In this article
we have suggested 7 ways to go on a vacation without you leaving your
desk. Interesting isn’t it? Researchers have analyzed an easy way
of doing this. The following would illustrate their suggestions.
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1. The Breath Break:
Here’s about the simplest, cheapest vacation you’ll ever take.
For two minutes, just breathe. Take air way down into your belly. You
should actually be able to feel your stomach rise with the intake of
breath. But haven’t you been breathing already? Sort of. But as
you hurry, and as you feel the pressure build inside you, your breath
becomes shallow, and you don’t get the oxygen you need. You’ll
especially notice this when you have to speak in front of a group. Your
voice rises and gets squeaky, and your throat becomes dry and sore.
To combat the ill effects of this oxygen debt, you don’t have to
empty your mind or chant mantra or wrap yourself into a yoga position.
All you have to do is breathe deeply and slowly for a couple of minutes
three, four, even five times a day. In private, with your feet up and
your eyes closed would be nice, of course, but you can take a breath
break in the middle of a meeting, behind the wheel of the car, or on
the phone. Nobody needs to know you’re sneaking oxygen.
2. The Continental
Drift:
Think of a place of perfect contentment in your life, “your own
special island”, as Bloody Mary signs in ‘South Pacific’.
Harken back to a time when you were truly relaxed and at peace. Or create
an imaginary oasis. Then go there for two minutes. Shut everything else
out, close your eyes and create the scene in your mind. See, hear, feel.
Let warmth and peace wash over you. You’ll return refreshed after
just a couple of minutes, and you’ll know you can go back again
soon.
3. Pack up your
troubles:
Something bothering you? Get rid of it. Picture your nemesis, hot branding
iron in hand, sneering at you, ready to poke and prod. If your anger
and frustration has an abstract source give it specific shape. Lack
of time making you crazy? Picture a clock gone berserk, its hands spinning
out of control. Or make time into a huge Indiana Jones style boulder.,
rolling towards you with desperate speed.
Then put the image into a bubble and imagine the bubble floating slowly
up and away, becoming smaller and smaller until it finally disappears.
Action movie alternative: Forget the gentle bubble stuff. Blow your
troubles to smithereens. Hey? Are you starting to enjoy this? Great,
That’s what vacations are for.
4. The Shoulder
shrug:
We tend to take out our tensions on specific parts of our bodies. Shoulders
are one of the researchers favorite targets. Without knowing your doing
it, you tend to tense your shoulders as you work. If you don’t
catch yourself at it, you end up with a sore neck and shoulders and
a pounding headache. You can break the tension, save your shoulders,
and avert the headache by remembering to relax your shoulders and rotate
them slowly and gently for a couple of minutes. On particularly bad
days, the results are dramatic. Your shoulders seem to drop several
inches, and a smooth warmth flows up your neck. You never even realize
how tense you are until you unclench your muscles and relax.
5. The phrase
for the day:
This one takes a bit of preparation, but it’s well worth the effort.
Collect pithy bits of wisdom, interesting observations, and intriguing
fragments of ideas, funny phrases, anything that snags your fancy. You
can catch them everywhere from the media, from conversation, from your
own boundlessly creative and endlessly curious mind. Get in the habit
of jotting them down as you run across them. When it’s time for
a break, pull one of your gems out, read it a couple of times and let
yourself chew on it for two minutes. Don’t direct your thoughts.
Just let them wander where they will.
6. The object
of your affection:
Hold a picture of a person you treasure, an object that has special
meaning for you, or a talisman (like that lucky silver dollar you’ve
lugged around with you for years.). Spend two minutes with it, again
letting your thoughts roam. These six work for most of the people. What
might work for you? Why not take a two minute break and jot some ideas
down?
7. Advance Resting
technique, for the gifted and talented:
Combine the breathing with any other relaxation activity. Close your
eyes for two minutes and just breathe slowly. Do not think of anything
else and do no think of your troubles. Get the work tensions out of
your mind and just keep a blank mind. Just breathe in slowly first and
then breathe deeply for two minutes. The fresh air that you consume
will give you the extra energy that you need and would get you zapped
up with your enthusiasm level.
Why the two-minute
break works:
Will a two minute
break really do you any good?
Yes. It really will. But you may feel uncomfortable breathing from your
stomach the first few times, and you may not notice the effects right
away. But if you stick with it, you will definitely feel the difference.
Here’s why?
As you come under
fire in the daily wars, your body instinctively reacts tensing muscles
and doling out emergency rations of adrenaline and other natural uppers,
getting you ready to fight your enemies or run away from them. These
automatic responses will work against you when you’ve got no one
to fight and nowhere to run.
These reactions
can build on themselves, and you can get caught in a dangerous loop.
You sense danger, and your body responds. That response in turn seems
to verify the perception of danger and triggers still more response.
No wonder you can’t relax at the end of the day! But the cycle
can work for as well as against you. If you can relax your body, slowing
down your breathing, calming your heart, by taking a two minute break,
your panic will subside. You will regain focus, clarity and energy.
Researchers have
assured that these techniques have helped people to a great extent.
You can prove that they work for you by trying them for a period before
drawing any conclusions about their effectiveness. Break your day with
three or four of these short breaks for about say three weeks and see
if you notice the difference. But here’s a warning, you won’t
remember to rest on your own.
You are going to have to build these breaks into your daily routine,
and you’ll probably even need to plant reminders in the form of
a note in the briefcase, a Post it on the refrigerator, an alarm clock.
(Setting an alarm to remind you to rest!? Whatever works) If you hang
around a computer most of the day as people these days do, you might
be able to program your inanimate partner to remind you, with a beep
or a scroll line (“Don’t forget to relax”) or some such.
How about it? Are you willing to try? You have nothing to lose but tension
and that ‘quiet desperation’ that has been chasing us all
these years.
Researchers have
suggested these techniques as it has been tried and tested by various
people. These methods have been proved very effective and help people
reduce their tensions and manage their time effectively and efficiently.
A research conducted in the business city of the United States of America
has proved that 8 out of 10 people have been benefited by trying out
the above mentioned techniques. You can also get benefited. Start Now.
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