Hello everyone, can someone help me to learn how to control my stress and negative emotions after hard and over-intensive day? 
I am a first year master degree student, also I work on two job places, so at the end of day I am completely exhausted, stressed and cannot found enough positive emotions and strength for my family and loved people 
I am quite active person, but such lifestyle is destroying me I wish I could find a way to relax and calm my nerves, so I could be gentle and nice to people over me. I absolutely have NO TIME and NO spear money for any specialists or procedures, so I guess I need something so I could use or do at home. I will be so appreciate to everyone who can help me with my situation. Thanks!
After working so hard at two places, it is amazing to know that you did not get sleep instead get negative ideas.
What Job you doing?
What negative emotions you are passing through?
From your post it sounds like you need to change your lifestyle first. You are asking more from your bodymind than it can cope with. It you don’t listen to these early signals, they are likely to become bigger. In other words, you will get more stress. If you don’t listen too that either, your system will eventually shut itself down as a merciful act of self-preservation.
You do need to make time for some relaxation. That could be any of your favorite activities (time with family, walking outdoors, etc). If you are looking for a yoga solution, the easiest way is to join a local hatha yoga class. That will take you an hour a week. If you cannot spare an hour a week, please look at the first paragraph again. If you cannot find a local yoga class, at least learn how to do abdominal breathing in savasana (lying down of the floor) and some very easy yoga routines (like the [COLOR=purple][FONT=Verdana]joint freeing series[/FONT][/COLOR]). About half an hour of daily practice will balance your nervous energy.
First and foremost, adapt your lifestyle and keep regular hours (“early to bed, early to rise” at the same time every day, regular meals, enough time for your family and favorite activities).
If you need personal advice, your college must have free of charge mentors. They often have very cheap yoga lessons too.
First learn to control your time again in your life, in other words make time, find time, stop saying you have no time as it becomes your reality. Once you have time, then you can start to invest in practices/people to lead you to greater relaxation.
[FONT=Verdana]We may never have enough time for everything we want to accomplish in life, so it is important that we spend the time we have wisely.[/FONT]
[QUOTE=dolcevita5;30145]Hello everyone, can someone help me to learn how to control my stress and negative emotions after hard and over-intensive day? I am a first year master degree student, also I work on two job places, so at the end of day I am completely exhausted, stressed and cannot found enough positive emotions and strength for my family and loved people I am quite active person, but such lifestyle is destroying me I wish I could find a way to relax and calm my nerves, so I could be gentle and nice to people over me. I absolutely have NO TIME and NO spear money for any specialists or procedures, so I guess I need something so I could use or do at home. I will be so appreciate to everyone who can help me with my situation. Thanks![/QUOTE]
Well this is a Yoga site so I will just say stand in Tadasana (mountain) and breath. Let your thoughts come and naturally go and don’t focus on them, just watch them pass by
Or if you prefer a Chinese martial Arts or Qigong view (I have much more experience in that) Stand in Wuji or Zhan Zhuangand breath. Let your thoughts come and naturally go and don’t focus on them, just watch them pass by.
Take about 5 minutes at first and build to 15 to 20 minutes. Don’t rush it, just take the time. I tend to be incredibly busy at times myself but I can generally find 5 to 20 minutes.
Hi dolcevita5,
let’s assume that you cannot change your way of life right now. Still some things can be done to improve your situation:
It sounds like you are feeling guilty about how you interact with your loved ones and that it’s that what bothers you most about your situation. In that case, you are obviously a nice person and one thing to do - and you might already have done it - is to simply bring this up and talk to them openly. Just tell them how you feel and why you feel that way and that some bad mood and the currently low compassion-expression has absolutely nothing to do with them, but only with your energy-status. Tell them how unhappy you are about how things are going right now, tell them that you’re looking for ways to get better and tell them that you care about them a lot, even if you cannot show it that well right now. Everyone should know such moods and situations and therefore everbody should understand you. This might relieve (all of) you a lot already.
What you are now looking for are ways to increase your energy-level. The most obvious source of energy is? Food. If you’re living a very busy life it’s likely that you eat accordingly. If so, change that. Eat extra healthy, stay away from anything that it unhealthy, like coffein, nicotin, alcohol and so on. Well, at least try to, if it’s pretty difficult to overcome an addiction in the middle of a stressful period of one’s life. But reduce where possible. Have a lot of fruits and veggies and juices to get those vitamins, drink liters of mineralwater, eat food that provides energy like pasta, bread, soja. If you’re a meat-eater, eat birds and fish instead of cows and pigs to stay away from too much fat. Quitting meat is a good idea too, but you have to invest some additional time to find out how to feed yourself without it, so maybe start with reducing meat. Very important: Eat consciously whenever you can, instead of stuffing a burger down that throat on a way, sit down and focus on eating, chewing, swallowing, digesting.
Up to here it shouldn’t cost you any much time, but if you wish to establish a Yogic practice, obviously you need some of that, so if you really have “NO TIME” I can only suggest that you fit some relaxation and conscious deep breathing into possible breaks. But it sounds like you actually do have some at home-time so let’s see what you can do with that:
If you only have something like 15 minutes per day I suggest you do deep and conscious relaxation in Shavasana. That’s fairly simple, you lay down on your back on a hard ground, like a Yoga-mat, carpet, towel - your bed or the couch is not so good, but you can even do it there, even before falling asleep. Lay down there, find a position that is comfortable and then start relaxing all parts of your body. Just go to each part with your consciousness and tell it to relax. Do so not only with muscles, but with anything you got, bones, organs, skin, nerves. Begin with the muscles and observe how these relax and then “apply” that impression to what isn’t a muscle. I usually begin with my head, relax my tongue, facial muscles, my eyes and then work my way downwards to the toes. Very important are the shoulders, these harden in stressful situations, so spend a lot of time there. Every now and then unfocus your consciousness and try to feel your whole body and how it’s all relaxed on the ground and deepen that impression. There’s a lot to read about this, go get some more information if you find the time.
Try to establish the relaxation-thing as a daily ritual (same place, same time), everybody should have 10 or 15 minutes to do it - doing it longer is obviously better, but: It’s not a nap-like procedure, you are making an effort, so do not use it to sleep or drift away with your thoughts. Then it will provide you with amazing results, if you do it right, already on the first day. But it might be hard to let go right away, so if it doesn’t work instantly, don’t give up! One neat thing about it is, that you will have your mind and thoughts off your problems and all those sources of your stress, that alone is very healthy. It’s much better than watching TV, which usually comes with only more exciting content - that’s actually a suggestion of it’s own, stay away from such input and if you have to use the telly to calm down from a busy day, don’t watch anything war, horror, action, shooting, but light comedies, maybe something inspiring, like films about religious icons, artists, and such.
If you have some more time, try to establish an Asana-practice. This will cost you some time of research, though, do not simply mimic what you see on a picture, but inform yourself about every pose and how it’s done properly. There are tons of information available for free, I’d suggest you stay away from modern approaches and stick to the traditional methods that have proven themselves millions of times. If you can spend some cash, I recommend the books “Light on Yoga” or (more descriptive) “The Path to Holistic Health” by B.K.S. Iyengar and the DVD “Maha Sadhana Level 1” by Dharma Mittra. At least the books should be available in any public library around the globe and you can throw the pages you need on a photocopier and get the information for a few cents. Following the courses is a good start for a beginner, with time you will find out which postures do you good and best; personally do I find inversions very refreshing (shoulderstand, forward bend, anything where the head is somewhat hanging down and the brain gets an extra supply of blood).
If you do Asanas, make sure to end each session with at least 10 minutes of deep relaxation in Shavasana! Very important, so if your time is limited, do not do Asanas instead of not doing Shavasana. It’s, though, best to do both.
However: Beginning an Asana-practice can be quite an effort and can start out straining. But after a few weeks, when you’ve created a first ground of strength and flexibilty, you will step off the mat refreshed and energized, so it’s not comparable to a “workout”.
Overall: Try to keep a positive mindset, accept what you cannot change and do not become desperate. Attitude is everything. 
How much time each day are you able and willing to commit/dedicate yourself to in order to accomplish the goal you are outlining?
gordon
[QUOTE=Yoga & Unity;30147]After working so hard at two places, it is amazing to know that you did not get sleep instead get negative ideas.
What Job you doing?
What negative emotions you are passing through?[/QUOTE]
I am working in office with computer, also all my studying at home is with computer, so I basically leave in web world, which is so hard and exhausting.
[QUOTE=InnerAthlete;30183]How much time each day are you able and willing to commit/dedicate yourself to in order to accomplish the goal you are outlining?
gordon[/QUOTE]
At the moment I am not sure that I have any of time, may be max 15-20 min for myself. But after 2 weeks I will have a summer break in my university, so I will have much more time “free”, that I could spent on me. But I really want to learn to spent these hours properly, if you know what I mean not to waist this time on nothing.
Thank You to all of you, who are participating in this discussion and spending your time for helping me… it is so kind of all of You!!! Thank You also in advance!
You should develop slow and steady Yoga schedule which involves the right blend of the 4 major features of yoga:
-
Yoga positions (asana) for exercises and physical toning of the muscles
-
Meditation for mind exercise and developing concentration and awareness.
-
Breathing (Pranayama) for optimum energy balancing.
-
Relaxation as well as deep relaxation.
This sounds like a bio of my thesis years at university. I had 2 jobs, as well as intensive class schedule. I took some time each day to have ‘a holiday’. Time spent on ME. It could be an hour, or even 5 minutes out of selected hours in the day.
One thing I remember from an old movie that sticks with me to this day (the name escapes me) where a young man was in med school, and his mother pleaded with his father (a med professor at his school) about his workload. The father looks cooly at his mother and says, “It builds stamina.” The tests on your system right now will prepare you for even greater tests to come.
Learn to incorporate a bit of joy into each stressful hour and that may help.
Have any one head of “Yoga of the Nine Emotions” ?
I have found on forums a product called acupressure mat. I have never heard about that. What is that? The participants of forum say, that it can help to reduce stress…but I kind of not understands how the single mat can help to reduce stress? Is it true or again some kind of marketing tool? Thank you in advance for your replies.
Dear dolcevita,
You seem to be looking around for solutions. But please don’t expect to find them in a mat. Do expect to find them in changing your lifestyle. If you need more background on stress and its abatement, I highly recommend this site.
You are lucky that you have only two weeks to go to summer holidays. The symptoms that you mention (stress, tiredness, negative emotions) do ring some alarm bells. Please do something about it. Recharge yourself over the summer holidays and make some beneficial changes to your lifestyle.
Any mat may help a little bit, but don’t expect any miracles from tools and props. The changes must come from you. Start your relaxation practice today! Namast
Everyone has such wonderful suggestions. I think this quote fits right in with what FlexPenguin has suggested about taking 5 minutes each hour:
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 229
From “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
" ‘It would have been better to come back at the same hour,’ said the fox. "If for example, you come at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, then at three o’clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o’clock, I shall be already worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am ! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you…’ "
My reason for having a set time for practice, so that my heart is ready to greet the Self.
(Taken directly from the forums at http://www.yogaforums.com/forums/f17/the-importance-of-routine-1599.html
FlexPenguin said:
This sounds like a bio of my thesis years at university. I had 2 jobs, as well as intensive class schedule. I took some time each day to have ‘a holiday’. Time spent on ME. It could be an hour, or even 5 minutes out of selected hours in the day…
Learn to incorporate a bit of joy into each stressful hour and that may help.
Plan that for every hour of study, you will take 5 minutes at the end of that hour for JUST YOU. Breathing exercises, some yoga asana, some meditation practice. Allow that nothing else is allowed to intrude on these 5 minutes. If you must, set yourself a timer so you can fully go into your 5 minutes without worrying that you may go over.
This can be just the beginning of setting time aside for yourself so you can recharge and revitalize. You will find it affecting the quality of your work, your retention of information, and your mood toward others.
The soul needs to be fed, and will not thrive on a starvation diet.
I will Give you some Purification techniques. Check your pm.
[QUOTE=Yoga & Unity;30211]You should develop slow and steady Yoga schedule which involves the right blend of the 4 major features of yoga:
-
Yoga positions (asana) for exercises and physical toning of the muscles
-
Meditation for mind exercise and developing concentration and awareness.
-
Breathing (Pranayama) for optimum energy balancing.
-
Relaxation as well as deep relaxation.[/QUOTE]
I would like to suggest from both personal experience and from the perspective of integral yoga, the order is more natural and effective is you perform the sequence; 1,4,3,2 or 1,3,2,4.
My practice is;
- Asana + relaxation (for me generally self led Yoga Nidra)
- Breathing (Pranayama)
- Meditation
Each leads into the next very effectivly.
Hmmm… world is developing. Technology is progressing … To make the life easier…easier…n easierrrrrrrrrr 
Hi dolcevita5,
You might find this recent thread here useful.
Here you will find a list of practices i compiled in response to a topic on anxiety.
A number of those practices aid in deep relaxation( as most folk don’t know how to truly and deeply relax, on a profound level certainlyl- henceforth yoga science invented many techniques for that end- ultimately to expand consciousness, individual and collective/cosmic, & our awareness) and other things such as transcending the thinking mind; it is this that is often attributed as contributing to a great deal of man’s suffering- in fact some venture to say most.