Wow! What a turn our lives have taken in the past couple of weeks.
Kids at home, schools, and businesses closing, cancellations, and possibly health concerns, as we navigate our way through the outbreak of the Coronavirus. Stressful feelings can oftentimes be more harmful and add even more strain and uncertainty than the circumstances themselves.
Many understand the implication of the formula, Event + Response = Outcome. However, what evades most is how to create and maintain the optimal state of coherence that support us, no matter how difficult circumstances are, to respond positively to them, moment by moment. As we choose positive responses, we create positive outcomes for you and those concerned.
We now know how to quickly shift from destabilizing and health-harming emotions, like worry, overwhelm, and anxiety, which can diminish every aspect of our lives. Stress is most damaging in the moment, and so it is most important to de-stress as stress occurs.
So, where do we start? The heart!
About 30 years ago, HeartMath® began to look at a key signal from the heart to the brain. The heart sends more signals to the brain than the brain sends to the heart. The heart also makes many decisions on its own. So, it makes sense to shift your attention to the heart in order to de-stress.
Also, very important to note, thoughts chase feelings quicker than feelings chase thoughts. When you begin with the heart, you can change your feelings in just seconds. This means your thoughts change along with them.
As you learn to shift your feelings on demand, you send a coherent, smooth and orderly signal from the heart to the brain. In a stress-state, this same heart signal is erratic. By shifting to a coherent signal, you change the way your brain perceives the event. A coherent heart signal tells the brain, “I’m okay, no need to fight, flee, or freeze and kick out cortisol to facilitate any of that.” Instead, the brain pauses and considers the following: “What outcome do I want?“
Choose my response. Everything slows down, facilitating your highest intelligence and intuition to be brought into the situation.
A fear-based state, like worry, overwhelm, frustration, despair, and anxiety, shuts down the highest levels of brain thinking and narrows our perspective with an erratic heart signal. We become highly reactive, reacting within old patterns. In a stress state all the brain can do is respond the way it has in the past, the way it has been wired to respond, leading to more unpleasant events and circumstances.
The very good news is that in just seconds when we create the optimal state of coherence, we create a sense of balance and calm. DHEA, the anti-stress, anti-aging, and vitality hormone, (versus cortisol in a stress-state), is now present, facilitating our highest level of health, being, and functioning. Those around us can count on us for highly responsible, calm, and well-thought-out responses to them, events in our lives, their lives, and circumstances.
Our perspectives widen, important in the midst of challenge, change, and strain. It is, oftentimes, a new perspective that is all that is needed to change the trajectory of a life, a relationship, a business, and health.
The HeartMath® techniques and technology heal the body, renew energy throughout the day, and point us in the best direction for optimal choices and decision-making all in a few seconds. Won’t you do it with me?
- Focus your attention on 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. Find an easy rhythm that’s comfortable.
You might notice already you have slowed things down internally, the chatter in your head is quieting down or is gone, and you’re feeling calmer and more peaceful.
- Make a sincere attempt to experience a regenerative feeling such as appreciation or care for someone or something in your life
Continue to feel feelings of care and appreciation for someone or something as you breathe in and out of your heart (45 seconds or more).
Now, notice how you feel physically. More relaxed, shoulders down, less tension in your neck, gut, chest, or back?
How about mentally? Has your mind quieted? Perhaps you notice it is clearer, maybe even like a blank slate.
And emotionally, what are you feeling? Peace, joy, love, compassion? Happiness perhaps?
All in just seconds. Circumstances may remain exactly the same, however, our responses do not need to.
The Coronavirus continues, or the health challenge, the business challenge, financial pressures, or disappointment. What doesn’t need to continue are our old ways of responding. As we sustain the state of coherence for just a few minutes a couple of times a day, we also begin to rewire our neural circuitry so that calm, peace, and joy become our natural state, while resilience grows.
So, when confronted with challenges, change, and disruption, as we are today and will be once again, instead of responding with fear and cortisol taking over the body, take a moment instead to do heart-focused breathing and heart-focused feeling. Your heart, with a coherent heart signal to the brain, will always guide you to your very best response and outcomes that are in alignment with your goals and values. And that’s the very best anyone of us can ever do. That’s peace. That’s joy. That’s love.
A change of heart truly changes everything!
– Laurie
If you want to learn more, take Laurie’s Personal Health Assessment; Get a free 40-minute Personal Health Consult, and practice this tool together.
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Laurie Levin refers to herself as a Transformation Coach. She helps others transform and master their own wellbeing. She specializes in emotional and physical well-being including healthy nutrition and lifestyle habits, healthy weight loss and the HeartMath® stress reduction techniques.
