4 realistic ways to reduce your stress

Read any article about how to reduce stress and you’ll find yoga and meditation held up as the fundamental pillars of self-care. And those can be super effective, but cutting out for an hour-long Vinyasa class every afternoon is no more an option for many of us than moving to an ashram to chant ohms all day. 

The truth is you can feel less stressed without a huge time commitment or lifestyle overhaul. “Managing day-to-day stress doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, some of the most effective techniques are super simple and quick, helping the brain and body find balance in real time,” says Ann DuPre Rogers, LCSW, a licensed clinical social worker and executive director of North Carolina-based nonprofit Resources for Resilience. The best part? “These simple actions and pauses, when used consistently over time, help expand your tolerance to stress. With practice, you can literally train your brain and body to move more quickly out of a stress response and into a state of healthy regulation.” 

Here are a few of the tension-calming shortcuts that make a noticeable difference for real people in real life.

One of the reasons yoga and meditation are so good at reducing stress is because they encourage you to slow your breathing down. And there’s evidence that you can get the same, if not more, stress-relieving benefit by skipping straight to the breathing part: Researchers at Stanford University found that five minutes a day of either controlled breathing exercises or mindful meditation both reduced anxiety and negative feelings, but the breathing practice was significantly more effective at improving positive feelings than meditation. 

“When the amygdala (the brain's threat detector) is activated, stress hormones are released, and that can make it much more difficult to communicate or problem solve effectively. In a way, our brain goes ‘offline’ under stress and in survival mode,” says Rogers. Breathing slowly can help switch you from fight-or-flight mentality (powered by the sympathetic nervous system) back into rest-and-digest mode (under the control of the parasympathetic nervous system).

Participants assigned to one specific type of breathing pattern showed the greatest daily mood boost and lowered their resting breathing rate throughout the day (not just during the exercise). That pattern is called cyclic sighing: 

1. Slowly breathe in through your nose until you’ve filled your lungs.

2. Inhale another small bit of air so that your lungs are maxed out. 

3. Very slowly exhale completely through your mouth. 

You can use cyclic sighing in the moment when you’re feeling anxious or for a few minutes each day as a quick reset.

Slowing your breathing isn’t the only way to snap yourself out of fight-or-flight mode; drawing your attention to the present through actions can do the same. “Simple body-based exercises like gentle side-to-side tapping (cross your arms and alternate tapping your left and right shoulder), lifting a heavy object, taking a sip of water, or humming can be a helpful reset in the middle of a chaotic moment,” says Rogers. ”They become even more effective when you can notice all the subtle, sensory elements of the action — how you feel lighter or more settled in your body, or how your breathing gets deeper and slower during or afterwards.” 

These rapid reset methods work as a sort of control-alt-delete for the nervous system. “When the amygdala is calmed, the body and mind come back into balance together. And once we're in a safe and settled state physiologically, it's far easier to create, communicate, live, work, and move forward,” says Rogers. “While the stressor itself may still be there, our capacity to respond has improved.”

A major driver of stress isn’t just having a lot to do, but having a lot of things you’re in the middle of. “When tasks feel unfinished or ambiguous, your nervous system stays in that simmering, low-grade threat mode,” says Melissa Gluck, Ph.D., a psychologist in private practice in New York City. It’s called the Zeigarnik effect, which is basically the finding that our brains keep unfinished tasks more top-of-mind than completed ones. And it can contribute to a constant underlying strain on the system, lowering your bandwidth. Studies find that having a sense of uncompleted tasks makes rest time less restorative — increasing rumination, impairing sleep, and keeping you thinking about work even during your off time.  

Instead of just trying to will yourself to calm down, aim to tie up one loose end per day (or “close the loop”) in a tangible, visible way: Send an email you’ve been putting off. Make a decision you’ve been going back and forth on. Literally close all of your browser tabs. If a chore has been lingering on your to-do list for ages, consider whether it really needs doing — and if the answer is no, just cross it off. “Completion reduces mental load. Even symbolic closure tells the brain: This is handled,” says Gluck. “It’s especially helpful for people whose stress shows up as late-night racing thoughts.” Can’t finish a job before quitting time? Mentally categorize the work into two tasks (one you complete today and the next you’ll start on your return), and write out a detailed to-do list of your next steps. You may dwell on it less and sleep better at night.

To relieve stress via both mind and body in a way least likely to feel like an extra chore, consider laughing it off. “Not only does laughter feel good physically (it relieves muscle tension), it also reduces the body’s stress hormone, cortisol,” says Steven Sultanoff, Ph.D., adjunct professor at Pepperdine University Graduate School of Education and Psychology. A recent meta-analysis showed that spontaneous laughter reduced cortisol levels by 32%, with a reduction of approximately 37% after just a single session of hilarity. A 2025 study confirmed that watching comedy also lowers salivary α-amylase, another important stress marker. 

Sounds great, but you can’t blow off work to binge-watch vintage SNL clips every day. Turns out you don’t have to! An earlier meta-analysis found that “ simulated laughter ” (in which you just make yourself laugh, no humor required) seemed to significantly lower stress, and decrease anxiety and depression levels even more than natural humor-induced chuckling. So, much like skipping the meditation and going straight to the breathing, you can just…laugh. At nothing, whenever you want. And it still works. 

So does getting in on a joke even if you don’t LOL. "Mirth is the emotional response to humor, even when laughter is not present,” says Sultanoff. “Mirth dissolves emotional distress and replaces it with uplifting emotions.” If you’d rather silently smirk about something than cackle wildly about nothing (in the office perhaps?), Sultanoff suggests keeping a set of your favorite funny memories — the ones that had you rolling on the floor in tears — in your back pocket to mentally play back during anxious moments. Or start making a habit of noticing funny signs, puns, or other silliness on your daily travels. And when you get home, stream a half-hour sitcom instead of an eight-episode dystopian drama. “Mirth and stress cannot occupy the same psychological space,” says Sultanoff.

When the usual stress relief practices feel out of reach, shorter, simpler strategies can still move the needle, sometimes even faster than the ideal routines. Small shifts in the things you already do every day — like slowing your breath, crossing things off your to-do list, and finding something (or nothing) to laugh about — help make rest more restful and stress management less stressful.