Deep in the winter blues, riddled with anxiety and regularly waking at 3am with worries, I was desperate to get my stress levels under control
Nothing helped. Filling my diary left me frantic. No amount of early nights, soaks in the bath, reading favourite books distracted me from anxieties about everything going wrong. Even doing nothing made me castigate my own laziness.
“Our stress response is designed to detect potential threats which need attention immediately – we’re meant to deal with it then settle down,” says Willem Kukyen, professor of mindfulness and psychological science at Oxford University. “Nowadays we’re surrounded by things needing our attention: notifications, news, work. We’re always on alert.”
The best way to relax is a disputed subject. Listen to Mozart, sit in silence, do some gentle yoga, join a dance class, drink green tea, eat chocolate, drink coffee, don’t drink coffee: you name it, and someone has touted it as the solution to your worries.
So what activities really bring your anxiety levels down?
How I measured my stress levels
While it’s difficult to measure stress levels in the moment, a study from Bielefeld University in Germany found that a 10 point questionnaire could assess relaxation to an 86 per cent accuracy.
Also newer fitness trackers have built-in stress tracking. As well as observing my heart rate (a slower heartbeat can indicate calmness) my Fitbit features an electrodermal activity (EDA) tracker. This measures how much I sweat using tiny pulses to measure my skin’s conductance. The lower the score, the less stressed I am.
So armed with these tools I headed to the Lake District, which has been a premiere spot for rest and recuperation since the 18th Century, for the ultimate relaxathon.
My average, un-relaxed EDA score was 30, so I knew if I scored lower, theoretically I should be more relaxed. Similarly my resting heart rate is 54bpm, so the closer I was to that, the more relaxed I should be.
Finally, immediately before and after each activity, I would take the Bielefeld questionnaire, rating my responses to statements like “My breathing is faster than usual” or “My muscles feel loose”. Noting the difference before and after, I could see how each activity affected my sense of relaxation.