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Open your journal
How to make a deep abdominal breath :
1- Put one hand on your belly.
2- Inhale while you push your belly out. Feel you hand moving.
3- For the count of one-two aim the breath at your abdomen. For the count of three-four aim the breath at your chest.
4- hold your breath for the count of five to twelve. This fully oxygenates your blood.
5- Exhale first from your chest (thirteen – eighteen), then from your abdomen (nineteen – twenty). This eliminates toxins by activating the lymph system. Practice for a few minutes. Feel the tension get out. Relax your muscles.
6- Report in your journal your experience of this exercise.
How do you feel? In which situations can you use this simple techniques?
7- Keep practicing and use this technique whenever your are under stress.
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2 – Deep Relaxation
Relaxation has a whole series of benefits. The Relaxation Response has the opposite effect of the Fight or Flight Response. It
decreases metabolism
decreases heart rate
decreases blood pressure
decreases breathing rate
decreases muscle tension
In addition, it decreases stress-related physical symptoms
decreases anxiety and hostility
frees from compulsive worrying and negative thoughts
increases concentration
improves the quality of sleep
enhances performance and efficiency
increases quality of sensory perception
facilitates changes in behavior
reduces depression, fatigue, neck and back pain, joint pain, migraine headaches
reduces symptoms of autoimmune diseases such as diabetes and arthritis
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Open your journal
There are lots of ways to elicit the Relaxation Response. Read the how-to books that describe the different techniques and find out what works best for you. A simple way is the Jacobson tense relax method which works as follows:
1- Select a quiet place and a comfortable position
2- Give yourself full permission to relax
3- Take a few diaphragm breaths
4- Tighten all muscles in the area of your right leg, foot and toes for a few seconds
5- Relax all these muscles and exhale
6- Repeat sequence 4 and 5 for the following groups of muscles: left leg, foot and toes, hips and buttocks, abdomen chest, back shoulders, right arm hand and fingers, left arm hand and fingers, neck, jaw tongue eyelids face and scalp
An easy way to feel what happens when you relax muscles’ groups is to close your eyes by contracting your face muscles and then just smile. Feel how the muscles of your face relax.
Report the result of this experience in your journal
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3 – Biofeedback
Biofeedback is simply a series of techniques that feedback one’s own biology. There are lots of aspects of your body that are on automatic most of the time; they are out of your consciousness, like your heart rate.
When some instruments let you measure how they function, you can consciously modify the way they work. A visual meter or a sound generator varies depending on the biological activity to observe. With a little training, it becomes easy to modify at will the activity. This works for skin temperature, muscle tension, blood pressure.
But it also works for brain waves, which gives you a great way to modify at will the level of activity and relaxation of your brain, your State of Mind. Biofeedback has been successfully used to treat stress-related disorders like insomnia, migraines, asthma, gastrointestinal disorders, hypertension, muscular dysfunction, and even some cancers.
4 – Exercise
The choice of possible sports or healthy physical activities is overwhelming. What matters is to find a type of exercise that you enjoy and that brings you a feeling of intense satisfaction. To keep growing over time you will need internal motivation. Make it fun or you will soon give up.
Also, find activities that are easy to do even if the weather conditions are less than ideal. Remember that team sports are great, but finding the right partners, available when you need them, is not always easy. Combine individual sports like walking, running, swimming, biking with team sports.
Select daily activities that do not require hours of preparation. Follow your instinct and start with what you feel will be enjoyable for a long time. Then go for it and remember that practice makes perfect. But start in any activity is generally clumsy.
For more information on exercise read The Power of Exercise
5 – Hobby
If you have a hobby you already know the benefits it brings you. Your hobby is a great way to discover your real talents and gifts. Usually, we get involved in activities we like and easily improve our skills, as our motivation to progress is internal, not external.
We just enjoy doing it, naturally get better at it, and relax with a feeling of accomplishment. If you don’t yet have a hobby, consider choosing one. It can considerably improve the quality of your life. It brings balance and helps you recoup from the stressors of life.
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Open your journal
You probably don’t need any encouragement to pursue your hobby. Accept nothing but the long march toward perfection. Keep learning. Emulate the best. Build a group of people with the same interest to exchange hints and tips.
If you don’t have a hobby, let your imagination go wild. Ask questions like:
What did I like doing when I was a kid?
What activity makes me feel really good?
What I am better at than my peers?
What do I do that makes me lose the notion of time?
What do I need to start?
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6 – Knowledge Power
The more you know, the more options you have to choose a perspective on life events. The more potential perspectives, the more freedom you have to manage your stress and reach your Life Goals.
Learning is a life long process. A great way to increase your knowledge is simply reading books. About every aspect of humankind experience and knowledge is described, explained, synthesized somewhere in a book.
Everything and its contrary can be found in books. Beware. Some books can develop great ideas on a certain issue and be totally wrong on another, using assumptions, over-generalized conclusions, half-truths, myths, misunderstandings or even downright falsehoods. Exercise judgment.
What matters is what works for you. Keep learning and make constant reality checks. I have found in most books I read some interesting ideas and experiences which confronted with reality proved valuable. Other books are just a waste of time. Make your own judgment, but appreciate and value the freedom we now have access to so much information!
7 – Laughing Out
There ain’t much fun in medicine, but there’s a lot of medicine in fun! (Josh Billings) Humor is great stress coping aid. It reduces fatigue, tension, anger, depression, and confusion. Laughter is nature’s way to diffuse the Fight or Flight state if it gets turned on needlessly.
Laughter is a great way to change focus in seconds. When we laugh, our brain pours out enkephalins and endorphins, the feel-good hormones. Laughter: stimulates the heart and lungs, increases the heartbeat, temporarily contracts arteries, brings more oxygen to the blood and to the brain, builds mental energy, boosts the production of immune cells, massages facial muscles, diaphragm, thorax, and abdomen.
When we stop laughing arteries and muscles relax reducing blood pressure, which feels good. Laughter also reduces pain, promotes creativity, facilitates digestion, strengthen our immune system by increasing the level of immunoglobulin A, improves communication with others: “humor is the shortest distance between two people” (Victor Borge)
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Open your journal
Collect funny cartoons, humorous anecdotes, items that make you laugh and build your “silly file”. When you need to release some endorphins, go back to this file and have fun for a while.
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8 – Meditation or Prayer
Meditation has been shown to reduce blood pressure, improve the immune system, improve mood and even increase fertility in women. But meditation has many other beneficial effects.
Today most people live a frantic life and make little or no time to relax. All meditation techniques tend to put us back in the present moment. We spend way too much time remembering the dead past or worrying about the imagined future. Meditation puts us back in the present.
Meditation is the stretching of the mind. As we stretch muscles to get rid of the tension and allow peak performance, we can use meditation to cope with stress and let our brain work at its maximum capacity when needed.
Most illnesses of modern life have to do with stress. Not with stress itself, which is a normal part of life, but rather with the way we cope with stress. As modern human beings, we are constantly overstressed.
To maintain flexibility, we must relax regularly. One of the easiest ways to achieve this is meditation as even sleep does not totally relax the brain. Meditation is a sort of cleanup of the mind. Meditate at least twice a day for 15 minutes.
There are hundreds of ways to meditate. Over the centuries all sorts of techniques, religious or not, have been developed. Just try a few and choose whatever works best for you. There is no such thing as a perfect meditation where no disturbing thoughts would come to consciousness.
Unless you are dead your brain keeps working and thoughts popping up during meditation are normal. The proper way to handle them is just to observe them and let them pass, refocusing your attention on breathing or counting or saying a mantra, or any other meditation technique you use to come back to the present moment.
1- Breath Counting Meditation
Choose a quiet place
Sit or lay down and relax your body
Close your eyes
Take several deep belly breaths focusing on the to exhale, the pause, then the inhale.
As you exhale count “one, two, three, four, five”.
As you pause count “one, two”.
As you inhale count “one, two, three, four, five”.
As you pause count “one, two”.
The counting keeps your mind focused and leaves less room for rising thoughts. Thoughts however will come. Just observe them and let them pass, returning quietly to the counting. You can try variations in the numbers.
2- Mantra Meditation
Choose a quiet place
Sit or lay down and relax your body
Close your eyes
Take several deep belly breaths focusing on the to exhale, the pause, then the inhale. Select a word or sentence that you like as your mantra.
When exhaling chant your mantra to yourself silently or aloud. The mantra keeps your mind focused and leaves less room for rising thoughts.
Thoughts however will come. Just observe them and let them pass, returning quietly to the counting.
3- Walking Meditation
Take several deep belly breaths focusing on the to exhale, the pause, then the inhale. Start walking and focus your attention on your feet and legs.
Observe their movement.
Count each step from “one” to “ten”. Then “one” to “ten” and so on.
The counting keeps your mind focused and leaves less room for rising thoughts. Thoughts however will come. Just observe them and let them pass, returning quietly to the counting.
4- Actively listening to music
This is not just hearing some music. It’s focussing on the music with full attention, savoring the melody, listening alternatively to the different instruments, feeling the rhythm with your whole body. This is a great form of meditation.
5- Prayer
Depending on your religion you might have very different ways to pray. The aim of prayer is much higher than simple stress management, its effects on the body however are similar to those of meditation.
9 – Mind Technologies
Mind machines are sophisticated biofeedback systems. With electrodes placed on the skull during sessions, they help monitor the electrical waves of the brain: Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Theta waves. Theta waves for instance are in the 4 to 8 Hz range and correspond to a state between waking and sleep. It is the ideal state for communication between the conscious and the unconscious mind. One of the best ways to modify unwanted habits and behaviors by suggestion.
Each State of Mind entails a symphony of brain waves. Alpha brain waves correspond to daydreaming and reverie. Beta brain waves are associated with normal waking States, logical thinking, active external attention. Delta brain waves are associated with restorative stages of sleep. Theta brain waves are associated with deep meditation and creativity.
Some of the Mind Machines:
Biofeedback tools
Sound machines
Light and Color systems
Cranial Electro Stimulation (CES) machines
Ganzfeld systems
To know more about Mind Machines read:
“Mega Brain Power” by Michael Hutchinson (Publisher: Hyperion New York), a fascinating book on research in the field of Mind Technologies.
“The high-performance mind” by Anna Wise (Tarcher Putman)
To study the functioning of the brain, see the series of videos “The Brain, our universe within” from the Discovery Channel with T. Suzuki.
Potential benefits of Mind Machines.
They reduce stress
Help produce Deep Relaxation
Improve or eliminate unwanted Behaviors
Produce the Peak Performance States
Make the brain healthier
Boost IQ
Enhance creativity
Accelerate learning
Increase memory
Eliminate substance abuse problems
Overcome Depression and Anxiety
Alleviate pain
Boost immune functions
Help understand and improve relationships
Help spiritual development
Mind technology has been used for over 40 years with apparently little or no ill effects. It is however a new technology that still needs a lot of in-depth research. CES (Cranial Electro Stimulation) for example should only be used with medical supervision.
10 – Nutrition
We are what we eat
. Healthy nutrition is a basic requirement for a peak performance life.
Good nutrition achieves balanced brain chemistry, triggering feelings of well-being, confidence, optimism, and sharp thinking. In
addition it
- Increases our level of energy
- Helps control our emotional states
- Improves our immune system
- Reduces risks of degenerative diseases like cardiovascular diseases or cancer
- Helps control a healthy weight
- Allows deep refreshing sleep
- Increases creativity and efficiency
- Increases physical performance (both strength and endurance)
- Increases health and longevity
- Stimulates the immune system
Good nutrition habits force us to stop ingesting some food we might be addicted to, usually however the ones that are worst for our health.
For more information on nutrition, read Mastering Nutrition
11 – Self-Talk
Self-Talk is one the most powerful tools you can use to build and consolidate your belief system. Self-Talk is either conscious or unconscious. It is what you tell your selves when you start doing something or when you explain what happened, like “I need to stop at the grocery store” or “I am no good at math”.
Neuroscientists have established that everybody carries on an ongoing dialog, or Self-Talk, of between 150 and 300 words a minute or an average of 50 000 thoughts a day. The ongoing negative reinforcement created by habitual negative Self-Talk results in limiting beliefs that end up as self-fulfilling prophecies.
Negative as well as positive beliefs are literally etched into your nervous system in the form of neural pathways, a combination of hormones and neurotransmitters ready to be fired in an instant.
At the turn of the century, Emile Coue, a modest French doctor invented a healing method using Self-Talk that literally made miracles. Although the medical establishment of the time tried to ridicule his method, Dr. Coue healed thousands of patients with a few simple suggestions like “Every day in all aspects of my life I am getting better and better“.
The patients would repeat this sentence again and again without any special procedure, but simply imagining that it was true, and miracle cures occurred. Mind over matter. Today affirmations are regularly used by professional athletes and successful business people.
We now know that deep relaxation increases the production of Alpha and Theta Brain Waves, which makes autosuggestion and visualization even more efficient. The keyword is repetition. Our subconscious does not evaluate the validity of the affirmation. It just memorizes by repetition; so that positive Self-Talk used consistently, and a great number of times, changes our belief system about ourselves and about the world.
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Open your journal
1- Put yourself in a deep relaxation state.
2- Copy to your journal the following positive suggestions.
3- Select, edit and adapt them to your own needs.
4- Use repetition
5- Be specific
6- Be positive
7- Use the present tense
8- Use all your senses and vividly imagine the outcome
9- Believe your suggestions. Start with “I choose to” or “I decide to” if you fear that your affirmation is too different from what you presently believe. Change is a process that takes time. You will be amazed to see that with practice the affirmation becomes reality. Remember that your negative beliefs have been reinforced by years of Negative Self-Talk.
I am relaxed
I feel centered and calm
I trust myself
I am in charge of my life
I am in control of my mind, body and emotions now
I respect and appreciate myself
I choose healthy activities
I eat only when I am hungry
Every day my energy grows stronger
I have a spirit of adventure
My immune system functions perfectly
I use all my senses to learn
I enjoy learning
I reject drugs
or any other suggestion that relates to a problem you decide to cure.
For instance to
stop smoking
I am a nonsmoker and I am proud of myself
My lungs are strong and healthy
I enjoy breathing deeply and fully
I am in control of myself
I choose to do what is best for me and my future
Being a nonsmoker it is easy for me to exercise
I enjoy exercising
I like being in good shape
Exercising keeps me feeling good and living at my best
I get exactly the right amount of healthy exercise
Every time I exercise I feel better about myself
I create a picture of myself the way I want to be
To lose weight
I see myself becoming slim, trim and healthy
Changing myself is changing my life
My mind automatically keeps me at the weight I choose
I gain self-esteem instead of weight
I take responsibility for my body
I eat only those foods which are beneficial to me
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12- Smart Nutrients
Although balanced nutrition with organically grown foods brings us all of the nutrients we need, there might be some times when we can optimize our biochemistry with an extra amount of some nutrients. Besides most of us now eat industrially grown food contaminated with pesticides, synthesized fertilizers, antibiotics, preservative chemicals, and hormones.
In the last decade’s research has shown that smart nutrients can have a considerable impact on health, performance, well-being, and longevity. The right amounts of these nutrients will:
Fine-tune your biochemistry
Strengthen your immune system when needed
Relieve stress
Increase energy level
Facilitate learning
Increase creativity
Help reach physical and cognitive peak performance
Help change behavior
Prevent premature aging in particular of the brain
Can avoid memory loss, strokes, and certain kinds of cancer
Neutralize free radicals
Bring more glucose and oxygen to brain cells
For more information on Smart Nutrients, read Mastering Stress
13- Social Support
A strong support network of family, friends, and associates will help you avoid internalizing stress. Just talking about stressors releases the tension. Studies after studies show that small communities that have a strong supportive relationship with their members have much fewer stress-related illnesses.
Pets like dogs that show unconditional affection are a great anti-stress help. But the best way to increase the feeling of being loved, which significantly reduces stress, is to act lovingly toward others. Even if love is not given in return, the impact on your own stress will be considerable.
Build your own support network. It will be one of the best anti-stress systems you can get.
“To have a friend, be a friend“.
Give love, care, and appreciation.
Increase your perception of being loved: act lovingly toward others.
14- Stressor Control
Stress is sometimes defined as any difficult situation that you can’t control. If you cannot control the stressor, what triggers your reaction, you perceive it as a threat. If you can control it, you see it as a challenge and approach it relaxed and confident.
Loss of control considerably increases stress. Control over work situation determines the level of job stress. Predictability is very important to cope with stressors. The feeling of loss of control often creates the “learned helplessness” personality trait.
People who have the least sense of control have the highest level of stress. Biochemically they accumulate cortisol in their brain. Cortisol starves the brain of glucose, its energy source, interferes with the normal flow of neurotransmitters and eventually kills neurons.
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Open your journal
Report in your journal a stressful event. Remember vividly the incident. Learn to recognize when you really lose control. Feeling out of control when you are still in charge is the usual way to acquire “learned helplessness”. Check if you used an erroneous thought process like the following.
All-or-Nothing thinking
Overgeneralization
Negative increasing
Positive decreasing
Jumping to conclusions (Mind reading, Fortune telling)
Magnification or minimization
Emotional reasoning (“Should” statements)
Labeling the person instead of the behavior
Self-blaming
A good approach is to question your automatic or reflex thoughts. When a stressor occurs ask yourself:
Is it really an All-or-Nothing situation?
Is it “Always” and “Everywhere” like that?
Are there only negative aspects?
What are the positives sides?
Is this conclusion absolutely certain?
Am I blowing things out of proportion?
Am I emotional or rational?
Why “should” it be different?
Why and How do I put myself in a box?
Who is really responsible?
Another common mistake is the belief that, to be in control, you need “total control”. In fact nobody can forecast all the details, but you sure can determine the final goal, keep in mind the broad picture and adapt your strategies to the situation.
See the film “Mon Oncle d’ Amerique” (1980) by Alain Resnais with Henry Laborit, a French Brain Surgeon and researcher who discovered Chlorpromazine the very first tranquilizer.
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15 – Thought Stopping
Negative or frightening thoughts always precede negative and frightening emotions. The more you let your Self Talk focus on scary events or negative people, the more your body will react by interpreting any event in a fearful or negative way. You are over time building a mind infrastructure that automatically perceives reality this way.
If you regularly stop these thoughts before they impact your biochemistry, you can considerably reduce your stress levels.
Thought Stopping works best for phobias such as fear of snakes, fear of driving, fear of the dark, fear of the crowd, fear of elevators, and the like. But this technique works great to weed out any negative thought. When certain thoughts or images consistently generate pain or unpleasant emotional States, use Thought Stopping.
Some repetitive stressful thoughts that can be handled by Though Stopping:
I am going to be late
I forgot to switch the lights off
I left the gas on
I did not lock the doors
I am over-concerned with germs
I am going to be broke
I am going to be trapped in this elevator
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Open your journal
Report the result of the following experience in your journal
1- Set a timer or alarm clock to 1 minute in a quiet place.
2- Close your eyes and imagine a situation in which the stressful thought is likely to occur. When the time is elapsed shout “Stop!” and snap your fingers or a rubber band kept around your wrist.
3- Have a physical routine activity that takes about a minute and makes your mind blank like push-ups or anything that requires some muscular coordination and attention.
4- Take control of the thought-stopping process without a timer or alarm clock. While ruminating on the stressful thought, shout “Stop!”. If it works for a few times, say “Stop!” in a normal voice. Then say it in a whisper. Then only think of a loud “Stop!”.
5- Now substitute the stressful thought with a few positive statements which are in fact different perspectives of the same feared event. Just imagine that instead of the frightening outcome something great happens.
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16- Visualization
Mental imagery is the internal representation of thoughts you can see, hear, feel, taste and smell. Mental imagery is the ideal tool to improve the quality of our life. To reach a better life you first need to create a full sensory experience of what it will be.
“Images, whether perceived with the senses or summoned from memory, go to the visual cortex. From then on, the brain handles them in much the same way, regardless of their source.” (in “The brain: the last frontier” by R. Restack)
Mental imagery is known for its effects on physiology: It stimulates changes in heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen consumption, brain wave rhythms, level of hormones and neurotransmitters.
Visualization improves performance through mental rehearsal. Visualization requires that you use the right hemisphere of your brain improving creativity and memory.
Thoughts and emotions also have a considerable impact on your immune system’s ability to protect you from illnesses. Visualization ability develops with practice.
Everybody visualizes. Daydreams and memories are types of visualization.
External reality is transmitted to your unconscious as images. The deeper the relaxation, the more vivid the transmitted mental images.
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Open your journal
Report the result of the following experience in your journal
1- Master Sub-modalities
1-1- Relax your muscles. Take a few deep belly breaths. Start with some deep relaxation techniques. The more relaxed you are the better.
1-2- Close your eyes and recall a past scene or create one you want to live in the future. Visualize your goal as vibrant colorful images.
The following questions will help you modify your memories or creation. Visualization is more than just remembering. To visualize you need to use all your senses, change your physiology, feel exactly what you felt in the past or what you want to feel in the future.
1-3- Use one sense at a time.
First, what you see
is the image moving or still?
is the image in color or black and white?
is the image bright or dim?
is the image close or far?
is it two or three-dimensional?
Then, what you hear
is the sound loud?
what is the tonality?
is the sound harmonious?
Who’s voice do you hear?
Then, what you feel
is it hot or cold?
is it rough or smooth?
is it rigid or flexible?
is it heavy or light?
Then, what you taste
is it sweet?
is it bitter?
is it acid?
is it salty?
Then, what you smell
what odor or perfume does it remind you?
You can improve the quality of your memory by changing the modalities.
To make a pleasant memory more vivid you can change the scene from far away to near, from black and white to colorful and so on.
Inversely you can diminish a traumatic scene by making it gray and dimmed instead of near or changing any other modality.
Repetition of the process is key. Do it several times. You will be amazed by the results. Visualization when practiced regularly increases creativity. It is also great for athletic and peak performance training, pain reduction and healing.
2- Re scripting exercise
Take a very unpleasant memory you want to modify. Look at it and see it as a black and white movie, make it dimmer and dimmer, let it fade away. How does it make you feel?
You might find that most of the emotional content of the scene, the unpleasant feelings, have faded away with the image.
Now, remember a very pleasant memory. Turn on the brightness of the scene. Increase the colors, the clarity. Make it three-dimensional. Make it closer. How do you feel?
You can also change the auditory modalities like pitch, tone, tempo, volume or distance.
Change the kinesthetic modalities like weight, size, temperature or texture.
3- Develop your Image Bank
You will be able to change your State of Mind at will. Build a few scenes and strongly associate with them the following States or others you might want to recreate. When you want to change State, just recall the image.
For relaxation:
Recall a time when you were totally at ease, secure and unworried. Play with your Senses Sub-modalities to optimize your feeling of relaxation. You will know when you have reached your Peak Level: You breathe more deeply and your muscles relax.
For energy:
Recall a time when you were full of energy. The sky was the limit. It can be when achieving a great physical performance or listening to some music. Tune up your State to Peak Level. Store the whole memory for future use.
For ideal action:
Recall a time when you did exactly the right thing at the right time with the right level of movement and caring for others. Optimize the scene as above.
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