Calming Cortisol – three techniques you can use today

The quickest and most effective way to balance your cortisol levels is to calm down – easier said than done I know!

Stress is everywhere in the 21^st century emails, traffic jams, toxins, pollutions, bad foods, annoying colleagues and even the wrong type of exercise.

Whilst you can’t avoid stress what you can do is learn how to quietly and confidently manage it using one or even all of these three techniques.

Yoga

Yoga is the perfect type of exercise for us women of a certain age.

It really helps to calm both your body and your mind and balance your cortisol levels so your menopause symptoms become less intense.

If you enjoy group exercise join a local class.  If you’d rather exercise in the comfort of your own home I’d thoroughly recommend the You Tube channel Yoga with Adrienne.

She even has a workout called Yoga for Mood Swings which is specifically designed to help reduce stress hormones.

Meditation

Meditation is also a form of exercise both for the body and the mind. It’s super relaxing and equips you with a number of calming techniques you can adopt during your day to day life to help keep your menopause symptoms at bay.

I recommend the app Headspace to all my clients. You can download it to your phone for free and it takes just 10 minutes of your time each day.

Breathing

Deep, slow breathing is especially useful for dealing with the stress caused by other people and executed correctly it’s guaranteed to stop a hot flush, anxiety attack or menopausal rage in it’s track.  It can also help with night sweats.

When you feel yourself getting stressed, when you feel your menopause symptoms rising I want to you to breathe deeply – in through the nose and out through the mouth.

Four to six deep belly breaths can be enough to switch off your stress response and switch on your parasympathetic nervous system which serves to slow your heart rate and helps you to power down.

Yes it really is that simple.

Test me on this – next you time you sense a hot flush or rage or anxiety attack building I want you to breathe.

In through the nose and out through the mouth.  Up to 6 times.  And you’ll start to calm down again.

You don’t need to use all three just choose the one that suits you best – for me it’s yoga.

Which will you choose?

Yoga, meditation or deep breathing? Let me know in the comments below.