The Power of Relaxation - How do you ease the mind?

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Foler

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Thread title may need to be reworked.

I don’t think this thread topic fit exactly into other threads and I think it’s a big enough topic to warrant it’s own thread.

What have you found in life that helps you with relaxing your mind, easing anxiousness and stress? I’m curious if anyone has tried any of the following and what their experience is - sauna (red light, traditional, etc), steam rooms, sensory deprivation tanks, hot plunge, hot tubs, meditation, mindfulness, massage, light therapy, yoga, etc.

We’ve touched on this in adjacent threads - things like exercise and supplements and the positive effect they can have on well-being.

I’ll tag Gurgeh Gurgeh because I feel like you would be someone who’s done research into this. Will also tag Cukernaut Cukernaut since he’s been on a journey of healthmaxing
 
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fred sanford

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Personally, I find something that completely occupies my mind outside of everything else. If you can take your focus off work/chores/whatever for a while, it helps a lot with mood and feeling better mentally. In my case, it's golf. I often refer to it as therapy when I tell my wife I'm heading to the range. Like most amateur golfers I have a lot of room for improvement, and I really enjoy it. So going to the range and working on my game for a good two hours once or twice a week clears my head because when I'm there I only think about golf.

I have a coworker who swears by saunas and cold plunges, which I'm sure are good for the body, but even while you're doing that your mind may be occupied by personal issue/work/etc.
 
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Tuco

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There's a few things I find immensely relaxing, for example, sitting in my zero-g chair Amazon.com on my deck listening to whatever audio book I'm listening to.

But I think one skill I've developed is getting *really* good at mental compartmentalizing. This is probably a specifically defined thing I don't know the definition of, but I think of it as being able to forcefully suppress certain thoughts from entering my brain. For example, when I go home from work I almost never think about work. If I have some drama with someone or some event that's bothering me I'm able to consider it, absorb what's useful and then not think about it.

If there's some project that requires some thought I'll consider it in different mental states (ex: waking up, going to bed, showering, driving, etc.) to attack the problem at multiple angles and then put the problem down until it's time to decide or move forward with it. Sometimes this is easier if I write down my thoughts to just get it out of my brain.

This is hardest when I'm in new situations. For example, buying my first house was super stressful because of all the new information, high stakes and new modes of drama that mentally overwhelmed me.
 
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Gurgeh

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Foler said:
Thread title may need to be reworked.

I don’t think this thread topic fit exactly into other threads and I think it’s a big enough topic to warrant it’s own thread.

What have you found in life that helps you with relaxing your mind, easing anxiousness and stress? I’m curious if anyone has tried any of the following and what their experience is - sauna (red light, traditional, etc), steam rooms, sensory deprivation tanks, hot plunge, hot tubs, meditation, mindfulness, massage, light therapy, yoga, etc.

We’ve touched on this in adjacent threads - things like exercise and supplements and the positive effect they can have on well-being.

I’ll tag Gurgeh Gurgeh because I feel like you would be someone who’s done research into this. Will also tag Cukernaut Cukernaut since he’s been on a journey of healthmaxing
Click to expand...
Honestly that's not something I like to talk about, never made a post about it.

I had some serious anxiety problem during covid first lockdown, which caused a cascade of problems. I had multiples panic attacks, the kind were you really think you're dying. It was really crippling.

The quick fixes I found to manage those were breathing exercices and sleepless night. Sleepless night kinda "reseted" my brain. That was not fixing the root problem, and they kept coming, but it made them way more manageable.

That caused me to start looking into health in general. To make it short the long term fix for me was walking outside as much as possible, on average walking 90 minutes in the wild a day sometimes up to 5/6 hours of walking, also I do not sit until I absolutely have to, and fortunately that's not a lot, most days I won't be sitted for more than 2 hours. Red light/IR and vit D in winter made quite clearly a difference.

I suspect losing weight and eating much much less refined sugar made a difference as well, but that's harder to tell.

I discovered fasting 6 months into that shitshow, and just intermittent fasting was significantly decreasing the stress.

I'm glad this is entirely behind me, but if you're suffering from depression, anxiety, I think there's no easy fix, you need to work on both the mind and the body, it's a long term fight. I think a good way to fight anxiety, stress, depression is just to look at what is good for the heath in general, and it will help with it.
 
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Druss

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Gurgeh said:
Honestly that's not something I like to talk about, never made a post about it.

I had some serious anxiety problem during covid first lockdown, which caused a cascade of problems. I had multiples panic attacks, the kind were you really think you're dying. It was really crippling.

The quick fixes I found to manage those were breathing exercices and sleepless night. Sleepless night kinda "reseted" my brain. That was not fixing the root problem, and they kept coming, but it made them way more manageable.

That caused me to start looking into health in general. To make it short the long term fix for me was walking outside as much as possible, on average walking 90 minutes in the wild a day sometimes up to 5/6 hours of walking, also I do not sit until I absolutely have to, and fortunately that's not a lot, most days I won't be sitted for more than 2 hours. Red light/IR and vit D in winter made quite clearly a difference.

I suspect losing weight and eating much much less refined sugar made a difference as well, but that's harder to tell.

I discovered fasting 6 months into that shitshow, and just intermittent fasting was significantly decreasing the stress.

I'm glad this is entirely behind me, but if you're suffering from depression, anxiety, I think there's no easy fix, you need to work on both the mind and the body, it's a long term fight. I think a good way to fight anxiety, stress, depression is just to look at what is good for the heath in general, and it will help with it.
Click to expand...


Watch the video, Diet seems to have a massive affect on some peoples mental health. Just a thought, not sure if any of you have seen this, it was really amazing to me to hear how much diet can affect a persons mental health. This video is about more serious MH issues but i think its worth at least considering that diet could help with any kind of MH issue to start with.
 
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Foler

Asshat Foler

2024 FoH Asshat
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Gurgeh said:
Honestly that's not something I like to talk about, never made a post about it.

I had some serious anxiety problem during covid first lockdown, which caused a cascade of problems. I had multiples panic attacks, the kind were you really think you're dying. It was really crippling.

The quick fixes I found to manage those were breathing exercices and sleepless night. Sleepless night kinda "reseted" my brain. That was not fixing the root problem, and they kept coming, but it made them way more manageable.

That caused me to start looking into health in general. To make it short the long term fix for me was walking outside as much as possible, on average walking 90 minutes in the wild a day sometimes up to 5/6 hours of walking, also I do not sit until I absolutely have to, and fortunately that's not a lot, most days I won't be sitted for more than 2 hours. Red light/IR and vit D in winter made quite clearly a difference.

I suspect losing weight and eating much much less refined sugar made a difference as well, but that's harder to tell.

I discovered fasting 6 months into that shitshow, and just intermittent fasting was significantly decreasing the stress.

I'm glad this is entirely behind me, but if you're suffering from depression, anxiety, I think there's no easy fix, you need to work on both the mind and the body, it's a long term fight. I think a good way to fight anxiety, stress, depression is just to look at what is good for the heath in general, and it will help with it.
Click to expand...
Thanks for sharing. I’ve found your thoughts/recommendations around this in the past to be very insightful and improving my health has helped significantly. I think may give red light therapy a shot.
 
Izo

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big fucking deal bfd GIF

Alternate left and right. You'll feel better.
 
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