5 ways to nurture yor body and soul!

1. Allow yourself some private time each day, even if it is only a half hour.
2. Take a long walk.
3. Buy a bouquet of flowers for yourself.
4. Begin to develop an intimate circle of friends and family.
5. Turn off the phone and allow your answering machine to pick up your calls.

Nap and Make Love

Don't nap too late in the afternoon, or it may interfere with your sleep at night.
Studies have shown another extra health benefit. People who spent 30 minutes each day napping had one third less heart disease than those who didn't nap.

Make Love
Making love is often overlooked, especially by tired moms, as a great way to relax. Satisfying sex leads to a deep relaxation. If you feel too tired, how about massage?
Touch is a powerful healer.

Meditation Benefits

Meditation reduces your blood pressure, and helps to dramatically reduce your stress level. Meditation or prayer can help bring you back in touch with your spiritual side. It is a very effective method of relaxation, reducing your blood pressure, slowing your breathing, relaxing muscles, and helping to clear your thoughts (resulting in improved concentration.)
To meditate, quiet your mind and allow yourself to focus on one thing, such as your breath, or the flame of a candle. Find a relaxed position where you can remain comfortable. You might try visualizing health and renewal with each inhalation, while you are breathing out all your stress on the exhale. Take in just what you need, and let go of the rest. Bring yourself slowly back, becoming aware of your body and your surroundings, with a sense of peace and renewal.

Sleepy?

Take a Much-Needed Nap

Sleepy?

Find a quiet, comfortable spot and take a short snooze. Allow yourself to really get comfortable.
Even 20 minutes of napping will leave you feeling renewed, focused and more energetic.

Bust Stress with Meditation

MeditateSlow down. Take a 20 minute time-out.
You can meditate at your desk, as well as in a quiet room.
Meditation reduces your blood pressure, and helps to dramatically reduce your stress level. Meditation or prayer can help bring you back in touch with your spiritual side. It is a very effective method of relaxation, reducing your blood pressure, slowing your breathing, relaxing muscles, and helping to clear your thoughts (resulting in improved concentration.)
To meditate, quiet your mind and allow yourself to focus on one thing, such as your breath, or the flame of a candle. Find a relaxed position where you can remain comfortable. You might try visualizing health and renewal with each inhalation, while you are breathing out all your stress on the exhale. Take in just what you need, and let go of the rest. Bring yourself slowly back, becoming aware of your body and your surroundings, with a sense of peace and renewal.

Schedule Your Worry Time, Play, Water Therapy

Have lots of worries and concerns?
Schedule 30 minutes of worry time into your day. Save all your worries for that time.
If worries begin to creep into your thoughts at other times of the day, mentally file them away.
You'll be surprised at how much time this can free up, and how much better you will feel.

Play!
Design a castle
Paint a picture
See how high you can swing.
As adults, we sometimes forget the therapeutic value of play. Play stimulates our imagination, encourages our creativity, boosts our energy, and best of all, is fun.


Try Water Therapy
Let your troubles float away.
Showers and baths are high on the list of best stress relievers. Climb into a warm shower and bath. Make it long and luxurious.
Visualize your cares just going right down the drain.

2 great stress busters

Celebrate Your Friendships
Sit down and indulge in some meaningful conversation with your best friend.
Women find great comfort, support and intimacy in the company of their inner circle of friends.
Friends share not just the triumphs, but the heartbreaking times and the ordinary day-to-day moments that become woven into the fabric of our lives.
"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."
- Anais Nin

Catch a Few Rays
Grab some sunlight.
Spend some time outdoors each day.
The seasonal slump that can result from inadequate sunlight can cause depression and fatigue.
Even on cloudy days, a walk outside will help to recharge your batteries.

Take care of YOU!

Eating well is one of the basics of self-care. Busy moms often forget to eat or they skip meals and then eat whatever is handy.
Complex carbohydrates (whole grain bread, pasta, fruit) gives long-lasting energy, as do protein foods that are low in fat (like broiled chicken or fish.) Foods that are high in fat can be draining because they take more energy for your body to digest.
Feed your soul.
Take Time for YouAllow yourself time alone. Time where you are focusing on yourself.
Find a place in your house where you can go and find solitude. It might be an entire room, or just one area that you have set aside.
Ask your partner to take the rest of the family out for the morning while you stay home and begin to remember what it's like to be all alone.
Do nothing, sleep, watch a love story that nobody else wants to see, read old letters ... Just enjoy your solitude.
Let the day unfold, totally unscheduled.

Moms, eliminate stress by doing this:

Sing.
Dance.
Let the music soothe your soul.
Laugh
Put on a funny video, sit back, and laugh your way to good health.
A good laugh is a potent stress reliever. Laughing stimulates the body to produce hormones that cause the brain to release stress-reducing endorphins.
Even putting a smile on your face when you aren't feeling so happy causes your body chemistry to change for the better, helping to create within you a happier mood.
Comfort Yourself with Rituals
Turn the ordinary into the extraordinary.
Rituals are comforting. Begin to introduce rituals into your everyday life.
A ritual can be as simple as sitting down with your partner and sharing your first cup of coffee in the morning.
Savor Good Food
Feeling frazzled?
Foods affect us emotionally. Low-fat, high carbohydrate foods (such as bagels, popcorn, pretzels, rice cakes) trigger brain chemicals that help to soothe us when we are stressed out.