A Wellness Workshop: Stress Management

I tend to say YES often, coffees, collaborations, referrals, the occasional awkward elevator pitch. But saying yes to Sandra’s stress management workshop on Saturday was one of the better decisions I’ve made recently.

I’d met Sandra Stanofsky through networking events. She’s the kind of person who doesn’t need to sell herself, because the warmth and credibility she brings into a room does that for her. She’s the Wellness Vision Health Coach and over the months I’ve come to know her, I can see she is deeply committed to her work, not just as a profession but as something she genuinely believes in because it’s something she has lived. So when she mentioned she was hosting a morning workshop on stress, I didn’t hesitate to participate.

The session was called a stress management workshop, but that description doesn’t quite capture what it felt like from the inside. It was more like sitting down with someone who genuinely wanted to help you understand what’s happening in your body, while also handing you the tools to do something about it.

Sandra started by walking us through the biology of stress. I thought I knew most of it, but it’s always good to hear it again. She explained our fight-or-flight response, what it was originally designed to do and why our modern version of it is quietly wreaking havoc on so many of us.

The insight that landed hardest for me was this: our bodies were built to handle a lion charging at us. We run, we survive, the stress dissipates. But today our stressors are emails, traffic, deadlines, social media, and financial pressure. The threat never fully goes away and because the body doesn’t know the difference, we land up with elevated glucose, oxidative stress, thickened blood and a body that’s perpetually on high alert.

Sandra put it plainly: these are the perfect ingredients for chronic illness. She didn’t say it to frighten us. She said it so we could understand what’s at stake.

One of the next key points for me was learning about breathwork. It always sounded like something that requires a mat, a candle and someone whispering at you about your chakras. Now, this is a lovely experience, I get it, but I appreciate that breathwork can also sit very simply in everyday life.

Deep, rhythmic breathing with an extended exhale literally signals safety to the nervous system. It switches us out of fight-or-flight and into rest-and-digest. This is profound. I LOVE THIS.

There’s a technique that I’m embracing called 3-5-6 breathing: breathe in for 3, hold for 5, breathe out for 6. The out breath is twice as long as the in breath. That’s it. Do it four to eight times.

She also introduced box breathing: four counts in, four counts hold, four counts out, four counts hold. This popular technique is used by everyone from athletes to emergency responders. I tried it there and then in the meeting room and I’m doing it whenever I think about it.

Moving on, Sandra painted a picture that was uncomfortably familiar. We wake up in the morning and immediately reach for our phones. This means we’re instantly pulled into an unreasonable thread, a work notification, someone’s bad mood leaking into your screen, or the latest impossible headline. By the time our day actually gets started, we’ve already accumulated enough stress that the smallest thing tips us over.

She said it gently but clearly: it doesn’t need to be that way.

Her suggestion? Put your phone in another room. Use a traditional alarm clock. Get up without checking anything. While the kettle boils, write three things you’re grateful for. Set an intention for the day. Even five minutes of a gentle yoga flow in the kitchen counts.  For me, the putting the phone away part is probably the one I struggle with the most. The habit of reaching for it first thing in the morning is deeply ingrained. Fortunately, gratitude and setting an intention are already part of my routine, so I’m halfway there. Now it’s just about protecting those first few minutes of the day from the noise of the world.

Sandra also spoke about how what we eat and drink can either support the body during stress or quietly add to it. She reminded us that B vitamins are quickly depleted when the body is under stress and suggested that a good quality B complex supplement can be helpful. That part really resonated with me. While I can’t claim that I always follow every piece of lifestyle advice perfectly, I do understand the importance of Vitamin B, particularly because I live with Vitamin B deficiency anaemia. It was a good reminder that sometimes the basics our bodies need most are also the easiest to overlook.

What I loved about Sandra’s approach was that she never made it feel overwhelming. She wasn’t asking us to overhaul our lives. She was asking us to notice, and to choose.

Think movement, not exercise. A five-minute walk around the block. Taking the stairs. The glucose that stress produces needs somewhere to go, and movement is the most natural place to send it. The endorphins are a welcome bonus.

On relationships, Sandra made such a valid point. When we’re stressed, we tend to withdraw, but isolation can actually increase stress. It’s important to cultivate real connection, not just connections on social media, and to actively invest in the people who feed your soul.

Sleep was another cornerstone. A wind-down routine matters, dimming the lights an hour before bed, stepping away from screens, journaling the open to-do list so your brain can actually let it go. I love how writing things down before sleep gives the brain permission to switch off instead of running a loop at 2am.

There’s something about the way Sandra delivers this material that makes it stick.

She also reminded us, gently but firmly, that taking things personally is a choice. She referenced Mel Robbins’ Let Them Theory as a way of understanding that we get to choose how we respond to what happens around us. Creating space between the event and your reaction is, as Sandra put it, a guaranteed stress reliever.

I left that Saturday morning with a page of notes, a few things I was already doing and several things I’m rethinking. Thank you – what a good way to spend a Saturday morning!

If you’d like to connect with Sandra or find out about her next workshop or to connect with her about wellness coaching please reach out to her via her website here: https://wellnessvision.co.za/

Michelle Longman

Founder & Owner