How to relax in the office? 12 practical tips

Feeling stress in the workplace is the daily routine of almost all workers. This may seem obvious and something inevitable since who is not going to feel stressed working? Work is something to which we are obliged, we do not do it for pleasure.

Although there are jobs and jobs, all those that are done in the office are very stressful. It is true that it is normal to sit down and not do dangerous activities, but equally, the pressure of having that complying with deliveries can overwhelm us a lot, especially if we have a predisposition to neuroticism.

One thing that should be clear to us is that to be a good worker and perform our role well, we have to be relaxed. Stress is the enemy of productivity and mental health, that's why today let's see some ways to learn how to relax in the office.

• Related article: "Work stress: causes, and how to combat it"

Tips to know how to relax in the office

No person is immune to stress, and the workplace is the place where stress is most likely. Many people have internalized the idea that this is normal since working is not, at least on most occasions, a pleasant activity. This is especially true if we work in an office. Being locked in a claustrophobic cubicle sitting in a chair that makes us cringe in front of the computer is not usually our ideal of pleasure.

Fortunately, There are many things we can do in the office to relax, all of them easily achievable in the workplace. Learning how to relax in the office is essential for your mental and physical health as well as for your productivity since, whatever one may say, human beings do not work very well under too much pressure.

People who live their work in a particularly stressful way sooner or later make mistakes that hurt him as well as the rest of his colleagues and bosses, and this is something that no one want. Next we will see some techniques and tips that we can apply in our office, very easy to do and that can help us to be more productive.

1. Breathing exercises

The first thing we have to do to keep our stress at bay is to learn to control our breathing. Breathing deeply is a classic in any manual for learning to relax, and it is perfectly applicable to the workplace. We just have to close our eyes and breathe as deeply as possible, making sure that the air gradually fills our abdomen. We keep it in our lungs for a few seconds and, little by little, we exhale it very slowly, always through the nose.

We can repeat this exercise a few times, always doing it calmly and slowly to avoid hyperventilating. A good guideline is to follow the 4-7-8 rule: inhale through your nose for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 7, and exhale very slowly for 8.

2. Good posture

We cannot be relaxed if we are in an uncomfortable position.. This is especially important if we spend many hours a day sitting in front of a computer, since as we careless, we can get stuck in a very unnatural posture, with a rounded back and putting too much pressure on the legs. cervicals. We must make sure that our chair is ergonomic and is set at a height that suits us well to work.

It is essential that we take advantage of the shape of the chair, supporting our back on the backrest and keeping it straight. As far as possible we must support the cervicals. In this way we will save all kinds of physical discomfort such as contractures, headaches or dizziness, in addition to the fact that since we will not be in tension we will not fall into stress while at our post job.

• You may be interested in: "6 easy relaxation techniques to combat stress"

3. Stretch the arms

Stretching the arms is a technique especially recommended for all those who usually spend many hours withdrawn. Many people ignore the importance of stretching their arms, which causes them to feel shoulder and wrist pain very often.

To stretch our arms we don't need a lot of space or any special material, we can even do it sitting down. We simply have to bring our arms forward, parallel to the ground and with the palms out. The fingers first point to the ceiling and then to the floor. We will rotate the wrists to relax the area a little more.

4. Turn the head

One of the parts that suffer the most when we work in offices is the neck. In order to relax it, we can move our heads in all directions, always making smooth and slow movements, never abruptly. First we move it up and down several times, then to the right and left, and then with 360º turns to the sides. The important thing is that we notice how we are loosening the neck by "removing the dust" after hours of being in the same position.

Another option that we have is to place the palm of the right hand on the left ear and, gently, apply a little pressure towards the right shoulder, stretching the neck a little to the side. Then we will do it with the opposite side, and in each batch we will be between 30 seconds and a minute in this position.

5. Teleport to a colorful world

Staring at the white computer screen with the word processor open all day is tedious, boring and monochrome. Pleasant colors rarely abound in these types of contexts and there comes a time when we start to see the world in black and white. In order to break this monotony a bit and achieve a happy alienation, we can go from one vision to another. white with black letters to a multicolored one, seeing for a few minutes a pleasant landscape and colorful.

For this we can use the visualization technique, which simply consists of closing your eyes and imagining a pleasant landscape, the one that brings us the most inner peace. If we are not very good at imagining things, what we can do is search the Internet for a nice photograph like a field of colorful Dutch tulips, the blue waters of the Caribbean or a traditional landscape Japanese. Let's imagine that we have teleported there and that we can hear, smell and feel what we are seeing.

6. relax eyes

To relax the eyes it is very important to take them away from the screen, especially after spending several hours in a row looking at the monitor. Constantly active eyes are more prone to dryness and develop pathologies such as infections. This is why it is so important that, even if it is not even 5 minutes, we move them away from the monitor and move them around a bit.

A good exercise is close the eyelids, drawing the infinity sign (∞) with the eyes about ten times. We can also do it with our eyes open, although we are more likely to get dizzy if we go too fast. This exercise is not very difficult to do and we do not need any material at all, so it is a perfect exercise.

7. Listen to music

If we are one of those who do not lose focus when we listen to music, we can try putting it on while we are doing our homework. As long as our boss doesn't mind us putting on headphones, we can listen to our favorite genre of music, which it will make our work go from being stressful to more fun and enjoyable, making our workday fly by.

8. Look through the window

It may be that our office has a window with an interesting landscape, whatever it is. It may not be much, but this is so much better than the claustrophobic cubicle we find ourselves in. We can look through it, amusing ourselves for a while by gossiping about what people are doing on the street, the weather, the shape of the clouds, if there is any detail in the buildings in front that we had not seen fixed…

Everything that a simple perspective of something as mundane as the street where our office is located can offer us is so immense that it will never cease to amaze us.. It can even make him give us some other ideas, making our work more creative and enjoyable.

9. Walk

Many people, especially on weekdays, do not get the WHO recommended goal of taking between 8,000 and 10,000 steps a day. Many will think that these are a lot of steps but, really, it does not take more than an hour to do them and They can even be obtained at work, either by walking through the corridors or going up stairs. When we talk about walking to relax in the office, we are not talking about doing it while talking on the phone or looking at the mobile, but just walking.

In our work walks we can visit a colleague who is not too busy, see more at what the building we work in is like or go and have a healthy snack, a glass of water or a infusion. If tea or coffee relax us, we can also drink them, but we must bear in mind that these drinks have methylxanthines, substances that can overstimulate us and cause us stress.

10. exercise legs

We can stand up and briefly exercise our legs. This is necessary because the legs end up getting tired from spending so many hours sitting without moving, especially if we are in a job where it is difficult to walk around the company or its surroundings. When we stand up we can raise one knee until it forms a 90º angle with respect to the trunk and we stay like this for a few seconds. If we don't have balance problems we can stay like this for about 30 seconds or a minute. Then we repeat the exercise but with the other leg.

11. To meditate

Meditating is also one of the most recommended techniques to relax. However, there is a problem: an office is not a yoga room. The space is smaller and there are more distractors, with which it will be very difficult for us to meditate like a Buddhist monk from Tibet. Fortunately, you don't have to meet absolutely all the requirements to meditate, as long as you manage to relax a bit at the office. For example, we can stop looking at the screen for about 5 minutes, put music on the mobile or on the computer itself and close our eyes.

12. take breaks

The good worker is not the one who does not stop for a moment, but the one who knows how to manage time and rests regularly. Many times, something as simple as taking 5 minutes every hour as a short break helps keep our energies from fading.. In addition, since it is difficult for us to be concentrated and attentive for more than 50 minutes, we cannot wait do our job well if we dedicate ourselves 3 hours in a row without any break to doing what we are doing. You have to recharge.