1. Build Movement into your Daily Routine

• Exercise raises our neurons’ stress threshold. Exercise reduces muscle tension, which has been shown to reduce feelings of anxiety.

• Exercise elevates and regulates all the primary neurotransmitters (serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine). Exercise increases dopamine storage in the brain and creates dopamine receptors in the reward center.

• Exercise boosts the immune system by raising T cells.

• The best amount of aerobic exercise is 45-60 minutes 6 days a week. Hike, walk in the park, or walk your dog around the neighborhood.

• 10 Mindful Movements with Thich Nhat Hanh.

• Yoga on Youtube.

• Body weight workout with Funk Roberts (Try this one too).

• Stretch when you wake and before you go to sleep.

2. Prioritize Nutrition

• Maintain a consistent meal plan and manage portion sizes.

• Use a food diary to track your plan and progress.

• Stress can increase selection and consumption of palatable (comfort) foods, which are typically high in sugar and fat, which increases the risk for cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and depression.

• Omega-3 fatty acids have anti-depressant effects.

• Maintain good gut health by eating fermented foods that are high in probiotic and other healthy bacteria.

• Add garlic to your diet for its anti-inflammatory, anti-viral, and anti-bacterial effects.

• Boost your immune system with nutrient dense fruits and vegetables.

• Sugar, pasta, white bread, and corn increase inflammation.

• Avoid excess consumption of drugs and alcohol.

3. Keep Up with Sleep Hygiene

• Sleep deprivation impacts the stress response system, increases low-grade inflammation, and significantly impairs human functioning.

• Circadian rhythm regulates your mood and immune system, so be consistent with your sleep (go to sleep at the same time, wake up at the same time every day).

• Sleep enhances immune defense and immunological memory.

• Follow the CDC recommendations for hours of sleep per day.

• Chronic restriction of sleep to 6 hours or less (in adults) significantly increases cognitive deficits.

• Prepare for sleep by relaxing at night, using methods such as binaural beats, Tibetan sleep yoga, Yoga Nidra, Nadi Shodhana, progressive muscle relaxation, autogenic training, and ASMR.

• Use the DBT nightmare protocol for when nightmares keep you from sleeping.

• Avoid stimulants, such as caffeine, screens, and nicotine, prior to sleep.

4. Stay Connected with the Ones you Love

• Humans are hardwired to seek social contact.

• Bonding with others is the most intrinsic essential survival strategy for human beings.

• Predictable physical and/or emotional connection with the ones you love calms the nervous system and builds a safe space where comfort and reassurance can be reliably obtained. Responsiveness from others tunes the nervous system to be less sensitive to threat.

• Reach out to the people in your life. Make phone and video calls to family and friends. 

• If at home, turn toward your partner. Physical touch increases oxytocin and decreases cortisol levels, improving mood and decreasing stress and anxiety.

• Talking exercises elements of our social engagement system: the ventral vagus through breath control, the larynx for sound, auditory pathways for listening, cranial nerve V as the mouth moves to make sound, and cranial nerve VII as our face expresses what we say. Face to face conversation is the most human and humanizing thing we do.

• The presence of a trusted and loving adult helps children to moderate their stress response.

• A six second kiss with your significant other can improve mood and decrease stress.

• Pet your dog and/or cat to decrease cortisol levels to improve mood and decrease stress and anxiety. Research with dogs and their owners has shown that an elevated human heart rate is regulated when an owner is reunited with their dog.

• Gottman card decks app may be used to build connection with your significant other

5. Spend Time Outside in Nature

• The practice is known as “Shinrin-yoku” in Japan, which translates to ”taking in the forest atmosphere through all of our senses.”

• Nature therapy, or exposure to forests, urban green spaces, plants and flowers, and natural wooden materials activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which reduces stress, lowers blood pressure, and decreases pulse rate.

• Nature therapy boosts the immune system.

• Walking in nature for 15 minutes induces a state of physiological relaxation.

• Olfactory stimulation (aromatherapy) by Hinoki cypress leaf oil can induce physiological relaxation.

• The color green has a relaxing and calming effect on the human organism.

• Exposure to sunlight regulates serotonin and melatonin, which helps manage symptoms of depression and improve cognitive functioning.

• Nature sound has a calming effect on psychological stress

• The sound of water can be restorative, reduce stress, and enhance well-being.

• Spend time at the park, hiking, and in your garden.

• Place foliage and floral arrangements around your home.

• Spend the first 15 minutes of your day outdoors.

6. Limit Use of Screens

• Electronic media heightens stress states, leads to increased heart rate, cortisol, and blood pressure.

• The use of electronic screen media sends unnatural and overstimulating messages to the nervous system, which promote and maintain the fight or flight response, leading to chronic hyperarousal.

• Unnatural bright lights from screens suppresses the sleep signal hormone melatonin, suppresses REM sleep, delays onset of sleep, and prevents the body temperature from dropping for deep sleep.

• People who sit in front of the television for more than four hours a day are 80% more likely to die for reasons linked to heart and artery disease.

• Be intentional with the media you consume. Avoid misinformation by sticking with reliable sources.

• Schedule phone and social media time for once per hour, limiting yourself to 10 or fewer minutes per session.

• “Light at night” is linked to depression and suicidal thinking. Avoid screens one hour before sleep. Do not invite screens into the bedroom.

7. Be Mindful and Meditate

• Mindfulness meditation may show improvements in immune response such as raising T cell count and increasing telomerase activity.

• Mindfulness training can reduce symptoms of depression and improve resiliency to stressful events.

• Mindfulness can reduce concentrates of cortisol secretion.

• Mindfulness can reduce emotional reactivity by decreasing the size of the amygdala.

• Chanting (such as in the om meditation) combines sound, breath, and rhythm and has been shown to reduce anxiety and depression, blocks the release of stress hormones, and increases immune function.

• Resistance on the out-breath and during meditation activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which slows the heart rate and reduces body tension.

• Practice mindfulness with the Three minute breathing space, Body Scan, and Thich Nhat Hanh’s mindfulness exercises.

• Try out Insight timer, Calm, and Headspace.

• The Mindfulness Card Game is a fun and interactive way to teach children the practice of mindfulness.

8. Express Gratitude, Compassion, and Kindness

• Show gratitude and appreciation for the gifts that are freely offered and given to us from this world.

• Maintaining a daily gratitude journal may decrease symptoms of stress and depression.

• Gratitude practice may improve mood, improve sleep quality, decrease cellular inflammation, and improve resiliency.

• Write a gratitude letter to someone important to you.

• Positive thinking builds new neural structures and actually reduces the power and influence of negative neural nets. Gratitude practice disconnects us from unhelpful thinking patterns and attunes us to more helpful ones.

• Loving compassion meditations may reduce stress-induced immune and behavioral responses.

9. Be Helpful for Others

• Volunteering increases sense of sense of meaning, self-esteem, and life satisfaction.

• Volunteering has been linked to increases in self-efficacy and decreases in symptoms of depression.

• Focusing on helping others can buffer the effects of stress on health.

• Volunteer work builds a sense of community and connection.

• Donate blood to the American Red Cross, provide support to your local Boys and Girl Club, or give to a local food back, volunteer for Meals on Wheels, . Here are some additional opportunities to donate in your community.

• Provide companionship to an elderly person through Alone, volunteer as a text line crisis counselor, or help your neighbors purchase groceries and other supplies.

10. Educate Yourself

• Shift focus from unproductive worrying toward and engage yourself through online education opportunities.

• Learning leads to development of new neural networks and promotes neurogenesis in the Hippocampus, which may help manage anxiety and manage stress.

• Yale open course catalogue.

• Harvard free online courses.

• TED Talks.

• Crash Course offers a fast paced enhanced learning experience.

• Fight Mediocrity summarizes books with engaging whiteboard animations.

• Masterclass offers expert teachings from leading experts.

• Khan Academy offers free personalized learning.

• Minute Physics provides an energetic and entertaining view of old and new problems in physics.

• Learn a new language with Duolingo, which offers free, personalized education.

• Learn a coding language with The Coding Train.

• Try out one of these Educational YouTube channels.

11. Think about your Purpose and Reevaluate your Values

• A clear sense of meaning and purpose can add something positive and significant to one’s life regardless of one’s circumstances and health.

• Lack of meaning increases perceived stress and threat response.

• Having a life purpose improves mental health, self-regulation, and coping.

• Having a sense of meaning is linked to improved physical health.

• Viktor Frankl encourages us to transform terrible experiences of suffering into powerful concepts that ennoble the human spirit and empower people to survive.

• “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way” – Viktor Frankl

• “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how” – Friedrich Nietzsche

• Plan goals for the future beyond the present crisis.

• Reevaluate your values with the Valued Living Questionnaire.

• Explore strengths with the CliftonStrengths assessment.

• Explore values with the Values in Action assessment.

12. Have Fun

• Intentionally schedule leisure time into your day to cope with stress.

• Play relieves stress, builds connection with others, and stimulates creativity.

• Channel anxieties and vulnerabilities into creative pursuit such as art, music, and story.

• Laughter improves mood, decreases stress, and decreases symptoms of depression by regulating stress hormones and the release of dopamine and serotonin.

• Laughter improves pain tolerance and increases immune cell activity.

• Laughter relieves muscle tension, improve blood circulation, decreases blood pressure, and stimulates organs.

• Consider implementing a 10-minute laughter meditation.

• Smiling increases positive moods (including for those you smile at).

• Singing can reduce tension and improve mood.

• Drumming has been shown to reduce anxiety, improve mood, and boost the immune system.

• African dance and Hatha Yoga have been shown to reduce perceived stress and negative affect.

• Listening to music has been shown to significantly reduce negative emotional states and physiological arousal.

• Play board and card games, such as the aptly named Pandemic, Catan, Ticket to Ride, Dominion, Sushi Go, Exploding Kittens, Terraforming Mars, Azul, 7 Wonders, Codenames, Castle Panic, Forbidden Island. Explore recommendations from Board Game Geek for more suggestions.

• Try one of these 87 energy bursting indoor games and activities for kids.