Stress: five things you can do

Step by step

1. 1

   Step 1: Move your body a little

   Start with the body, because it is the quickest to answer. Roll the shoulders, turn the head slowly side to side, circle the ankles, open and close the hands, and stretch gently wherever you feel held. Seated is completely fine. You are loosening what the day has tightened, not exercising.

   Learn more: Chair dance for bone and muscle
2. 2

   Step 2: Slow your breathing

   Four or five slow breaths, and make the breath out longer than the breath in. That longer breath out is the part that settles things. If your mind is circling, this is also where the four-step pause fits: stop, breathe, notice what is actually going round, then ask whether you can do anything about it right now.

   Learn more: Worry: a four-step pause when your mind will not stop
3. 3

   Step 3: Put on an old song

   Put on a song from your younger years, not something new. The one that was playing when you were twenty, at a wedding, on the radio in your mother's kitchen. Let it play properly rather than in the background.

   Learn more: Music and memory: why an old song does so much
4. 4

   Step 4: Let it bring something back

   Let the song bring something back, and give it a question to answer. What does this remind me of? How old was I? What was life like then? The remembering is not a detour from the exercise, it is a large part of what makes it work.

   Learn more: Dementia-friendly movement
5. 5

   Step 5: Tell someone

   Tell someone. A friend, a daughter, a neighbour, whoever is nearby or at the end of a phone. Share the memory the song brought back and ask what it brings back for them. A worry carried alone weighs more than the same worry spoken aloud, and this is the step people skip.

   Learn more: Stress: what it is, and why not all of it is bad

All topics in this guide

• Stress: what it is, and why not all of it is bad
• Worry: a four-step pause when your mind will not stop
• Music and memory: why an old song does so much
• Dementia-friendly movement
• Chair dance for bone and muscle
• Sleep & recovery

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