Check out this exciting article about research that has found mindfulness meditation training can change your brain structures in just 8 weeks.
Mindfulness meditation training changes brain structure in 8 weeks Continue reading “8 Weeks of Meditation Can Change Your Brain”
Tag: Stress Management Techniques
Body Has a Built in Stress Reliever?!?
I enjoyed this NPR article Just Breathe: The Body Has a Built in Stress Reliever.
Here are some highlights:
- “As it turns out, deep breathing is not only relaxing, it’s been scientifically proven to affect the heart, the brain, digestion, the immune system — and maybe even the expression of genes.”
- “…breathing can have a profound impact on our physiology and our health.”
- ‘Our breaths will either wake us up or energize us. It will relax us, or it will just balance us’…
- “Research has shown that breathing exercises like these (see article) can have immediate effects by altering the pH of the blood, or changing blood pressure.”
- “But more importantly, they can be used as a method to train the body’s reaction to stressful situations and dampen the production of harmful stress hormones”
- “She says rapid breathing is controlled by the sympathetic nervous system. It’s part of the “fight or flight” response — the part activated by stress. In contrast, slow, deep breathing actually stimulates the opposing parasympathetic reaction — the one that calms us down.”
- “Research shows that breathing can even change the expression of genes. He says that by using your breath, you can alter the basic activity of your cells with your mind.”
- “What’s happening when you’re stressed is that your own body is giving itself multiple shots of that anti-inflammatory hormone, and so that tunes down your immune system’s ability to do its job to fight infection,” Sternberg says.
The Wisdom of a Snapple Cap
According to a Snapple cap…..
“Six-year olds laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day.” Continue reading “The Wisdom of a Snapple Cap”
How Often Does Your Inner Volcano Erupt?
“When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.” – African proverb
I think of this quote with clients all the time, because it seems that our common tendency is to look outside ourselves and blame “the other” for our anger, frustration, sadness, fear etc. Whereas in truth, people and situations simply trigger these deeper parts of us boil over.
When we clear out our “inner volcano” we can find our deeper sense of grounded calm and strength.
So when an “enemy” comes at us with something that would normally trigger our own internal “eruption”, we have nothing left to erupt, and we stay cool as a cucumber! 😉
Whenever you are ready to empty your volcano here’s how to find me…