Guest Post by Kelly Kilpatrick

The use of therapeutic massage to reduce stress and anxiety levels is a fairly common practice in the United States and around the world. Using massage as a means to achieve this end has grown in popularity in recent years, and finding a licensed massage therapist near you should be a fairly easy task. There are several ways therapeutic massage helps to reduce your stress and anxiety levels, several of which will be explored in this article.

You can survive without food for weeks, without water for days but without oxygen for only minutes! But most of us spend very little time thinking about our breath. As the Oxford University Press reminds us, "In earlier years breathing was synonymous with life itself, for with the 'last breath' its absence signified death and departure of the soul." Similarly, in yoga, the Sanskrit word for breath is prana, which also means life force energy.

 
When we bring our consciousness to our breath, we slow down and we begin to realize the deeper layers of ourselves, our thoughts and feelings. Did you know that when we are under stress some of us actually hold our breath? Other times, we just breath very shallow. We are unconsciously stopping our life force and causing even more stress in our body. If you start practicing conscious breathing (purposefully focusing on and noticing your breath) your body will relax and the mind will become more focused.

Your stress levels affect your breathing, but by changing your breathing you can flip things around and affect your stress levels - here’s how…

For many of us modern life equals chronic stress. We live with stress daily, we accept it as normal and when we talk to each other of our pressures and concerns we say: “tell me about it!” In other words, I have my worries and you have yours and such is life. But over time, chronic stress eats away at us from the inside, it makes our muscles rigid and tense, it weakens our digestive system, and impairs our immune response.

When Stress Feels Normal