Imagine crying better or not even crying at all! The following stress reduction and relaxation techniques work for children and adults in their moment of crying because nobody really wants to cry and everybody wants to be happy and stress free whether they can admit it or not.

How nice would that be if your child new exactly how to stop crying in those moments when they have their first inner-urge to express their pain. You and your child can do just that with positive guidance and by using these effective relaxation techniques that can be developed into a lifelong stress reduction tools for happiness.

Crying is a build up of stress and depression - a temporary stress disorder! Remember that it is relaxation that works far better than crying and that is acquired through proper stress reduction and relaxation techniques. Crying has just been the process (habit) we’ve known for getting us closer to peace and calmness. But processes improve over time, and hey, why not bypass the old habit and the subtle damage that goes along with it and go straight for what we want – peace and happiness.

Consider that when a child is crying it is a sign of some emotional and/or physical disturbance. And it is an opportunity to release some old or hurt feelings that would otherwise become trapped inside the body and cause future illness. It's the same for adults! The releasing is important and it happens best when feeling calm and peaceful - stress free. The way that most people cry is usually suppresses feelings - most people would argue against me but they also don't know how to cry.

In our modern culture, we have become overly supportive of long crying sessions in the hopes of “getting it all out”. But it simply doesn’t work that way. In fact, ongoing crying tends to cause long term stress disorder and slowly eats away at the positive feelings and beliefs that really do us the most good in life. Come on, you have to admit that most crying is not much more than emotional drama anyway. Is more drama what you really want for yourself or your children?

Have you ever had those “hang-over” physical feelings after having a good cry? Doesn't that almost always leave you feeling drained? Well, just like you can avoid getting a hangover from drinking alcohol, you can also bypass that heavy and exhausted feeling of a crying “hang-over” by learning how to cry (and stop crying) in a way that is truly positive and productive. This has nothing to do with repressing your emotions but rather knowing how to get what you really want.

Just practice these relaxation techniques (9 steps) with your child or your spouse and try them on yourself the next time you start to get that crying feeling coming on. Don’t confuse these steps with the concept of suppressing the emotions – this is different. These 9 relaxation techniques lead to the evaporation of the crying feeling itself and quickly replaces crying with peace and calmness which then leaves you feeling lighter and stress free.

1. Sit or stand relaxed and face to face with the child/person who is crying

2. Convince them to look up and towards your eyes and just maintain relaxed and gentle eye contact

3. Together, begin relaxing the body – face, shoulders, arms, stomach, etc

4. Begin breathing deeply, slowly and peacefully - and keep breathing that way!

5. Keep a soft smile on your face no matter what

6. Help them to relax their forehead and the area surrounding the eyes – put a stop to all tension in the face – when ever facial tension arises, it must be dropped, this is key!

7. Let them express themself without blaming anyone or anything – encouraging self responsibility and remind them to breathe deeply

8. As quickly as possible, lead the crying to an easy end – don’t let it linger on and on – just move on

9. And probably most importantly: you don’t need to cry or feel any emotion with them – that does you and them no good! Just feel peaceful, feel positive, feel loving, and feel good that they are releasing some sad feelings and becoming happier with every breath

My colleagues and myself have applied these relaxation techniques with thousands of children and adults for over a dozen years with great success!