January 21, 2019

Hello beautiful,

It's Katie bringing you another week of tips, hints, styles, and trends to help you look and feel your best!

I often wonder, if you're stressed out all the time, are you really taking care of yourself the way you should be? After all, one of the only ways to truly feel your best all of the time is to make sure that you're doing your best to make sure you are the best version of yourself.

One of this weeks topics is how to clear your mind and how to keep your stress from building up.

Until we meet again,
Katie

Questions? Comments? Email me at:katie@gophercentral.com

*-- How Do You Quiet Your Mind? --*

You might hear this one all of the time, but it really does help to just breathe. This time, use your breathing to find stillness and pay attention to the rhythm of it. If you take short, quick breaths, try to move toward slower, deeper ones. Try this for about six breaths a minute and see how much better you feel after!

This next tip is a tranquil one to say the least. Watch fish swim because watching them can make you feel more relaxed, calm, and less stressed. A study using a tank hundreds of times larger found that the more types of marine life that were added, the happier people got. Heart rates and blood pressures dropped, too.

Listening to music literally calms the activity and thoughts in your brain. Fewer neurons fire in the part of your brain that responds to fear, which may lead to fewer signals sent to other parts of your brain. Music is a good thing to try if you're distracted by pain.

One thing that some of us enjoy doing in the warmer months on our lunch breaks is going outdoor and taking a walk. Being around nature often makes people think more clearly and feel more relaxed and refreshed. Spending time outside can also bring down your heart rate, blood pressure, stress hormones, and even muscle tension.

Even getting creative helps escape a busy mind. Coloring books, knitting, scrap-booking, and pottery give people a large increase of relaxation. Simple, repetitive actions can help you redirect your thoughts and tune out the chatter in your head. Let your inner child play! The key is to enjoy the process and not worry so much about the result.