How to Reduce Stress Today

Ever feel like the only constant in your life is the feeling of being stressed? Whether you’re at work, driving the kids to school, or even trying to relax on the weekends, do you find it hard to just “shake-off” the stress? If you answered yes, you’re not alone. In fact, according to the Huffington Post, 8 in 10 Americans report feeling constantly stressed about their work, and the American Institute of stress reports that 20% of Americans report feeling extremely stressed on a daily basis. This feeling of extreme stress is often accompanied by physical symptoms like shaking, heart palpitations and depression.

A recent report by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Foundation focused on the issue of stress overload in American society. It provided a deeper look into why people report feeling such high levels of stress. According to the study the most common stressors in people’s lives were feeling too burdened by responsibilities and financial problems. Furthermore, those who had dealt with poor health in the past year were twice as stressed as their healthy counterparts.

Interestingly, 14% of those surveyed reported having no stress in their life. When asked about why they experienced no stress, they responded by saying that it was due to their personalities. Thus, even though these people experienced the same life experiences as others, they did not report feeling stressed the way other respondents did.

So what can you do today to get rid of stress from your life? Below, we’ve featured an excerpt from one of Sadhguru’s live talks where he offers a simple solution to this widespread problem:

“Are daily stresses like work and family just a part of life? Is there a way to come out of it?

It is not a question of the nature of the work that you are doing which is causing stress; it is just that you don’t know how to function smoothly within yourself. You have no control over your own system. That is why you are stressful. Have you seen that in many situations, one person may be very stressed out but another person seems to go through it effortlessly? So stress does not come because of the external situation. Stress happens because of your inability to manage your inner situation. If your mind, body, and energies were taking instructions from you and behaving the way you wanted them to, you wouldn’t make yourself stressful no matter what was happening around you, isn’t it?

Your body, mind, emotion, and energies are the vehicles through which you are traveling through your life. Without any understanding, control or subjective experience about them, you are trying to live your life. This is an accidental existence. When you exist accidentally, if you manage to get somewhere in life, it will only be an accident. So you need to do something about this; you need to get a grasp of these four. If this does not happen, you will live life by accident. You will always be hoping that situations will work out well.

Yoga is the science of activating your inner energies in such a way that your body, mind, and emotions function at their highest peak. When your body and mind function in a completely different state of relaxation and a certain level of blissfulness, you can be released from so many things that most people are suffering from. Right now, you come and sit in your office and you have a nagging headache. Your headache is not a major disease but it takes away your whole capability for that day; just that throbbing takes away everything. With the practice of yoga, your body and mind can be kept at their highest possible peak and you can be relaxed all the time.”

If you’re interested in starting out with a simple method to get rid of stress from your life now, try Isha Kriya our free, online guided meditation, and don’t forget to share your experience with us below!