puts it out on a nice graph it's easy to
read. you go in take some of these programs in these classes and it helps
you read these and helps you figure out how to cope with that stress and anxiety
and ways to help decrease it as well. so you can see here there's a lot of the
classes and the courses, and so it's really great lots of great information
if you're feeling stressed out and you really want to know more about your body
and become more body aware. that's just going to help you be more healthy in
general. so if you're interested in getting the Welltory free app or the
paid version, make sure and click on the link up here. the fourth way to help
relieve stress and anxiety is isometric exercises. and isometric exercises are
basically when you're contracting the muscle, but you're not actually moving
whatever you're contracting. and the reason this helps relieve stress is a
lot of times if you hold stress, specially like in your neck and your
upper back, the muscles get really tight and if you contract those muscles if you
push them into something you make those muscles contract even more. when you let
go, a lot of times it will relax. so what I like especially in the neck area is
just doing some side bending and rotational ones. so if with side bending,
basically what you're doing is the movement you'd be taking your head over
to the side like this, but you're gonna put your hand here so you're not
actually moving, you're pushing into your hand. so your head's not really going
anywhere but I'm pushing into that side bend position three to five seconds.
nothing too long, and relaxing and then just switching over to the other side. so
you're not necessarily pushing as hard as you can when you first start doing
these. you want to maybe put 20% of all you have and then if you feel
okay then do 30% and then go up from there. but doing about five on each side
just pushing in. again this is the motion that I'm doing, but I'm just pushing into
my hand activating these muscles. so if they're tight I'm squeezing them and
then when I let go then a lot of times that will let go of the muscle to let it
go. that stress where your hunch those shoulders up and then it's gonna relax.
also a good one is a rotation with your neck and your head. so if you're turning
this way, same thing you're just blocking it. so this is the motion I would be
doing, but I'm pushing into my hands. so again holding for that three to five
seconds. I can feel those muscles tightening up, and then as soon as I stop
they let go. so it's just a really nice way to get especially those neck muscles
that hold a lot of stress the neck and the upper back to relax. and it is really
more effective than you would think it is. sometimes you might feel a little pop
in your neck, but as long as it's not painful, just a little pop that you feel.
it might be a little weird, that's just your body readjusting the
spine. so that's pretty normal if you feel pop as long as it's not painful it's
okay. so you can also do that with your lower body too if you're a little
stressed out. you can just if I'm going up this way, I would just push into my
hands for about three to five seconds to get those hip flexors. especially if
you've been sitting all day, these might be really tight, so if they're really
tight and stressed out, just pushing into your hand again going this way about
three to five seconds doing five on each side. that's really going to help relaxe
because a lot of times, you know if you're sitting all day you have a lot of
time to stand up and stretch those are gonna get really tight as well. and so
then the last thing that's a really good way to help relieve stress and anxiety
is just to lie all the way down and try and stretch from head to toe, fingertips
to your toes. and so I'm gonna do that now. so I'm gonna lie down and just show
you that full whole body stretch. and as you can see, I'm so long I don't even fit
the whole screen. those are my goalkeeper arms up there, but what you wanna do is
just push your arms above your head, point your toes
all the way down. get a big stretch. you can pull your toes up into that flex
position as well, that's gonna tighten those muscles a little bit. so some
people like I'm pointed you can you can hear some of my pops and my joints or
just pulling them up this way, but just taking some nice deep breaths and push
as hard as you can. and that's just a stretch from head to toe. you can hold it
for 30 seconds. you can do short ten-second ones, but just do that three
or four times and it's just gonna let all that stress go. so there you have it.
those are five ways to relieve stress and anxiety. so if you're interested in
downloading the Welltory free app, make sure you click on the link up there, and
if you want a deep dive really and to see what's going on, you can also get the
paid version up there. so check that out. and don't forget to subscribe by
clicking down here. and remember, be safe (have that body awareness), have fun, and I
hope you feel better soon.