Stress—it should be a four-letter word. Slipping back into mommy mode after a tricky day in the boardroom is indeed a tough proposition for many overtaxed moms, but we don’t have to let the stress take over our lives. It is possible, using a few basic techniques, to lower your tension levels considerably. For help, we spoke to Tevis Gale, founder of Balance Integration, whose company provides strategies and stress management techniques to tackle work-life balance problems through corporate meditation, on-site yoga, and business coaching. Her practices are stress-relieving, and the classes and workshops she created for the office not only enhance creativity, productivity, and morale, but they are great for co-worker bonding. Life and work may never be fully balanced, but we are the masters of our own day, so why not try to make each one the best it can be? 

“The classes I teach in the workplace are about productivity and bonding with neutral, positive support—it’s not bitching about work,” Tevis says. “A lot of times we get into a negative state around work simply because there are no mechanisms in place to stop and ask ourselves: What is it I am getting burned out about? There is a general lack of awareness of how we manage ourselves correctly. It is about optimizing the human asset. It’s not only the employee’s best interest, but also the company’s best interest.”

Balance Integration’s “Piece Of Mind At Anytime” workshop teaches how to first recognize that you even have stress, something the people that need it most often don’t realize. “We love giving people both the grounding and the practice of how to become present: How do you calm your thoughts? How do you get perspective? How do you back up from a situation and see it for what it is?” Tevis shares. “I call it improving our brain to mouth coordination…or brain to fingers in the case of emails.”

Manage Your Breath
Nine out of ten trips to the doctor are now being attributed to the human stress response. Not only does your short term recall go down when you are stressed, but digestion, circulation, and other body functions are affected when your nervous system is under attack. Even your reproductive system and sleep functions are in distress. “One of the easiest ways to calm your nervous system is by learning to train your breath,” says Tevis. “What is one of the most potentially life threatening experiences a woman can have? Child birth. What do they teach women to do? Breathe. What do they teach athletes to do in the heat of the moment? Breathe. A soldier in combat? They teach them combat breath. This is what science says. If you manage your breath, your nervous system is going to calm down and you will be able to take yourself to an optimized state.”

Quick Desk Side Breathing Tip
1. Put everything down; push your keyboard away.
2. Sit back, relax your arms and body, and soften your eyes—let them go to half mast.
3. Softly feel yourself inhale.
4. Notice how it feels to exhale, then let it feel more velvety.
5. Really observe what the outflow and inflow feels like, very soft and very easy.
6. Repeat five times.

You can do this anywhere—on the elevator, during a meeting, at the dinner table. It can take less than a minute, but you’re expanding awareness and sharpening your attention by keeping your brain from spinning. “What’s practical and critical is that we begin to use these tools to create sustainable success,” Tevis says. “If we are not succeeding sustainably, then it spells disaster for ourselves, our families, and our companies.”

Digging Deeper
Tevis believes that we tax ourselves with social threats and get worked up about things like worrying if our boss likes us, our coworkers respect us, or if our kids are listening to us. It’s the same as before humans were civilized—that fight or flight feeling when adrenaline builds up inside us, and produces the stress hormone, cortisol. When produced too much, it can be detrimental to health, causing high blood pressure, issues with thyroid, and…what we’ve heard on those infomercials…abdominal body fat.

She emphasizes that stress is not a character flaw, it’s a scientific mechanism built into your body. Admitting it is the first step to bringing your system back into equilibrium. The ability to correct it is such a powerful tool. “There are so many phrases we use: ‘Take a deep breath,’ ‘Give me some breathing room,’ ‘Waiting with baited breath’…. They are really embedded in our collective wisdom and culture, but we have forgotten to use them as strategic tools,” she says.

Solutions To Common Scenarios

• You are in the middle of a super stressful meeting and you are finding that you can no longer concentrate, let alone contribute due to the level of your stress. What can you do? Try the breathing exercise discussed earlier. “In this situation, your adrenaline response sent a ton of blood to various muscles. We tend to have a clenching pattern; it could be your jaw, your fist, your belly…the breathing helps, but also notice your physical response and consciously let that clenching go,” Tevis says.
• You are finding that you are lashing out at your kids and husband over the littlest things because you are harboring work stress issues. How can you prevent this? “It’s really the question of catching yourself and staying present state of your being in the midst of everything you do,” she shares. “Red-lining—having an extreme emotion coming from a very reactionary state—is the perfect moment to stop and do what your grandmother told you: Take a moment and count to ten and do it with an awareness of your state of being.”

De-Stressing In-Office Poses

• In your office chair, put your hands behind you on each side of the back of the chair. Scoot forward and make sure your hips are in line with your knees, which are lined up with your feet. Let your chest fall forward, keep your chin in and to open up the chest, and take a deep breath in. Exhale and release. This will un-do your office posture.
• Spinal exercises are good for reviving and are opening. Take your left ankle and cross over right knee. Bring right hand over to your left knee and twist. Take your left hand to the back and secure yourself with the back of the chair. Draw your chin in, keep your eyes soft, and think of it like you are wringing yourself out like a washcloth. “Take all that work stress, and wring it out,” Tevis says. Inhale and as you exhale, squeeze that twist a little bit deeper and imagine any excess stress going out of you. Release slowly and do the other side.
• Take a walk around the office, even if it’s just to the water cooler and back, every 45 minutes. Our bodies need movement.
• When you are washing up in the bathroom at work or moisturizing your hands at your desk, take those deep breaths in and out. During these “rituals,” try a relaxing lotion like White Tea Whipped Body Lotion from The Healing Garden. The scent has soothing abilities and can further enhance your de-stress moment.

Taking responsibility for our patterns of being is the way to tackle stress. It’s up to you what kind of day you are going to have by the actions you take. With these simple steps, you can create the cushion between work and home.

Tevis Gale is a pioneer in the field of worklife satisfaction. She founded New York-based Balance Integration Corporation, providing worklife balance and creativity tools to maximize human assets in corporate America.