Smartphones and screens serve many essential roles in our lives. Although we sometimes seek to reduce screen time, today--we’re encouraging it! There are a slew of science-inspired mobile applications and websites available to teach us ways to manage stress, anxiety, and worries.
Strengthening our body’s natural relaxation response is a science-proven way to improve our quality of life, reduce stress, and build resilience to face new and ongoing challenges.
A bit of science.
When we experience stress, our bodies trend toward sympathetic nervous system activation, commonly referred to as the fight or flight response. The fight or flight response is caused by a series of hormonal and physiological changes in our body. You might recognize it as an increase in your heart rate, blood pressure, respiration rate, sweating, and muscle tension.
Our stress response is designed to help us respond quickly and effectively to life-threatening emergencies. However, this same response occurs in non-life threatening situations, like job or school distress, anxiety, family strain, financial difficulty--I'm sure we can all imagine the many varied stressors we experience. When our stress response is activated more often than it should be, it results in negative impacts on our medical and mental health and wellbeing.
Ok. My stress response is over-active. What do I do about it?
The good news is that we all have the ability to learn techniques to trigger our body's relaxation response. You may have already found that listening to music, working out, reading, or spending time with friends supports your relaxation response.
Targeted, and science-supported relaxation interventions include mindfulness, yoga, biofeedback, and diaphragmatic breathing, among others.
Digital relaxation resources for the whole family
Resources for kiddos between the ages of 5–10 years:
hint: click on each of the bolded exercises to play the associated audio file
Resources for adults and adolescents:
Guidelines for using digital resources for relaxation
Find a comfortable place in the house or outside (e.g. porch, blanket on the lawn) that is relatively free from distractions.
Turn off the tv. Silence phone calls. Put away the video games.
Ambiance matters: some appreciate playing calming music in the background or scent (e.g., light a candle or diffuse essential oils)
Practice just a few minutes a day for a couple days each week and build up to a few minutes of daily practice.
After practice — give yourself or your child praise for try something new and for your/their active efforts in supporting health and wellbeing.
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