Quiet!

An important key to a stress free environment is quiet. This is in particular one of the reasons I enjoy visiting home; the few days out of the consistently noisy Dublin City Centre provides, at least, the option to escape noise. Noise triggers our internal survival response, flooding the body with adrenaline and cortisol* - handy when you are about to be decapitated by a bear, but useless when you're trying to read Wordsworth in the shade of a tree.

So stick on a set of headphones and listen to John Cage's 4'33.