Alleviate stress with a quiet garden room

Wednesday 5^th November will mark the 16^th  National Stress Awareness Day and this year’s theme is “Stress: the balancing act.” The focus will be upon the difficulty many of us share creating a harmonious balance between work, family, play and lifestyle. It will be encouraging individuals to scrutinize their work-life balance; adopt a healthier lifestyle and make more time to relax. Those of you who have read previous blogs, will know that these are all subjects very close to the heart of the Garden Escape ethos.

It is all too easy to charge through life with blinkers on, narrowing our field of vision, distorting our perspective and failing to stop and notice much. Paying more attention to the present moment, to your own thoughts and feelings and to the world around you can have a profound impact on your mental well-being and, in turn, your physical health.

Mindfulness is a mind-body approach to general well-being that can help us accept the things we cannot change and instead change the way we think about our life experience. It will reduce levels of stress and anxiety which are major contributory factors to a whole plethora of life limiting conditions, from heart disease to cancer. It will help you find the inner peace and strength to deal with life’s daily challenges and frustrations and to step back and take stock of all the good things in your life: your family, your friends and your health.

I was once in a particularly stressful and difficult place in my life and a very dear, older friend gave to me a tatty photocopy of the following quote. It was one of the best pieces of advice I ever received and, more than a quarter of a century later, still resonates with me.

“The longer I live, the more I realise the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what people say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. The remarkable thing is we have a choice, every day, regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you….we are in charge of our attitudes.”

Charles Swindoll

Of course, at the time I was young, free and single with none of the added pressures and distractions of family (how could I have been stressed? I now ask the older me) and so I was easily able to create a quiet space where I could get my attitude under control! It is not so simple in the hurly burly of modern, busy family life. How lovely would it be to have a dedicated quiet space to which you could escape, even if just for a short while once in a while, in which to peacefully contemplate your present moments? To listen to some quiet, relaxing music and take in the green tranquillity of your garden while you take stock of your life and regain a little perspective. A Garden Escape is a great solution, especially as the weather deteriorates and night falls before most of us have even left work. And it needn’t be just for you….the whole family could probably do with a little attitude control, on occasion! 

We often here from our customers in education that their Learning Escape has a particularly calmimg effect on staff, students and parents alike so call us if you are an educator and would like to find out more.