set up a home spa to relieve stress

Set Up a Soothing Home Spa Experience
By Elizabeth Scott, M.S., About.com Guide
Updated April 02, 2006

About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by the Medical Review Board

If you’re as busy and stressed as most of us, you may not take time out for self care very often. However, personal pampering has many stress relieving benefits, and should be incorporated as part of a low stress lifestyle. If you don’t have the budget for a high end spa, you can create a relaxing home spa experience for yourself. The following are some basic elements to include in creating a home spa experience that will melt away stress and leave you feeling pampered and relaxed.

Difficulty: Easy

Time Required: 30 Minutes to One Hour

Here's How:

1. Privacy: Perhaps the most important part of the home spa experience is being sure you have some uninterrupted time for just you. If you have to hop out of the tub to circumvent a catastrophe with your toddler or answer a string of calls, you may end up feeling even more tense! So make arrangements for some uninterrupted solitude, let the phone go to voice mail, and prepare to indulge.
2. Music: If you can arrange to have music in your bathroom, you’ll be glad you did. The right soothing melodies can help melt away the stress, make you feel more removed from reality, and, if you live with others, drown out the household sounds that may remind you of everything else going on, taking your attention away from the here and now of your home spa experience.
3. Lighting: You’d be surprised at how lighting can create a stress-relieving mood. Lighting the room with candles can fill the area with a soothing scent and create a very relaxing atmosphere.
4. Bath Products: You can go a long way in creating a luxurious bath with a few helpful products. Lavender-scented bubble bath, for example, uses the power of aromatherapy to soothe you. Body scrubs are used in spas to exfoliate skin, and can be used at home as well. There are also skin-moisturizing oils you can add to your bath to nourish your skin and make the pampered feeling last.
5. Beauty Treatments: While you’re relaxing, you may as well get more beautiful! Putting a conditioning treatment in your hair and a purifying masque on your face can make your face and scalp feel good and leave you looking more beautiful afterward. Rubbing your dry skin with a loofah and scrubbing calloused feet with a pumice stone can be a little more work, but you’ll love the results, and it’ll only take a few minutes.
6. After Tub Care: You may want to follow up after you get out of the tub by applying a rich conditioning cream to your skin and a coat of nail polish to your toes. Again this will keep you feeling more pampered between spa treatments.
7. Massage: You may think a home spa treatment can’t include a massage, but it can! If you can’t enlist the soothing hands of a partner, you can use a self-massager to do the same job: loosen up tight muscles, promote circulation, and make you feel great. Or, if you’re really in the mood to indulge, you can even hire a professional massage therapist to come to your house!

Tips:

1. Block off a specific amount of time for yourself. Sometimes busy people have a hard time just doing nothing because we can think of so many other things that need doing. If this break is scheduled to be a specific length, you may feel more entitled to just enjoy it.
2. Try to do this on a regular schedule, like once a week or twice a month. With repetition, you may see your spa time making a significant impact on your overall stress level!
3. Don’t feel guilty for taking some time for yourself—you deserve it!

What You Need:

* A bathroom,
* A tub.
* Some privacy.

MY THOUGHTS

believe me. it works. it can be done at home. you may have to make some adjustments- especially if you don;t have a tub and a partner. doing the rest still works.

gardening for stress relief

Gardening for Stress Relief
How and Why Gardening is a Natural Stress Reliever
By Elizabeth Scott, M.S., About.com
Updated: November 06, 2007

About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by the Medical Review Board

Planting a beautiful garden can be a great way to relive stress! Whether you have a small patio to decorate, or a vast amount of space to tend, the act of making your particular stretch of nature into a haven can be a stress reliever in itself, and the garden that you create can bring you even more peace. Here’s why:

* Sunlight: Just getting out in the sunlight can actually improve your mood! (In fact, there’s a condition called Seasonal Affective Disorder that affects some people during Winter months when there is less sunlight.) Sunlight also provides an influx of vitamin D, and the fresh air that that goes with it is good for your health. Getting outdoors to work with your garden is a great excuse to get more of this good stuff.

* Getting In Touch With Nature: Being in touch with nature and the great outdoors can help you feel more removed from the stressors of daily life. With the amount of time we spend indoors (at work, watching t.v., etc) many people feel an urge to connect with nature that goes unfulfilled. While you may not have the time to go camping or take a nature hike each day, having your piece of nature right outside your back door can help you feel some of this connection.

* Creating Beauty: The beauty of nature is a great stress reliever in itself. (Just think of how many times relaxation has been connected with pictures of stunning landscapes or recordings of nature’s sounds.) Having your own bit of beauty available as a place for meditation, contemplation and relaxation can provide quite a bit of relief from stress. It’s all part of making your home a haven from stress.

Getting Started
Given the size of space you have to work with, your personal tastes and the amount of time and money you can devote to the worthwhile and fun project of fixing up your piece of the outdoors, you have many, many options to choose from. Getting started might seem a little intimidating, but finding a few good books or magazines on gardening can give you lots of information and ideas to work with. There’s also a great site on the About network devoted to gardening. It’s got plenty of wonderful information and free resources. Here are a few that can help you get going:

* Landscaping For Beginners: This thorough article lets you know the basics, and is a relatively quick read.

* Landscaping Design Ideas: A Photo Gallery: This gallery can give you ideas of what you like and what you don’t like in landscape design, so you can start envisioning what you want for your own home.

* Free Landscaping E-Course: This e-course has daily lessons that continue for several months, to teach you little-by-little about landscaping and transforming your own yard into your ideal haven.

Once you’ve started, you should find that the act of creating a garden can bring you peace, and the garden itself can bring you joy! Have fun.

MY THOUGHTS

I love plants. I love gardens. Unfortunately, it's not mutual. Give me a beautiful plant and for sure, I'll be left with the pot in a few weeks. But I agree that gardening can relive us of stress. If gardens can calm us down then gardeing can do more for our stress relief.