Your Perception About Stress

Exercise is the one thing that can improve nearly every aspect of your health.

Extensive studies have found that exercise enhances the cardiorespiratory system, increases HDL cholesterol, lowers triglycerides, reduces blood pressure and heart rate, lowers inflammation, and improves blood sugar control.

Research has shown that even a few minutes of exercise leads to benefits.**It’s all about increasing the intensity.**

The ideal exercise for adults are :

• 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise a week, such as running, swimming, brisk walking, cycling, tennis, and doing yark work.
• 2 sessions of about 30 minutes of resistance training a week. Examples include resistance bands, bodyweight exercises like yoga, push-ups and sit-ups, and heavy gardening.

For more intense workout sessions, you should aim for:

• 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise a week.
• 2 sessions of at least 30 minutes resistance training.
• High-intensity exercise should get your heart rate up to 70 to 85 percent of your maximum heart rate.

1. Resilience comes automatically to most of us.
2. It is part of a set of skills and behaviours and not a standalone concept.
3. Resilience is not an individual trait or quality, but dependent on many contextual factors like one’s upbringing, social factors and health conditions.
4. It is not a static concept but a flowing, dynamic process based on our life cycle and external conditions.
5. Resilience does not make a person a superhuman being, and the journey of suffering, misery and pain has to be undertaken.
6. Positivity is one-sided, and running away from negativity does not build resilience.

1. Don’t isolate yourself, but connect with others, and nurture your relationships. One can reach out to others, play and have fun by joining online or offline groups, or while going for a morning walk. One need not wait for a pandemic.
2. Accept what is happening to you(and others) and allow it to exist, while taking affirmative action towards stuff that is in your control.
3. Don’t avoid discomfort, but move towards it occasionally. It’s not always about comfort and convenience.
4. Distance yourself from your thoughts by practicing gratitude journaling, or simply writing on paper what is on your mind.
5. Find growth opportunities in adverse situations by reframing them as a new challenge, something known as Cognitive Reframing.

• The neural circuits in our emotional brain - the limbic system and subconscious memory systems - control our emotional responses in daily life.
• When a stimulus arrives in the brain, it activates either stress-resilient circuits, the internal calmers and healers, or stress-reactive circuits.
• The brain activates the strongest circuit, which controls our responses.
• If the strongest circuit is the reactive circuit, our strong emotions get the upper hand, and the stress interferes with the part of our brain responsible for higher-level thinking and planning.
• The longer the stress-reactive circuit is activated, the more likely they are to activate other stress-reactive wires, which can cause an emotional meltdown of anxiety, numbness, depression, and hostility.

The brain learns to be resilient by being resilient. It takes becoming stressed, then use emotional techniques to change the unreasonable expectations stored in that circuit.

• One technique is to complain briefly. It activates the reactive wire that has encoded an incorrect response.
• Then rapidly express emotions, starting with a burst of anger (which decreases stress). You can then stay present to your strong, negative emotions. Talk to yourself through finishing phrases like " I feel afraid that..." or "I feel sad that..."