INSTANT STRESSBUSTERS

Try the following. (Remember to keep breathing gently, deeply and rhythmically, in through your nose and out through your mouth.)

• Unclench your fists, let your hands flop. Then shake them vigorously.

• Uncross arms and legs. Shake your feet, circle your ankles.

• Smile, or if you can remember a good joke, laugh out loud.

• Stroke away lines of tension: rest your fingers along your eyebrows then run them upwards, through your hair, down the back of the head to your nape. Repeat as often as possible.

• Starting with your face and jaw, mentally travel down your body, through shoulders, spine, pelvis, knees, ankles to your feet, relaxing each part. Imagine them as something soft, e.g. ice cream, unset jelly, a feather cushion.

• If you are angry, try mentally pushing out all the anger from your body and mind on the out-breath.

• If you are worried, lie on the floor if possible (if not, relax your body, as above), and imagine all your problems packed up into a balloon. Watch it floating away until it disappears.

• If work problems are bothering you at the end of the day, or before a meeting, visualise yourself filing them away and locking the cabinet. Undertake, however, to come back and sort them out at the soonest suitable time.