Five 30-Second Emotional-Spiritual Techniques to De-Stress at Work

To reduce the effects of stress in the workplace, take an emotional and spiritual, as well as a physical break, at least every two hours, preferably every hour.

Here are five de-stressors you can do in thirty seconds each...

1. Stretch your hands, arms, and shoulders. In addition to unwinding the kinks, this exercise provides a good warm-up for any of the other emotional exercises. Stand and hold your arms out to your sides so your body and arms form a cross. Gently bend each hand back at the wrist until the fingers point straight upward. Keeping your arms fully extended to the sides, with your fingers still extended upward, twist each hand and arm in a wringing motion as if you were operating a screwdriver.

2. Conscious Breathing: Breathe deeply and slowly. Focus your entire attention on each in-breath and out-breath. Visualize drawing new clean energy in through the top of your head on each in-breath, and expelling old stale energy out the soles of your feet on each out-breath.

3. Inner Smile: While conscious breathing, close your eyes and set the corners of your mouth in just the slightest smile. Visualize your smile growing larger and larger, and your happiness increasing.

4. Release: This exercise releases both your attachment to those things that haunt you, and your attachment to the fear of losing what you do not believe you can live without.

4a. Choose something that is very important to you and that you don't think you could stand to lose - such as your house, your favorite sport, your pet, your relationship with a loved one, your hearing, your eyesight, your life. Visualize your treasure between your hands. Feel intense love and gratitude for every joyful instant that you have spent with your important something. Now slowly raise your hands above your head, spread your hands apart, and RELEASE your treasure back to the Universe. It never belonged to you anyway - it was just on short term loan from Spirit. Choose another important something and release it. For everything important in your life, pick it up, love it, nurture it, give thanks for it, and then release it. Do the same exercise for each person that you have ever loved, and that has passed from this life. Hold them, love them, give thanks for them, and then release them back to the Universe.

4b. Now, release your burdens - your fears, regrets, guilts, shames, embarrassments, angers. One by one, focus on each memory or fear that troubles you, hold it close, then release it back to the Universe. Release each incident from your past that still bothers you. Release each fear - your fears about your health, your family, your job, and every other fear. Breathe deeply, and give thanks.

5. Merging: While conscious breathing, close your eyes and visualize merging with the entire Universe - with each person, each animal, each plant, each bit of everything seen and unseen. Feel a unity with Spirit and all that is.