100 Ways Destress

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Be gentle with yourself, just for today. Then consider doing

it again tomorrow.
Pay it forward. Do something for someone, without
them knowing, that they cannot do for themselves and for
which you will have no way of being paid back.
Make your own list of what brings you deep and abiding
peace, assurance, gratitude and love.
Evaluate your coping strategies to see if they are healthy.
Learn new strategies to replace the ones that may be
stressing you out even more.
BREATHE! YES! BREATHE!
100 ways to de-stress

body, mind & spirit
Bodymindspiritworks brings you the following 100 ways to

reduce the stress in your life. Please dont stress about having to
do them all!
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Bodymindspiritworks
1300 Fourteenth Avenue
Grafton WI 53024
(Old Grafton Mill, 14th & Bridge St.)
262 377.7708
www.bodymindspiritworks.com
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written/compiled: Thomas DAlessio, March 2008
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Breathe. Right now is a great time.

Get a massage! Work with certified professionals and
schedule a couples massage at the Inn or regular sessions at
Bodymindspiritworks.
Heal your body. Mend your mind. Free your spirit.
Immerse yourself in the Bodymindspiritworks Integral
Lifework Program.
Go for a brisk walk. Several times a week.
Learn to set limits and say no to others demands on
your time and energy. Your yes cannot really mean yes
unless your no really means no.
Make love, not war. Enjoy the pleasure of your true loves
company, delight in their warm embrace.
Each week, take a box full of items (in good condition)
you no longer use or need to a charitable organization.
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Clean off your desk. Set aside the items you know you
need to act on. Put everything else in a box and take it out
to the garage. If you havent looked in it after 6 months,
throw it away.
Keep your vehicle gas tank at least half full.
Drink more water and less coffee.
Breathe. Yes, again. Right now. Big, deep breath.
Go to bed early and wake up early.
Go to sleep and wake up consistently at the same times.
Get un-interrupted sleep.
Eat five to six small meals daily.
Eat breakfast every day.
Eat a balanced, healthy diet.
Minimize simple sugars.
Take breaks every 90 minutes during work.
Get some physical activity daily.
Do at least two cardio-vascular interval workouts and two
strength training workouts a week.
Listen to children laughing.
Join a yoga or low-impact aerobics class and go to it!
Write down your favorite fun leisure-time hobby here:
...........................................................................
When was the last time you spent time with it?
Leave your work at work.
Ask yourself who is responsible for what? Do not take
responsibility when it is not yours.
Change your worry to concern, and your concern to
actionotherwise leave it alone.
Ask yourself is this something I can do anything about?
If not, let it go.
Pray. Your prayer can be a simple and open-ended
meditation or it can be something rooted in your own
faith tradition and spiritual practice.
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This is what you shall do:

Love the earth and sun and animals,
despise riches,
give alms to every one that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labor to others,
hate tyrants,
argue not concerning god,
have patience and indulgence toward the people,
go freely with powerful uneducated persons
and with the young
and with the mothers of families,
read these leaves in the open air
every season of every year of your life,
re-examine all you have been told at school
or church
or in any book,
dismiss whatever insults your own soul
and your very flesh shall be a great poem.
(+ Walt Whitman)
Avoid people who stress you out. You do not have to deal
with them.
Write in your journal.
Work in your garden.
Play with a pet.
Face your monsters. Practice the Hank Deerfield method:
Heres how you fight monsters: you lure em in close, you
look em in the eye and you smack em down.
Find somebody to love and share your life with.
Deal with it. Think of the four As avoid, alter, accept or
adapt. And remember that there are many things that
should not be accepted, adapted to or accommodated.
Feel the sun on your face.
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Take a long, hot shower and use up all the hot water.
Treat yourself to aromatherapy for stress relief and
relaxation.
De-clutter. Do the 27-Fling Boogie: take a big garbage bag
and walk through your home or office as fast as you can
and throw away 27 items. Do not stop until you have
collected all 27 items. Then close the garbage bag and pitch
it. DO NOT LOOK IN IT!!! Just do it.
Think of a place that makes you feel comfortable and safe.
It can be in nature or indoors, it can be real or imaginary.
Use all your senses to experience the setting: look, listen,
smell, taste and touch everything you can. Really BE
THERE.
Listen to music that has been composed specifically for
relaxation. Try something from Chuck Wilds Liquid
Mind series (www.liquidmindmusic.com).
TRAF all your incoming stuff (mail, email, everything):
Trash it, Refer it out, Act on it, or File it. Handle it once,
and only once.
Make a long list of all the things you love to do, and then
pick one and do it, right then and there.
Identify the one task on your list that has become a real
annoyance monster, and take care of it, get it done, take it
off your list.
Take a nap. Remember that old Savoyard proverb: I have so
much to do that I am going to bed.
Go fly a kite.
Slice an apple sideways across the middle and appreciate the
star-pattern of the seeds.
Take a different route to work, even if it does take a little
longer.
Go to bed early with a good book.
Read something just for fun.
Trust your heart wont lie.
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As sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, we
move progressively towards death, one step at a time. If this
be the case, we might as well walk rather than run.
If something is killing you, get out. Emotional pain is
energy trying to move. It is an extremely important
teacher. Use troubles as a gift to make changes. Face the
pain, alter the behavior of the situation if you can, but if
the situation is hurting you, get out. Its your life.
A most important number is 168, the number of hours in a
week. You manage your time; you manage your lifeyou
waste your time; you waste your life.
Practice emotional geometry: the shortest distance
between two points is the truth and an unbroken line.
Easy does it. Sometimes we do things in difficult ways when
we could be doing them in easier ways. This does not mean
cutting corners which usually creates more mess & stress.
Care-front rather than con-front your issues.
Care-frontation is a much more gentle approach to
dealing with problems when you are in conflict with
another person. In care-frontation, the idea is resolution
and making both parties feel better.
Be self-aware instead of self-conscious.
Practice altruistic egoism. Altruistic egoism means that
ultimately you can only be as good with other people as
you are with yourself.
Periodically HALT yourself. H is hunger. What do you
hunger for at this point in your life? A stands for anger.
Anger takes up a lot of time and energy. Find ways to
resolve, dissolve, or, in appropriate ways, discharge your
anger. L stands for loneliness. How connected are you to
other people? Are you taking time to be close to other
people, to share with them? T stands for tired. Who/what
are you tired of? What would you need to do to energize
yourself in that particular area?
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True intimacy is about being truthful with yourself and at

least one other human being who will be truthful with you.
Take time to identify how honest you are with yourself,
and how honest the others in your life are with you.
Stop trying to do your best and start doing as well as you
can. Cut yourself some slack!
Be willing to admit your mistakes. Making mistakes is part
of being human.
Keep a healthy balance between your built-in joy detector
and your built-in B.S. detector.
Balance your work and your play, not juggle.
Stay in touch. A pat on the back, a hug, a sincere
handshake, or just a warm greeting are important parts of
your humanity.
Believe in something bigger than yourself.
Follow the yellow brick road: use your head (brain), feel your
feelings (heart), and to allow yourself to be vulnerable
enough to take the risks to accomplish your tasks
(courage).
Be a heroic rather than a tragic figure in your life.
Live each day congruent with your true values.
Do things the easy way verses the hard way. Use a
wheelbarrow. Find leverage. Be smart.
Choose peace over chaos. Run from crazy-making people
and environments.
Keep an ongoing daily to do list. Prioritize the list (limit
the list to A1, A2, A3, B1, B2, B3) and dont even worry
about the C priority items).
Live fully in the moment without judgment but with
insight and awareness: the NOW moment is all we get,
one at a time.
Love what is and make your changes from there. Move
toward what you do want instead of away from what
you dont want.
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Enough! While choice is a good thing there comes a time

when it is appropriate to say enough.
Find ways to keep a relationship with someone else at the
center of your life.
Back Plan. Think of what your life wants to be like in 10
years. Now starting with today, ask yourself what steps you
must take to make those plans come true.
Dream. Hope. Imagine. Go ahead. Right now. Its OK.
Remember that you are not the content of your thoughts,
feelings or experiencesyou are the invisible awareness of
those thoughts, feelings and experiences.
When chronic stress has resulted in serious emotional or
physical problems, get professional help.
Sign up for Tai Chi classes and GO!
BREATHE! Yes, YOU! Right now is a good time!
Take a long weekend and get away.
Practice deep breathing. Long, slow, even and full cycles of
inhale/exhale remove carbon dioxide and bring oxygen to
all the cells in your body.
Feel the wind on your face.
Use progressive muscle relaxation to relax your body. Start
with your toes, work up to your head.
When you feel stuck or backed into a corner, give yourself
a time out. Get up and move!
Learn meditation, whether it be sitting meditation,
walking meditation, or mindfulness meditation.
Plant a tree under which you know youll never sit.
Plant a carrot and watch it grow.
Read Where the Wild Things Are (Maurice Sendak) and
then let the rumpus begin.
Immerse yourself in unconditional love, saturate yourself
with infinite consciousness.
Pay attention to all the little decisions you are making and
to the hidden big decision they are adding up to.
Page 5

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96.

Be gentle with yourself, just for today. Then consider doing

100 ways to de-stress

Bodymindspiritworks brings you the following 100 ways to

written/compiled: Thomas DAlessio, March 2008

Breathe. Right now is a great time.

This is what you shall do:

True intimacy is about being truthful with yourself and at

Enough! While choice is a good thing there comes a time

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