That’s Just the Stress Talking, Dudes!

Dudeism Stress Management Techniques

by Rev. Andrea Favro

Stress nowadays is considered to be the greatest killer of human beings. Thus the not-so-modest task which is our charge is to find ways to reduce it. There are thousands ways to deal with stress, and some of them are actually very effective. In this article I’ve tried to distill the simplest ones.

Beside saying "Fuck it" on a regular basis, finding a kind of stress-free place to live, and indulging in the odd oat soda or ten, what can we do to live with less stress in a world ruled by reactionaries, nihilists and millionaires with trophy-wives?

Stress is the result either of fear, danger, or the inability to deal with the outside world; that is, you feel that you can’t control something in your life. Usually if you feel you can cope with a problem it doesn’t stress you out at all. Am I wrong?

For instance, if you have an exam to take you shouldn’t feel stressed if you know the material — maybe you’ll have a little tension, but that’s good. Keeps you on the case.

Now, I’ve already talked about fear, so I’ll shuffle on ahead.

When confronted by a danger, be it real or not, our wonderful body prepares either to fight, fly, or freeze to keep us alive. In fighting or flighting our energy accumulates, and then discharges in action. Freezing, on the other hand, mantains the body and the mind in a state of tension which results in stress.

Imagine that when you start your car you go on turning the key, the car dies.

Dealing with things can be more easily achieved if you follow the advice in my other article about Your Own Personal Genie and of course following Dudeism’s tenets. We can’t control much of the outside world, what we can surely do is to control our response to it. In the end everything goes in its place in the right way even if now we can’t see it: flowing in harmony with Tao we always do the right thing and in having faith in our abilities and in the perfection of Tao, is there really anything that we have to worry about? Anything can be handled by Abiding and taking it easy in a relaxed manner. Am I wrong? Just let everything flow.

Usually when asking about how to deal with stress these two types of advice are quite common:

Meditate: Meditation is always the best approach for calming your mind and your body, but sometimes you can’t meditate and relax if you are a bundle of nerves and there really are pressing issues on your mind. It’s a wonderful tool but needs to be practiced at the right moment.

Philosophy: Dealing with life’s problems is a philosophical matter, and Dudeism has already found the answers, so I’ll jump over this too.

So, how can we deal with stress in the most simple and successful way? First we must discharge tension already within us and then we can look at avoiding it to be felt again.

Ways To Discharge Tension:

1. The greatest way to discharge already accumulated tension is touching or being touched. The best way to do this is to have coitus on a regular basis. Gotta feed the monkey, as it were. People who have a happy, fulfilling sexual life tend to be less stressed than those who don’t. Of course, getting a partner to have coitus with who doesn’t add to the stress in your life in other ways is one of the biggest challenges in the world. It’s sort of a Catch-69, as it were. Luckily, it doesn’t matter if you just prefer to do it manually. And, of course, this will keep your mind limber too, opening up your creativity and making easy to find the right way way to deal with whatever affects you. This in mind, we recommend that you don’t rely too much on porn as that can dull your creative, imaginative faculties. It also makes the Jackie Treehorns of the world rich, and can sully the Fawn Knutsens which we love so well. You can also just go get a massage.

2. Bowling, or any fun physical activity helps discharge stress and tension, and helps you sleep better at night. It doesn’t have to be strenuous either — walking, driving around, playing with your pet marmot, or even just jerking off (see #1) can be perfectly adequate.

3. Last but not least comes laughing. No one can laugh and be stressed at the same time. So always have ready one or two funny movies, or a couple of humorous books to use when needed. There are also some laughing meditations where you learn to laugh at absolutely nothing. They can be incredibly therapeutic, even if your neighbors will think you’re nuts.

So remember: TBL. Touching-Bowling-Laughing. Fans of The Big Lebowski will find the acronym is very very easy to remember.

4. Taking a bath is quite useful too. With candles and meditative music and perhaps something to keep your mind limber.

In the case you quickly need to discharge tension here are a few quick fixes:

1. Move your body: Some jumping jacks, 10-20 push ups, some Tai Chi on your rug, or whatever else you can do to discharge physical tension.

2. Breathe: Take at least ten belly breaths, deep, long and calm, you know just like counting to ten before doing anything.

3. Say at least ten times the magical mantra "Fuck it" followed by the magical word "Abide".

To Avoid further tension:

Follow Dudeism’s tenets. Read the Dudespaper, the Dude De Ching, and think "What Would Dude Do?"

Have a good sleep every night, the one when you wake up fresh, regenerated, full of energy and maybe without having to use a watch. Of course this is easier to achieve if you follow first the previous paragraph. Besides keeping you in good health and full of energy, sleeping also has the advantage that sometimes dreams give the answers to your questions. Go to bed early too — it is said that every our slept before midnight is worth two ours slept after. But that’s just like someone’s opinion, man.

Meditate possibly daily but at least a few times a week. Five minutes are fine, ten are better. If you don’t like to meditate then do something that absorbs all your active mental attention, like reading a book or concentrating on music you like (or even tapes of old bowling tournaments). Playing videogames doesn’t fall into this category.

Choose some kind of physical activity to be done around five times a week, my preferred ones are: the Yoga practice explained in Five Minutes to Yoga by Oliver Benjamin, the Five Tibetan Rites, Sumo Kenko Taiso and Aiki Taiso. Obviously bowling and/or the physical act of love are perfect too.

There’s all sorts of things you can do: Listen to relaxing music like whale’s songs, go outside and listen to birds’ songs, or just get some beers, good friends, some burgers. Your fucking troubles are over, Dude

And just in case you like to use a good mantra, the best for stress is "Can’t be worried about that shit. Life goes on, man!" Or you can sing "Obladì Obladà life goes on bra. La la how the life goes on."