Reduce your stress with a simple technique

National Stress Awareness Day is focusing today on organizations reducing stress in the workplace, which is great but inevitably we’ll all need to deal with stress at some point in our lives. So I’m sharing with you a simple technique that’s scientifically proven not only to reduce stress but more importantly, to change the negative emotional and physiological affects you experience when a stressful event happens.

This is crucial because so many stress-relieving activities like listening to music, having a warm bath and yoga focus on relaxation AFTER the event. Yet by the time you wind down, you’ve probably already experienced hours of stress and its unpleasant effects. The stress hormone cortisol, for example, stays in your system for hours rather than minutes once released. So the key is learning how to change your reaction to stress, stopping the emotional and hormonal fallout that follows.

HeartMath is a simple technique that achieves this – and comes with loads of positive side effects, from better sleep and energy levels to clearer thinking and decision making.

Once you’ve got the hang of the HeartMath tools, you can use them any time you encounter a stressful event – for example, as you start to feel tense in heavy traffic, overloaded at work or sense you are about to face a difficult emotional situation. And you can do it with your eyes open, as you walk or talk – so you have a tool to control stress at the direct point you encounter a situation likely to trigger a negative reaction.

How to do it – and why it’s so important is explained in this article written by nutritional therapist and HeartMath practitioner Susannah Lawson.

I have lots of advice and suggestions on how to deal with stress on my website here. Take a look if you’d like to find out how to reduce your stress.