just take a moment & breathe.

Tension appears for a reason. A natural response to pain—both physical and emotional—is to contract. Imagine someone punching you in the stomach. What does your body immediately do? Maybe even the simple act of reading those words is enough for you feel a tiny contraction in your belly. That tension is a form of guarding, a way that your body protects your organs and tissues from more extensive damage. Without an adequate tension response, we leave ourselves open to violations of our boundaries, setting up for chronic exhaustion and ultimately resentment.

Tension isn’t bad.Without it you’d be unable to move or protect yourself. The problem arises when there’s an imbalance between tension and relaxation causing muscular contractions to become chronic, stuck, and painful. The problem arises when we forget how to relax, and even spend our sleeping hours with our fists and jaws clenched.

Learning to let go

There are lots of natural ways to ease tension and help to get the body unstuck. Here are some of the best ones that are safe and easy enough for you to try at home:

1.) Exercise releases endorphins, burns up those stress hormones, invigorates your circulation, and gives your brain a break. Exercise is the best free tension-buster, hands-down. It’s even been shown to be as effective for mild to moderate depression as pharmaceutical drugs.

2.) Greens and grains are both tension-busting, but for different reasons. In the view of traditional Chinese Medicine, greeens help to circulate the qi, or vital force. When your qi gets stuck, you feel tension in the upper back and shoulders, mood swings, and knots in your muscles. Whole grains (and potatoes) are a wonderful source of the precursors to seratonin, one of the neurotransmitters that helps you to relax and feel happy. (Bonus: chewing helps relieve stress, and both whole grains and greens need to be chewed well.)

3.) Lobelia inflata is an incredible herb that you can use topically or internally to relieve tension. Just apply the tincture (tincture = alcohol extract) directly to the tight muscles. For an overall relaxing effect, take a few drops of the tincture in a little bit of water and drink it. Be gentle with the dose, as this is nauseating if you take too much. 5-10 drops should do the trick. (For more about this awesome herb, check out this video.)

Take action and try one of these strategies this week.