With finals coming around the corner, many students are totally stressing out, so here are a couple of tips to help you de-stress during dead week!
Getting a Good Laugh In
Having a good laugh can always help relieve stress (at least for me). Whether it be getting a good laugh out of a movie or a show or just talking to someone who is funny, you can lower your stress! Laughing out loud can trigger your brain to have more endorphins which improve your mood. It also lowers your body’s stress hormone, cortisol. Why not turn on Brooklyn Nine-Nine and give it a shot?
Taking Deep Breaths
To relax a little, taking a deep breath can help reduce stress. It has been shown to help lower your body’s stress levels which in turn reduces stress and anxiety. Sometimes, taking deep breaths helps you take a break from whatever it is that you’re working on. When you take deep breaths, you also inhale and exhale more air which gets better oxygen flow going through the entire body and the brain, making you more calm.
Getting it Out!
I feel like a lot of time when I am stressed out, the way I am thinking about it and building it up in my head is way worse than what it really is. I always feel better after telling someone about what I am stressed out about and it’s nice to hear that someone understands what you’re going through. It sort of gives us a sense reassurance and can make us feel better. If you don’t feel like talking it out with someone, you can always write it out in a journal!
Listening to Classical Music
Listening to classical music is linked to lowering stress. It can lower your heart rate, pulse, blood pressure, and level of stress hormones. Listening to music can also distract you from what you’re most concerned about by taking you away with the melodies and tunes. Slow music is actually the best choice to achieving lowered stress, but then again, everything works differently for each person so give it a try until it personally works for you!
Adult Coloring Books
Lately, adult coloring books have been extremely popular! Although they may seem a bit childish, coloring actually helps us relieve stress! The action of coloring activates different parts of our brains so the part of the brain that is affected by stress, the amygdala, isn’t as active which makes us less stressed out. Coloring is also associated to that period of childhood when we were not as stressed out so it lowers our stress level. When coloring, we focus on the small tasks, like not coloring out of the lines so it helps us forget what we are actually stressed about. If you do not feel like going out and buying a whole coloring book, there are countless websites online where you can download and print out whatever outlines you want!
Hopefully, these tips are helpful to you and don’t forget to take breaks in between your studies! Your brain really needs a break every so often and it would give you a chance to fuel up for another round of studying. Good luck on finals and have a great time during the last weeks of this fall quarter, Gauchos!