By Summer Bowen

In the so-called “conscious community,” alarm bells are plentiful: BPA-laden baby bottles are poisoning your toddler! Soy foods are slashing your sperm count! Your old yoga mat will leach PVC into the landfill for all eternity! It’s enough to make you want to swap your fair trade coffee for Kahlúa and crawl straight back to your toxic mattress.

Big city living, it seems, only fans the flames. In a recent issue, Forbes magazine scrutinized six key quality of life indicators — housing affordability, unemployment rates, gas prices, air quality, number of sunny days and population density — to narrow down the top ten most stressful communities in America. With its skyrocketing unemployment rates and high gas prices, Chicago edged out New York for the number one slot (leading miffed Windy City-zens to inundate the Forbes comment boxes, claiming the creators of the study were “smoking something”). The Big Apple was a close second (thanks to untenable population density and unaffordable housing), followed closely by Detroit (9.4 percent unemployment rate and high pollution), Los Angeles (the most polluted city with expensive homes and low income) and San Francisco (high gas prices and even higher housing expenses).

So what’s an enlightenment-seeking urbanite like yourself to do? Quit the evil capitalist job, buy a healing drum and run naked to the sticks while clutching energy crystals? Going AWOL (or OM-WOL as the case may be) is not the answer, says American Zen master Genpo Roshi, author of Big Mind Big Heart: Finding Your Way. In fact, being too om’d-out can lead to a dysfunctional lifestyle. While we need inner peace and balance in order to be integrated functional human beings, we also need the competitive side that gets the job done. “If you can’t be calm and tranquil in the middle of the city,” says Genpo, “then what good is it if you can only do it beside a river?” The process of struggling to maintain your balance amidst urban angst, he adds, can be good mind/body training.

But how? We lined up a range of experts from across the country — everyone from yogis to psychologists, spiritual teachers to our friendly local bartenders — for their strategies on how to maintain balance in the face of whatever chaos city life throws your way.

City Stressor No. 1: Overcrowding is driving me up the wall

Forbes had it right that the sardine-like density in big cities foments stress. “The lack of parking, having to deal with street sweeping and living in a 480-square-foot apartment,” were some of the main reasons green business owner Katherine Racine-Jones recently fled San Francisco (home to the ninth highest population density in the country, according to Forbes) for the outskirts of Portland. Racine-Jones certainly doesn’t miss the hassles of shoulder-to-shoulder living. She describes her friends who still live there as high intensity people who don’t have time for balance.

Beyond just the physical discomforts, living closely among stressed-out friends and neighbors takes its psychic and emotional toll too, says Asha Praver, disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda and co-director of the Ananda meditation and yoga center in Palo Alto. “If you cut onions all day, your hands will smell of onions,” she explains. “Most people tend to accept what’s going on around them, and when the collective gets more tense, they become vulnerable.”

RX: Make time to chill. Schedule it into your CrackBerry, if that’s what it takes!

Praver recommends city dwellers seek regular doses of solitude in nature. Head right to the nearest body of water or hiking trail, any place where there’s more birdsong than traffic noises. A consistent meditation practice can be an even more effective stress-buster — as long as it’s done the right way. (Apparently, even meditation can cause anxiety for the beginner.) Says Praver, “Most people find it unbearable to sit down and shut your eyes in a quiet room. If ‘meditation’ is a word that sends you running for the hills, it may be beneficial to get some instruction.”

As a nice entry point for the meditation-curious, Roshi recommends putting the go-getter mind aside every once in a while and saying aloud to yourself, “I am the mind that is non-seeking and non-craving.” Our brains are like cars, explains Roshi, always in gear, always seeking and craving. Pausing for this type of mindful meditation serves to enhance your awareness, allowing you to respond wisely instead of hastily to stressors. “Instead of checking the BlackBerry, or reading the newspaper,” he advises, “take a couple minutes to take the brain out of gear.”

Just as tight living quarters and elevated psychic energy of others can adversely affect our stress levels, seeking and achieving a healthy emotional balance can ease the stress levels of those around us. A better, more blissful you will resonate positively throughout your relationships, your friends, your family, your business — even people you don’t even know, says Eugene Cash, a teacher at the Bay Area’s Spirit Rock meditation center. “Life is short,” Cash asserts. “We are the stewards of our own lives; how do we want to live them?”

City Stressor No. 2: The economy is plummeting, and it’s taking me down with it

Jay Michaels, a bartender at Monsoon Bar & Café in Santa Monica, CA, says that in these days of rising unemployment and faltering economy, money worries are topping the list of typical bar woes. “Bartenders for the most part feel like financial advisors; the focus has moved away from meaning or esteem needs having to do with relationships to more economic or safety needs.”

Gabriel Scheer, Executive Director of Seattle’s popular Green Drinks social networking events, notes the same. But in the Emerald City (which escaped Forbes’ top ten list) people are looking at the economic crisis as a chance to put ideals into practice. “A lot of people see it as an opportunity to change how the current systems operate,” says Scheer. “The financial crisis is a chance for us to reassess and look at new opportunities to do things differently, a time to rethink our energy use, the banking system (where do I put my money, what is it used for?) … pretty much everything.”

RX: Act to avoid reacting

In this economy, says Los Angeles-based eco-broker Jeffrey Fritz, it pays to have a financial plan in place for any kind of “just in case” scenario. Fritz sees countless clients in foreclosure situations behaving like the proverbial ostrich with its head in the sand. “They don’t really want to deal with what’s happening in their life because it is extremely stressful,” Fritz explains. In the case of economic emergencies, Fritz recommends facing the music by seeking help from a trusted financial planner and methodically, logically strategizing your steps for getting back on track.

Even if you’re not in the red, staying on top of finances in a rocky economy requires a lot of situational awareness, long-term budgeting and saving. When it comes to housing, Fritz gives the plain and simple advice not to spend to your limit, but instead live below your means and save the rest. Avoid stressful surprises by knowing what your house is worth, or when and how much your rent is going up.

Of course, as our bartender Jay notes, “understanding that dark muddy line between the things you want and the things you need” is easier said than done. For guidance, Roshi points to the teachings of Buddha: “In Buddha’s final teaching, he made eight points and the first two are very important: Have few desires, and know how to be satisfied with what we have.”