No one is lucky enough to live a life completely free of stress. For some, it’s more frequent than others, but feeling stress or anxiety is common and in many ways unavoidable. However, how we choose to handle that stress is something that’s under our control. There are a wide variety of ways that we can try to treat stress, but here are a few homeopathic treatments that many will overlook but that can actually be quite helpful for dealing with stress.
Cupping Therapy
Cupping is an interesting practice that’s actually been done for centuries but has recently gained some notoriety with a few prominent Olympic athletes talking about using it. Among its many benefits is that it can help relieve stress. Cupping therapy helps treat muscle and tissue groups that often times don’t receive enough attention from other types of massage therapy. Just one cupping therapy session can have you feeling far more relaxed than you were beforehand.
Passionflower
This herb is a sedative that’s actually been approved by the German government to treat nervous restlessness, so it’s definitely worthwhile to see if it can help ease stress and anxiety. It may not work well if you are also taking a prescription medication to treat your stress, but some studies have shown passionflower can be just as effective as some medications, so it may be worth trying before you resort to prescriptions to ease your stress.
Walk in the Woods
This isn’t exactly a type of medicine or procedure, but Japanese researchers have found that talking a walk in a wooded area can lower your level of stress hormones. It may be as simple as all the fresh oxygen from the nearby trees, or perhaps the smell of the woods and the sound of a babbling brook help the stress to melt away. The exact science isn’t completely understood, but studies suggest walking in the woods is better for stress than walking around an urban area. If nothing else, a 20-minute walk in the forest isn’t going to increase your stress, short of getting lost in the woods.
Meditation
It’s amazing how something as simple as taking a few deep breaths can help relieve stress, but it’s true. Even as little as 15 to 20 minutes of meditation per day can be helpful. All you have to do is relinquish every other thought from your head and focus on taking deep breaths. At the very least, it’s a small break from what may be an otherwise stressful day, and if you can take that brief bit of peace of mind with you throughout the rest of your day, you may be amazed at how you’re able to cope with stress.
Aromatherapy
There are dozens of different aromatherapy scents in the world, and simply inhaling those scents has shown to be able to trigger certain reactions within the brain, including stress relief. Scents like lavender, rosemary, and others have become synonymous with stress relief, as they’ve been shown to improve mood and help any anxiety you’re feeling wash away. This is another type of stress relief that will do you no harm to at least try just in case it turns out to be helpful. Worst-case scenario is you still feel stressed but your nose has some pleasant scents to smell for a few minutes. However, if you give it a chance, it just may work.
