Emotional wellness impacts your life, everything from your social status to physical health. Emotionally, when we aren’t well, we can’t navigate life in a confident, level-headed manner. Carrying out everyday activities can become a challenge.
If you want to strengthen your emotional wellness and mental health, a sauna’s a great opportunity to do just that. It’s hardly a cure-all however a sauna increases circulation, relaxes muscles, eases stress, and does a lot more. In helping foster more positive emotional wellness, we’ve put together a short list of some emotional wellness and mental health tips we think are worth following.
What is mental health?
Mental health refers to cognitive thinking and harnessing one’s attention to stay focused. Cognitive thinking such as processing information, memory making, and understanding new information is all involved with mental health. Under the subject of mental health, there’s the emotional, psychological, and social well-being.
What is emotional health?
Emotional health is strictly the psychological functioning and the expression of one’s emotions. Thoughts, feelings, and behaviour are all included under emotional health. When our emotional health isn’t doing well, we may have inappropriate reactions to situations, carry unnecessary or unhealthy stress, and be end up feeling ostracized.
How does a sauna impact emotional wellness?
A sauna addresses the root cause of emotional stress, relaxing the mind and body in some very effective ways. This isn’t to say a sauna’s all you need to overcome a difficult situation. So much more is needed but a sauna can help. When severe enough, emotional stress can lead to depression. A sauna can be the starting point to stress reduction and the development of inner strength. Being in a sauna, you have time to think, relax, feel, focus, meditate, and more. Alongside a sauna though, there’s plenty of other things you can do to maximize your ability to maintain emotional health.
Seek balance
Know when to quit, when you get overstressed. En route to emotional wellness, be aware of situations that are causing you stress or where you feel overwhelmed. Hey, if you need to walk away, remove yourself from a situation, or take some time to yourself to ‘recalibrate’, do it. The first step towards becoming a healthier person involves you taking action. Chase balance. Awareness of when you need to time to yourself is key.
Establish boundaries
Boundaries contribute to your mental well-being. Think of what sort of boundaries your life needs right now. What is and isn’t acceptable to you is important. Be clear in communicating these boundaries to others. Let them know as much or as little detail as possible. It doesn’t make you a bad person when you need to remove yourself from a situation or when someone’s doing something that’s upsetting you, to ask them to stop. The best advocate for yourself is you. Your emotional needs should be clearly communicated to others, in expectation and behaviour.
Use an infrared sauna
An infrared sauna relaxes, rejuvenates, and renews your mental health. Any built-up tension and stress melts away, with your sweat. The autonomic nervous system that keeps the body in fight-or-flight mode is affected and the parasympathetic system is activated, allowing your body to heal. Studies have also shown that hyperthermia in a sauna can potentially ease depression of this temporary stress put on the body strengthens the brain’s ability to handle stress.
Social connections
Social connections lengthen life and protect health, multiple studies have shown. When we link with others, we gain strengthen. It can be romantic but it doesn’t have to be. Platonic friends, family, reaching out to a neighbour, or other social connections, these all influence biology and well-being. If you don’t have anyone in your life that you have a strong bond with, consider getting out there and introducing yourself to others. It may just revitalize your emotional wellness!
Look for support
We all need a little help sometimes. If you’re overwhelmed with emotions, you aren’t alone. There’s resources available in our healthcare system, family and close friends work, counseling professionals, or even reaching out to new people can help remove some of the stress of emotions. A sauna for emotional support and mental health is going to get your systems moving in the right direction and creating more efficiency in the body but that doesn’t remove anyone’s need for support. You’ve need to find something healthy or someone healthy to lean on.
Stress reduction
Look at what’s affecting your emotional wellness. In many cases, it’s tied to stress of some kind. Can you eliminate what’s causing you stress? Is there a different way to do or to plan around stress? Stress is a rush of negative energy that the body can hold onto for longer than it needs. Immediately, the body’s put into high-alert, fight-or-flight which isn’t helpful for anyone. When possible, eliminate what’s causing you stress and find different things you can do to handle the stress that can’t be avoided.
Mindfulness
More people are combining meditation and mindfulness with a sauna to feel gratitude and awareness of the present. Mindfulness is a bit of an ancient practice, refocusing the brain on what’s happening in your present rather than focusing on things you can’t control. It means awareness of your life, taking things off autopilot and taking control. A more mindful person requires commitment and practice.
Coping skills development
When something happens that affect our emotions and we get overwhelmed, working on our coping skills can help get us in touch with what’s real and what isn’t. If you are unlucky in not having the support of family and friends, even more is put on your ability to cope. Don’t forget when working through a rough patch to do what brings you joy, take direct action to reduce stress, and review different coping exercises to get your mind refocused.
Time for you
Emotional stress can sometimes come from focusing on things that aren’t yourself. When we become stressed, we lose ourselves. This leads to more depression, less motivation, headaches, and tension. During times of emotional unwell, we need to focus on ourselves and avoid symptoms of stress. Self-care in an infrared sauna and treating yourself to what makes you happy can sometimes help you pull through and see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Sleep
Saunas can help insomnia and allow you to get more sleep, something which is so precious to emotional health. When you sacrifice sleep, it affects you mentally and physically. When you’re tired, you’re not functioning at your best. That’s no secret. When you’re well-rested, you think clearly and focus better. While it may be hard for some to do, getting your 7-8 hours of sleep minimum is a key to mental health.
Find the positive
In life, we are given positives and negatives. When we focus on the negative, sometimes all we see is the negative. People who experience fewer negative emotions isn’t because they don’t have any negatives in their life – it’s that they’re looking for and focusing on the positives. If one does this, they can bounce back faster and are more resilient when negatives happen. You’ve got to appreciate and be grateful for what you’re given.
At the end of the day, emotional wellness isn’t going to heal itself. You need to take steps to remake yourself as a healthier, more positive, more grateful person. The power lies in your hands. Saunas work extremely well at maintaining and creating health. It helps across a wide array of conditions, mental and physical both. In helping with your emotional wellness journey, don’t forget to put in the work with the other tips mentioned here. It’s not easy. It really isn’t. Emotional intelligence and wellness can be tough to figure out. With the right action though, you can achieve it in your daily life.