AHHH...STRESS!!!!!!!!

Now that we are nearing the end of the semester, I feel that my stress is at an all time high! Between all of the projects, papers, presentations and exams, and not to mention adding 20 hours of work on top of that, I sometimes don't know how I am going to fit everything in! 
        However, I know too well how important stress management is and how crucial it is to incorporate relaxation activities into my everyday life, no matter how busy I am. In Innovative TR, we discussed a wide variety of relaxation activities to incorporate into our TR programs. 
The main objectives we discussed going over with clients are:

•           Body Awareness
•  Decreasing Stress and Anxiety
• Use as a coping skill
• Transferability into everyday life <------------- SUPER IMPORTANT!!!!!

Skills that a CTRS needs to have to facilitate stress-reduction techniques are:

• A variety of approaches
• Lead by example
• apply to various situations (ex. journaling)
• Develop your own relaxation kit
• Become confident at leading quiet activities

One of the first activities we discussed to use is:

BREATHING, the foundation for all relaxation!

Some things we talked about to make deep breathing exercises successful are to make sure to consider:

• Body posture/position
• Breathing from the diaphragm
• Start simple and progress to different imagery

Progressive RELAXATION, the next phase in stress reduction!

Progressive Relaxation's focus is to tense/relax muscles to move into a deeper state of relaxation. For example, clenching fists, then relaxing them, clenching shoulders, then relaxing them, etc. It helps to reduce tension in all parts of the body!

Some Unique Breathing Exercises that were discussed were the

Yawn/Yell Exercises and Laughter Yoga

Here is a cool video I found on Laughter Yoga featured on CNN!

We also discussed the benefits of Meditation and Guided Imagery for use in TR programs. Some of these benefits include:

• Integration of "all levels" of ability
• Fast results
• Different types/applications to leisure education/recreation participation and rehabilitation

Finally, in class we talked about what type of relaxation program would be beneficial for different specific TR populations. My group discussed how we could design a relaxation program for adults recovering from a spinal cord injury.

We decided that a guided imagery session would be extremely beneficial for them because it would help them de-stress and learn how to calm themselves down while learning to adjust to their new lives after experiencing a drastic change such as having a spinal cord injury. We decided that having calming images of the outdoors/nature and having soothing music would be good to incorporate into the sessions. The goal would be to focus on their breathing and focus on happy memories/positive goals for the future while also working to bring themselves into a relaxed and positive sense of being.

Stress reduction techniques are definitely something that I am going to be using regularly as a future CTRS!