Transform Your Stress and Create Better Health and Resilience
Learn to reduce your stress and anxiety, develop self-regulation skills and build mental and emotional resilience.
You can increase your internal awareness and develop more self-empowerment skills to achieve the health you want.
Stress affects the body physically, mentally and emotionally. What can we do about it?
It is not the event or situation that creates the stress, it is how we respond to it. Emotions have a powerful impact on the human body. Positive emotions like appreciation, care and kindness feel good and are good for us. They help the systems in our body synchronize and work better.
Research has shown when we intentionally shift to a positive emotion, the heart rhythms immediately change. This shift in heart rhythms creates a favorable cascade of neural, hormonal and biochemical events that benefit the entire body.
How does it work?
When we are stressed, the body is out of sync. The depleting emotions we feel like anger, frustration, anxiety and worry, lead to disorder in the nervous system. Renewing emotions like appreciation, care and kindness create order, which is called coherence. Coherence leads to mental clarity, creativity and resiliency.
How to Practice Coherence
Practice the Quick Coherence® Technique daily to reduce the effects of stress, and use the HeartMath technology to see the changes in the body and sustain them. The technique is a simple and easy way to interrupt the stress response. Use it 3-4 times a day for a few minutes. Good times to use it are first thing in the morning, before you go to sleep at night and during lunch time. Also, use it whenever a stressful event occurs and when you want to rebalance, get an energy boost and gain more mental clarity.
Quick Coherence® Technique
Step 1. Focus your attention in the area of the heart. Imagine your breath is flowing in and out of your heart or chest area, breathing a little slower and deeper than usual.
Suggestion: Inhale 5 seconds, exhale 5 seconds (or whatever rhythm is comfortable).
Step 2. Make a sincere attempt to experience a regenerative feeling such as appreciation or care for someone or something in your life.
Suggestion: Try to re-experience the feeling you have for someone you love, a pet, a special place,
an accomplishment, etc. or focus on a feeling of calm or ease.
Quick Steps:
1. Heart-Focused Breathing
2. Activate a positive or renewing feeling
With practice we can experience better sleep, feel more peaceful and calm, and have more energy.
Coming in May, I will be a HeartMath® Certified Practitioner, a health professional licensed to use the HeartMath techniques and technology with patients and clients in individual or small group sessions.
Schedule a brief Initial Consultation with me at Interiority Wellness, LLC to discuss whether my services are a good fit for you.
References:
Rollin McCraty, Mike Atkinson, William Tiller, Glen Rein, and Alan D. Watkins. The Effects of Emotions on Short-Term Power Spectrum Analysis of Heart Rate Variability, The American Journal of Cardiology, Vol. 76 • No. 14 • November 15, 1995 • Pages 1089-1093.
Rollin McCraty, M.A., Bob Barrios-Choplin, PhD, Deborah Rozman, PhD, Mike Atkinson, Alan D. Watkins, MD. The Impact of a New Emotional Self-Management Program on Stress, Emotions, Heart Rate Variability, DHEA and Cortisol, Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science, Vol. 33, No. 2, April- June 1998, pp. 151- 170.
Jay P. Ginsberg, PhD, Melanie E. Berry, MS, Donald A. Powell, PhD. Cardiac Coherence and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Combat Veterans, Alternative Therapies, Jul/Aug 2010, Vol 16, No. 4, pp. 52-60.
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