RELAXATION

The ultimate relief for your hectic life.

Do you schedule down time for relaxation in your life? No? Then something seriously needs to change. If you view relaxation as a waste of productivity hours, you have no idea what you’re missing. 

Not only should relaxation be mandatory, but regularly scheduling breaks for yourself will improve your productivity over the long haul allowing you to plug back in when you resume work. 

Need to be sold on the benefits of relaxation in your life? Then let’s check this out!

Relaxation Boosts Your immune System

When you lead a busy life, chances are you don’t take good care of your health. The result may end up being the exact opposite of what you wanted — sick days that leave you unable to do anything. Luckily, some regularly scheduled time for R&R can offset this. We all have hectic periods of our lives, but the important thing is to regularly deprogram. 

Crazy hectic lives that cause sleep deprivation, and high stress is manageable up to 3 months, but after that things can go horribly bad. Take the weekends off, or if you can’t sleep in at least one day per week. Your immune system will thank you.

Relaxation Improves Your Working Memory

The longer you work at a high intensity, the poorer your working memory becomes. You will find yourself making silly mistakes, or getting a little too forgetful for comfort. Even short periods of high stress affect the memory centers of the brain and lessens your effectiveness when you’re under pressure. 

Relaxation allows cortisol (the fight or flight hormone) levels to return to baseline due to the absence pf any pressing matters to deal with. Chronically high levels of stress that result in constant streams of cortisol coursing through the body may also contribute to the development of Alzheimer’s disease  over many years, as it is known to have a strong inflammatory component. 

Relaxation Restores The Motivation Centers Of The Brain

Do you ever notice how your drive to work decreases significantly after doing it repetitively for a period of time? In fact, under the prolonged influence of stress, the motivation center of the brain becomes desensitized to dopamine, limiting your ability to feel motivated, or experience pleasure. 

This also explains why you have no desire to eat, and may resign yourself to hopelessness. Luckily, a well-timed break for relaxation will recharge your batteries. Just keep in mind that there is only so much you can handle under pressure. After all, everyone has a breaking point.

Relaxation Keeps Your Heart Healthy

Sadly, people don’t appreciate the danger that running a hectic life can pose to your heart until it’s too late. Not taking time off to decompress increases your risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke to name a few. Plus, cortisol results in greater retention of sodium and water, putting the heart and blood vessels under stress to pump and move blood. 

Relaxation has been proven to reduce blood pressure, decrease your risk of stroke by promoting vasodilation, and decrease inflammatory processes in blood vessels. 

Relaxation Will Keep You Young

Running a hectic life day after day is a surefire recipe to run your battery down. The greater the impact of the hormones cortisol and adrenaline, the harder and faster your body works to regenerate cells. This faster turnover of cells causes hastened aging, and cuts down your quality of life. This is why it is important to take regularly scheduled breaks from work — go on vacations, kick your feet up on that cruise, or go on that stay-cation, without your computer or work phone.  Just relax! Work will still be there when you get back.

“Life isn't just to be endured, it's to be enjoyed.”

dhf

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