17 Ways To Naturally Decrease Your Stress (+ A Few Freebies To Help)

My 17 favorite ways to naturally decrease stress:

1. Take probiotics (and other stress relieving supplements.)

I’ve blogged in the past about how probiotics are so powerful in stabilizing the mind that they are actually a treatment for depression. And now, in a more recent study, researchers show that taking probiotics for only one month reduces stress, decreases anxiety and even improves memory! Researchers looked at the strain of Bifidobacterium longum and followed what effect this probiotic had when used as a “psychobiotic” — looking at mood, stress, and even cognitive performance. Research presented Oct 18, 2015 at the Society For Neuroscience annual meeting showed that after only one month, B. Longum statistically and significantly:

• reduced the cumulative output of the stress hormone cortisol
• decreased subjective reports of anxiety in response to acute stress
• improved memory and improved EEG output

It’s exciting to focus on treating stress, anxiety, depression and memory disturbances through enhancing the gut biome, because this is a low cost, easily accessible all natural non-prescription, healthy and fabulous intervention that we can all be taking to become resilient to stress. We can’t change the stress that life brings, but one thing we do have the power to modify is that we can support our gut microbiome better so that we can boost mood and support brain function.

So consider:

• Adding probiotic containing foods such as fermented foods, kefir, komubcha and organic whole fat yogurt to your diet routinely (one study showed that eating yogurt completely resolved irritable bowel symptoms and gave patients full remission within 6 months)
• Taking a high quality probiotic supplement that includes strains (such as b. longum and b. bifidum) that have been medically proven to affect brain function and support the gut/mind axis.

Other supplements to consider include:

• Magnesium: being mineral deficient can trigger anxiety symptoms… magnesium deficiency can cause shakiness, muscle tension and irregular heartbeat. Your muscles (including your heart!) and your central nervous system absolutely need minerals to stabilize and function. I highly recommend magnesium replacement if you tend to feel anxious, stressed or have areas of muscle tension. Nightly magnesium bath soaks, topical applications of magnesium lotion, or trace mineral drops in water throughout the day can do wonders to settle a hyper-irritable central nervous system and soothe a tension.
• Omega 3 fatty acids: Omega 3 fatty acids offer a calming effect on the brain. In fact, a medical study published in Brain, Behavior and Immunity in November 2011 showed that taking Omega 3 fatty acid supplements dropped anxiety rates by 20%! Eating fish several times a week or taking krill oil daily is an easy way to boost your intake of Omega 3s.

I put my very favorite probiotics, magnesium, omega 3 supplements, and more into a Stress Relief Protocol for you right here;

That way, you can be sure that you are taking a medical grade product that truly works… not paying for an empty product with weak or ineffective probiotic strains, or probiotics that have lost efficacy because of the way they were manufactured and stored.

2. Reconnect with nature.

When you get stressed out, all you have to do is walk out your front door, step out of your office, or stop driving and step out of your car. To reconnect with nature is to find an instant sense of spaciousness, a calm centered experience as you take a single deep breath.

Reconnecting with the wonder of being a human being standing on a rock that spirals through space and seeing the earth for the vast support network it iscan’t help but lift your spirits for the better. The power of nature can hold even your worst of days and remain an immovable source of strength.

Don’t believe me?

The next time you are having a panic attack, or a pounding headache, or a knot of worry grow in your stomach, just go outside. Get out there. Don’t force anything, just go outside and let nature work its magic. If possible, touch the earth directly with your hands or feet and get grounded.

Getting grounded immediately boosts your vagal tone, getting you out of “fight or flight” and calming you. Reducing blood pressure, deepening breathing and oxygenation, decreasing cortisol output and more.

I’m very heart-warmed to see so many families where I live going on after dinner walks, riding their bikes, jogging in the early hours of the morning, shooting basketballs in driveway hoops, jump roping, etc…

But go outside even if you don’t want to exercise. If you have limited mobility due to medical conditions or just want to relax when you are outside, still do it.

Even taking a hot cup of tea outside at night and looking up at the stars and moon, when the rest of the world is shut up tight at bedtime, is wonderful for clearing the mind and grabbing a few minutes of beautiful fresh air.

Want more ideas on how to connect with the earth and boost your health through grounding?

I wrote a guide for you called The Earth Prescription, and it’s right here.

3. Get sunlight daily.

If you are going outside grounding daily (see tip #2, above) this will be a win-win situation! But for those that are not drawn to grounding for their health, at least be sure to get some form of sunlight daily.

Sunlight actually prolongs life span, in a dose dependent way (meaning more time in the sun = longer life span.) I blog about this extensively in this article I wrote for you last year, right here:

Time In the Sun Actually Increases Your Life Span… Here’s How To Do It Safely

So get sunlight daily for at least 10 minutes, either indoors our outside. Consider:

• • sitting on a porch, balcony or front door stoop every morning and every evening
  • eating picnic lunches outside mid-day
  • observing which of the windows in your home are sunny and at what time of the day there is a sunbeam and sit in those precious light rays while drinking your morning coffee, your evening tea, while working on your computer, while reading a good book, etc… (the glass will stop the majority of UVB waves needed for making Vit D, so open the window if you can)
  • going for a brisk pre-breakfast walk every morning upon rising
  • going for a post-dinner stroll every evening before dusk
  • enjoy a drive on a sunny day — be sure to roll the windows down and enjoy!
  • moving whatever indoor activities you can move outdoors: yoga, stretches, exercise, meditation, listening to music, weeding through your emails, writing up your grocery list and meal planning, watching TikTok — if you can multitask while doing an activity outside, always choose that!

And if getting outside in the daylight is impossible because of your shift work, your medical condition, or simply because you live in an area of the world that is predominantly dark all winter long, a light box can give you all the same benefits. Light therapy has been clinically proven to boost mood, reduce anxiety, deepen sleep and more.

Published August 2015 in Biological Psychiatry, researchers found that after only 30 minutes of daily light therapy in the mornings, fear and anxiety levels were significantly reduced and stimuli that used to trigger panic did not trigger an anxiety response in the way that it did before the light therapy.

I personally do both — I go outside daily but I also use a lightbox for about 30 minutes every single morning.

Light therapy can be used safely in conjunction with medical treatments (including Rx medications) so if you are on an anxiety or depression medication, augment your treatment with light therapy and it’s highly possible that you will feel so good you can work with your physician to decrease dose over time! This is the one I use.

4. Focus on Spirit.

The surest way I know to alleviate stress and suffering is to find meaning in it. Whether it’s through mediation, personal prayer, asking friends and family to pray for you, cultivating your own sense of spirit surrounding and supporting you, attending support groups, going to religious or spiritual meetings — these are all such important ways to alleviate stress.

The divine support system is around you, surrounding you, whether you are able to feel it or not. Calling on the power of prayer or connecting with that reservoir of love through meditation is an instant boost that strengthens you and changes outcome, no doubt about it.

Need some more inspiration? Read Man’s Search For Meaning, by Viktor E. Frankl. He is a concentration camp survivor who writes beautifully about how the people who survived these horrific conditions were not the strongest, or youngest, or even the healthiest… they were the ones who found meaning in what they were going through.

Finding a deeper, spiritual meaning in what you are going through — focusing on the why behind the stress season instead of on the stress itself — is in and of itself enough to sustain you.

Consider developing a meditation practice or a prayer practice to get into a daily habit of reframing your outlook around the things that are stressing you out today… and as protection against the things that will stress you out tomorrow. Literally even just repeating one word over and over for a few minutes (known as mantra therapy) has been shown to be so powerful it treats PTSD as good as psychotherapy! I review that medical study for you right here:

2 New Treatments For PTSD You Can Use Right Now To Feel Immediatley Better.

This is something shown over and over again in the medical literature — the power of prayer to improve clinical outcome (like reducing pain, enhancing recovery after cardiac surgery, even helping substance abuse recovery) and the power of spirituality to support general wellness (like boosting physical well being, increasing functional well being, and decreasing physical symptoms in cancer patients) is well documented.

The divine support system is around you, whether you are able to feel it or not. I feel that understanding upsetting stressors and traumas from a deeper spirit based perspective is so healing that I’ve painted many paintings over the years to help reminds us:

You can find all of those paintings I painted (and many more!) right here. I’d love you to check them out!

Whether it’s through meditation, mantra repetition, mindful walking (I created a video for you right here that walks you through how to create your own labyrinth for mindful walking… it’s easier than you think!) personal prayer, asking friends and family to pray for you, joining online spiritual groups (especially right now with many spiritual centers being closed for social distancing reasons, online groups are a fantastic option,) downloading spirituality apps that will send reminders to your phone, or reading books that align with and strengthen your sense of spiritual presence… cultivating a deeper sense of spirit surrounding and supporting you is such an important way to alleviate stress.

5. Music.

My kids will tell you that if I am really grumpy, all we have to do is hop in the car and turn on the radio and within a few songs, all of a sudden I don’t feel so hopeless. In fact, I feel optimistic and grateful and filled with the same sense of wonder and possibility that I feel when I spend time in nature.

My son funnels all his energy into his piano and guitar whenever he feels stressed out… and the music pouring through our home is as healing a presence as any I could possibly create even with my 26+ years of medical experience as a physician. Music is just. That. Good.

The power of music to wash through you and lift you is amazing. In fact, as I blog about here, music has the ability to lift dementia — it is that uplifting!

Creating A Healing Connection Through Music

If you are feeling stressed or depressed, especially if you can not leave your current surroundings (perhaps you are in the hospital or your office or your car…) slip on some music and allow it to sweep through your soul and lift you higher. Consider creating a playlist right now, filled with songs that move or inspire you, to reach for the next time stress threatens to suffocate you.

6. Consider changing jobs.

No, I’m not joking. Stress on the job is such a real threat to your health that I think you should take it into account when figuring out your future. Hop over here where I talk more about a medical study that shows that stress on the job can literally drive you crazy, and 4 ways to counterbalance it:

Is Your Job Driving You Crazy? You Are Not Alone. Here’s Help.

And if you can’t change jobs, take the time to invest in developing a good support system at your work. If you are suffering and over-taxed, ask for help. Ask your coworkers, your boss, the person you say hi to in the office every day. You can modify your current work situation even if you can’t change or leave it. Alleviating work related stress can go a long way to decreasing your over all life stressors… and protect your health.

7. Decrease background noise.

8. Hydrate.

It’s really important to recognize signs of dehydration as we head into the cooler months, because believe it or not: it’s very very easy to get dehydrated in winter. With heating systems turned on, the air we are breathing is incredibly dry. The drier the air, the more water we lose from our bodies, in several ways.

Did you know that urinating and sweating are not the only ways we lose water each day? We actually lose water through every breath, called respiratory water loss, and we also lose water through our skin, called transcutaneous water loss, which happens even when we aren’t sweating.

Both of those losses are occurring every minute of every day — a minimum water loss of over 3 cups of water just from breathing and skin evaporation — and increase dramatically when the air is dry… drying out our lungs and our skin rapidly.

And did you know even very mild levels of dehydration might be affecting you on a daily basis? Constipation, dry skin, bad breath, headache, and high blood pressure… and yes, irritability and stress. Hop over to this blog post to assess whether you are dehydrated and find tons of wonderful holistic ideas on staying more hydrated all winter long:

A Dozen Unique Ways To Use Water To Improve Your Health, Right Now

9. Breathe.

Use the centering power of your breath to provide calming bio-feedback immediately to your body.

Did you know it only takes 3 deep breaths to measurably decrease stress? That’s because deep breathing decreases your heart rate, decreases your blood pressure, stimulates digestion, lifts mood, and helps you relax more easily into sleep.

Similarly to grounding, deep breathing stimulates the vagus nerve that runs through your chest and abdomen and helps to regulate many different organs, including the heart, lungs, and the gastrointestinal tract. By stimulating the vagus nerve you support the parasympathetic nervous system into calming you down.

Try deep belly breathing (not shallow chest breathing) and slow your breathing to half the normal rate (from about 12 breaths per minute down to about 6). Thwarting stress can be as simple as breathing in while counting to 5, holding your breath for 3 counts, then releasing slowly while counting to 7. Repeat!

Breathe your way through it and usher in the feeling of peace and calm with each breath. Need some guidance on taking 3 deep breaths? In this blog post, I give you my favorite techniques for focusing on the breath, and I even created a video for you so we can take those deep breaths together. Deep breathing is truly one of my favorite ways to decrease stress and I passionately believe we all need to learn these techniques to navigate life more easily:

4 Easy Ways To Use Your Breath To Feel Instantly Better — Do Them With Me Right Now

10. Write it down.

There are so many huge, daily changes in the world that require overwhelming, important decisions to be made, day in and day out. So I created a worksheet that can help make at least one of the tough choices you are facing today a little more approachable.

Simply print it out and fill it out. Clarity, ease, a sense of relief, a meaningful choice that actually excites — instead terrifies — you into moving forward… that is my goal in creating this free worksheet for you:

If you love it, feel free to save this worksheet as a file on your computer to use whenever you like, forever more. Print out as many copies as you want, whenever you want. If you don’t want to print it out, it’s a very easy acronym that you can easily remember and think of any time, any where, and it can help you make basically any decision on earth:

The acronym is BRAIN:

B = Benefits (what are the benefits?)

R = Risks (what are the risks?)

A = Alternatives (what are the alternatives?)

I = Intuition (what does your intuition say?)

N = Nothing (what if you do nothing?)

Give this quick video a watch as you fill the worksheet out. Just hearing me run through it one time for you will allow you to always have it in your mental toolkit to use whenever you need it.

I guarantee if you run through this exercise just one time with me today, you will remember it forever. In the future, you’ll be able to mentally run through the acronym in just seconds, without ever writing a single thing down.

And of course, as with the free Adrenal Fatigue book below, share this worksheet with any loved ones who are making difficult decisions too — we could all use a little more support these days.

11. Gratitude and compassion.

This is a no-brainer — one of the gifts of suffering through stressful times is that you can witness and hold other people’s suffering so much more fully. Knowing the darker side, leaning into it, persevering through it, witnessing with compassion what others have gone through… all of these things make traveling your own dark night feel less lonely.

It’s not just that suffering has meaning but it goes one step further to say that you are strong enough to bear it and your heart is big enough to hold it.

Focus on alleviating the suffering in others around you actually helps you bear your own burdens too.

Holding compassion for the entire yin and yang of it all, the darkness and light of the world… the gift here is being able to open your heart even wider than you thought possible before… and then wider than even that.

Keep your eye open for flyers and ads in local businesses and libraries, church bulletins and neighborhood drives, for ways that you can give of your time and energy in a way that uplifts you instead of adds to your to-do list. Plenty of others have already done the hard work for you of arranging ways to donate your time and energy — sign up for something as little or big as you like!

There are tons of community outreach programs, from donating time or resources to a charity or foundation that you believe in is probably the easiest way to express gratitude and compassion during your own challenging times.

One of the simplest ways to increase gratitude is also one of my favorite, and as a bonus it helps me fall asleep, the topic that’s coming up next! All you do is, as you close your eyes to fall asleep for the night, run through the day in your mind’s eye. Specifically look for moments you had — even if it’s just one — that you were glad happened. And when you find that moment in the day, pause mentally and just say to yourself :

“I’m grateful for that.”

That’s it.

Even on a really horrible, tough, gut wrenching, miserable day, there are singular moments that happened in your favor or helped strengthen you to get you through. Something as simple as eye contact with someone who smiled at you. Or chancing into a food that was previously out of stock in the store. Or hearing a bird outside your window singing to remind you that all is well in the world. Or finally carving out time to take a warm bath.

I go chronologically through my day and pause here and there to say “I am grateful for that.”

I generally find I have fallen asleep before I’ve gotten to the end of my day and caught up with my own self, laying in bed that night in my “daily rewind.”

Please try it and see if you enjoy this nightly gratitude practice too.

12. Sleep.

Studies have shown that sleep deprivation is even harder to bear during times of anxiety or stress. So if you are going through a time of stress, it is more important than ever before in your entire life that you sleep well. Your brain must get restorative sleep in order to recover from the stress of the day and prepare for the next day ahead. In fact, sleep is so powerful that it is totally possible to treat anxiety and stress solely through increasing the quality of your sleep.

The timing is perfect for focusing on fixing your sleep, because you can use the fact that the days are getting shorter and night is getting longer to enter a time of restorative hibernation. Your natural desire for earlier sleep onset in the winter can help you shift your routine from staying up late at night to grabbing an earlier bedtime. Literally shifting your bedtime forward by just one hour — just one hour! — is enough to make a measurable improvement in how your body functions the very next day.

If you need some tips on how to get better sleep, here is an article I’ve written for you on correcting your sleep deficit:

Just In Time For Back-To-School: Get Rid of Your Sleep Deficit

For more articles I’ve written on sleep health, click over to read:

• Sleep and Asthma
• Sleep and ADHD
• Sleep and Cancer Recovery
• Sleep and Alzheimers
• Sleep and Weight Gain
• Sleep and Mood Disorders (Anxiety, Depression)
• Sleep and Mental Illness

Sauna + Grounding = A Win-Win Combo To Boost Your Health All Winter Long

14. Body work.

The feeling of worry and stress and anxiety is often the stress of energy that is accumulating in the body without release. I know I personally feel this as a ball of pressure right in my solar plexus, as well as knots along my neck… but it’s different for everyone.

Irritability, crying, headaches, diarrhea, nausea, tension, muscle stiffness, decreased or increased appetite, weight loss or gain, insomnia… often these all represent energy that just needs to be released to make room for the natural healing process and health/hope to return.

If you are feeling stuck and in need of physical release, do any or all of the following to help assist your body in letting go of stress… these are all ways to do body work right in the comfort of your own home:

• deep stretches
• yoga
• guided meditation
• long walks
• massage — foot, neck and hand massages are all massages you can do on your own body to release tension
• heat (hot water bottles are the best!) over tense areas
• water (in the form of showers or baths, as well as increasing hydration by drinking lots of water!)
• orgasm

And, if you feel comfortable heading out to a local practitioner, you can include:

• acupuncture
• qigong
• tai chi
• reiki
• deep tissue massage
• physical therapy

All of these methods of body work will reduce tension, release endorphins, and help lighted your load of stress.

15. Refresh your space.

A symbolic fresh start during times of stress can help you move on and usher in new, positive and hopeful energy. So if you are feeling stressed out and stuck, it might help if you give your living space a re-fresh.

The illusion that things never change can mentally hold you in a place of worry. Release this by making small changes to your living space, clean your living space, changing the energy of the room you are in, physically leaving the space you are in for a breath or two, or using candles/incense/bells/chimes/lighting/a new plant… whatever it takes to feel the energy shift in your space and remind you that nothing…

…NOTHING…

…stays the same forever. This holiday season will soon be over, before you know it. It’s a matter of a few weeks and then next thing you know, we are headed into spring. In the meantime, consider:

• freshen up the plants in each room, repot and water them, add new plants if you don’t have any
• rearranging whatever furniture you can
• clean your living space, room by room, and declutter along the way
• adding a mirror or two to help reflect light around the space
• burning candles of light in the evenings to help create a new warm glow in old, dark and depressing spaces
• go outside to take a deep breath of air
• lighting a smudge stick or burn incense or run a aromatherapy diffuser in your home
• ring a bell or strike a chime while setting a new intention for the space you are in
• move your body to increase circulation and flexibility — find a yoga or stretch video (countless free ones are waiting for you on YouTube right now) to get your body unstuck.

No matter what you do, do something to break the illusion that you are stuck. You are not stuck. You are a new person every single day and every moment within that day. There is always an ebb and a flow of energy through every situation no matter how unchanging it appears on the surface. Remind yourself of this by refreshing your space and feel your levels of stress lighten a bit.

16. Ask for help.

I know, I know, nobody wants to do this and especially at a time when everyone is facing huge challenges, it can be tough to ask someone to help you out. But bonding together, even — and perhaps especially — during the bad times is a game changer.

Of course the typical advice to ask family and friends for simple, actionable things that will help you stands (for example, ask your neighbor to pick up some cereal for you at the store, ask your sister to meet up with to sit outside, drinking some tea or coffee together, and share what your worries and concerns are, asking your old friend to text you every morning when you wake up so you don’t feel so alone, etc…) but people are also willing to help you out even if they don’t know you yet.

Do a search to find contact information and call your local support groups, local food banks, local ministries, local disaster relief and emergency financial assistance (to help pay bills,) join online support groups or enroll in private online counseling, all from the comfort of your own home.

I know I didn’t fully realize how many people I had, providing back up support in my life, until I went through a personal crisis. Some of my most meaningful sources of support during a very overwhelming time in my life were from people I had never ever met before, like the manager at my local bank and the complete stranger who came to pick up the furniture I got rid of as I downsized everything.

If you are having a stressful crisis, ask for help. Ask your neighbor, ask your family, ask your friends. And even if you have none of the above, go out into the world asking for help to show up — find online support, go to your bank and ask to speak to the manager, go to the grocery store and ask to speak to the manager, contact your local utility companies and ask for help, go to the thrift shop or the park and simply make friends. Yes, you can wear your face mask and stand far apart and still make new friends or simply ask for help.

Angels are out there waiting to embrace and help you every single day.

17. Repair your adrenals.

We all know someone’s who’s hair has literally seemed to turn grey overnight from stress… it’s a very real thing. And it actually happened to me! Years ago, my kids and I were unexpectedly abandoned by my then-husband who disappeared one night (and the stressful subsequent divorce that ensued) and that year I got my fair share of grays that seemed to pop up daily — and have remained in place right now, even almost a decade later.

We also know during times of chronic stress, hair can become markedly thinner, falling out strand by strand or in clumps, even clogging your shower drain night after night. This is because your body has hormone imbalance during prolonged stress… a very real result of elevated cortisol, hypothyroid, intestinal malabsorption, leaky gut, and other situations that stem from body’s response in trying to protect you from all the stress in your system.

And now we have an explanation for why our hair mirrors the amount of stress we are going through. Hair, it turns out, keeps a very accurate “stress diary” for us, and analyzing hair strands is actually a wonderful, measurable, non-subjective way to quantify cortisol release in the body.

A study, published in Neuropsychoendocrinology in March 2018, showed that;

• hair samples are a fantastic way to follow cortisol levels and help explain why our hair mirrors the stress that is going on internally in the body, since it collects cortisol in a *hair diary* for us
• therapeutic interventions during and after times of stress and trauma actually help heal the physical body, normalizing cortisol, which is then shown in the hair strands
• and even short term therapy helps significantly!

So what that tells me, is that addressing and treating stress is important, dramatically and measurably corrects your cortisol levels, and is worth examining. So my final tip for you today is to assess your adrenal health. To do just that, I decided to turn my 5 day online Adrenal Repair class into a free book that anyone can download and read.

If you have been through any kind of stressful situation or big life transition or change (even fun, positive ones like marriage, a new job, a new baby!) chances are your adrenals could use some TLC.

If you start to take care of your adrenal rhythm now, in just a few short months from now you can be fully recovered from Adrenal Fatigue and emerge this spring feeling better than you have felt in many many years!

Did you know that you can actually be in adrenal fatigue from birth? It’s true.

But did you also know it’s fully reversible, no matter how long you’ve been living on fumes?

That’s also true, and I will help you get there. Click the button below to order your free copy of my Adrenal Fatigue eBook… it will be instantly emailed directly to you, to keep forever:

I really hope this list of 17 things you can do to release stress and support your health… even in the middle of great personal stress or anxiety… is helpful to you and gives you at least one or two new ideas to consider.

To a decreasing your stress this fall and winter, my friends! (and of course please vote if have not already voted!)

xoxo, Laura