Beyond Exercise: Surprising and Effective Brain Hacks to Reduce Stress

Introduction

You may already be aware that exercise reduces the feeling of stress and helps you to feel more relaxed. But what you may not know is why this works and how you can use this information to create other ways to successfully manage stress that don't involve exercise.

Why Exercise Helps Relieve Stress

Let's begin with looking at why exercise causes you to feel less stressed. Simply put, there's a part of your brain that is actually responsible for creating the feeling of stress. We call this feeling of stress the "fight or flight response".

The part of your brain that's responsible for creating the fight or flight response requires chemical energy in order to function properly. However, when you move, there's a different part of your brain, called the "motor cortex", that also requires chemical energy in order to function correctly and allow you to move in complex ways.

When there is an oversupply of chemicals creating chemical energy in the stress part of the brain, your brain has to relocate those energy chemicals away from the stress area and move them into the part of the brain that is largely responsible for motion.

When this happens, you're able to move, but you no longer feel as stressed because there is less chemical energy supplying the fight or flight, or stress response, part of your brain.

It is worth noting that more complex movements require more chemical energy than less complex movements.

For example, going for a walk will certainly help you feel less stressed. However, if you do some soccer drills where you're dribbling a ball around some cones, maybe doing some complex footwork, and practice moving in ways that you don't normally move, you will likely feel even less stressed than if you simply go for a walk.

This is because the more complex movements require more chemical energy than the simple walk, so more chemical energy must be removed from the fight or flight part of your brain for use by the motor cortex.

Also, types of movement that are new to you require a lot of chemical energy for your brain to process verses movements that are known and simple.

So for example, if you typically play soccer as a stress relief, you may find it even more relieving to play basketball or go to a yoga class, if those are not activities that you find particularly familiar.

When your brain has to figure out how to move and coordinate different muscle groups, that requires more processing and thus requires more chemical energy to undergo that processing.

What are some other ways this information can be used to relieve stress?

This relocation of chemical energy doesn't occur only when you move, however. It occurs when your brain requires energy for any sort of function.

For example, when you eat and you taste some food, especially if it's very potent tasting food, your brain has to tell you what it tastes like. And there's a part of your brain that's responsible for processing taste.

So if you have a strong flavored mint candy, you can reduce the feeling of stress by causing your brain to have to process the strong flavor. For this to work, you can use something other than a mint or candy, as long as the flavor is as potent as possible.

Many people feel very relaxed and stress-free while taking a shower. The reason is because the water is hitting your skin and your brain has to process the fact that A) water is impacting your skin, and B) that water has a particular temperature of which you need to be aware.

In in the scope of just a few minutes in the shower, your brain has to process a tremendous amount of sensory information. That processing requires a lot of chemical energy that can't be used by another part of the brain, such as that part of the brain responsible for fight or flight, while the processing is ongoing.

Predictable music can relieve stress, while unpredictable music can increase stress:

Listening to music can be a great way to reduce the feeling of stress, because there's a part of the brain, called the "auditory cortex", that's responsible for processing sound and requires chemical energy in order to function. However, when using music to reduce the feeling of stress, predictability is important.

Your brain uses hearing to help you determine the predictability of your environment. If your brain senses that your environment is chaotic, it is more likely to access the fight or flight response.

So for example, if your brain hears the sound of a roaring lion and you are not at a zoo, that's a potential chaotic situation that will likely cause your brain to prepare the rest of your body to run, which is of course what we mean by the "flight" part of the of fight or flight response. 

To avoid the fight or flight response from being more likely to stay active while listening to music, try to keep the music you listen to as predictable as possible.

So for instance, listen to some songs on your favorite playlist, rather than listening to a new radio station. Or, listen to a kind of music that is extremely repetitive, and therefore more predictable, such as a "down tempo" channel on your favorite music streaming service.

Conclusion

To conclude, you now know why exercise causes you to feel less stressed. And by understanding the "why", you now have a mental framework within which to develop other tactics for reducing stress that don't necessarily involve exercise, but can utilize other resources you may have at your disposal. Having additional tools means a greater likelihood of stress relief, even at times when exercise isn't a viable option.

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