By Larry Green
We all know about stress. Today is tax day, there's rush hour traffic, your next project deadline, a least favorite co-worker, your teenager's plans for spring break, Al-Qaida's plans and your recent investment portfolio. Notice your stress level shifting into high gear?
Stress happens. There is no stimulus plan to eliminate it from modern life. There are however solutions and strategies to reduce and control stress. These can be the key to fewer illnesses, better personal productivity and living a longer, happier life.
Some stress management gurus focus on changing your outer circumstances to lower your stress exposure. Others recommend coping mechanisms or practices that act as a pressure release valve. Lists of these tried and true approaches are available through any Google search.
An alternative approach exists that consists of learning how to change your neurological response to life's events. This low-tech, high-impact, human-level "technology" can change your stress quicker and easier than you ever imagined.
How your body manages stress
We have all heard of the "fight or flight" response. During stress, our bodies act as they have for thousands of generations. The endocrine system responds by pumping extra adrenaline and hormones into the blood stream, respiration and heart rates increase, blood pressure rates climb and the digestion processes take a holiday. All of this was useful when our ancestors suddenly saw a saber-tooth tiger coming. Fight or flight proved a good idea for nature to hard-wire into the human system.
During stress, the blood flow within the brain also shifts while neural activity in the cerebral cortex diminishes. In simple terms, blood flow becomes more pronounced in the back brain (sometimes called the primitive or reptilian brain) and the frontal cortex activity (the executive center) turns down like a dimmer switch.
This was a good survival reaction out in the wild, but not so helpful now when you need to think through new options or rein in wild runaway emotions galloping through the amygdala (the brain's emotional center).
How to change your response to stress
Research from the field of Energy Kinesiology shows we can consciously and easily change that activity. We can rewire our stress triggers while resetting our neurological responses for future stress.
How can you do this? The answer is a skill called the Emotional Stress Release technique (ESR). It's a simple, user-friendly skill anyone can learn. You can perform your own test drive in two minutes.
First, sit comfortably, close your eyes, take a few easy breathes while relaxing and centering yourself. Think about some stress in your life, pick anything you want. On the first attempt, take it relatively easy. Don't choose your biggest #1 stress in your life -- you can come back to that one soon.
Begin by rating the stress on a scale of 0-10, with zero being no stress and ten being ultimate stress. This is your own quantitative internal measurement. You can use it again at the end for a comparison. Got the measurement? Good.
Next gently place one hand across your forehead, or use your fingertips and lightly touch across the middle of your forehead (half-way between the eyebrows and the natural hairline). This procedure begins to reactivate the frontal lobes, the conscious choice-creating rational centers where we make decisions and can explore new options.
While holding your forehead, think through the stress situation in some detail for 30 seconds. This alone can counteract your neurological response to many stresses, but next, you'll enhance it with another step.
While still holding your forehead lightly, imagine you're the director of a movie. This movie has a happy ending. In it, your stress is resolved in the best imaginable way. Because it is a movie, it does not have to conform to reality. You can imagine your boss banished to the dark side of the moon, for example.
In this movie, each person does and says whatever the director (that's you) tells them to do. Create the script you want and now watch the movie in detail (still lightly holding the forehead). See the colors vividly and the faces up close. Hear all the sounds. Feel the tactile sensations. Notice your feelings. Even smell and taste what's happening.
[A quick note to our techie readers: we know this all sounds pretty hokey, but we've tried it and it works pretty well. You're probably as stressed out as everyone else, so why not take 10 minutes and give it a try. It's definitely cheaper than meds. -- Ed.]
After you have watched the movie through once in detail, watch it another 4-5 times, with each viewing happening at a faster pace, and the final show zipping by quickly. Once you are finished, open your eyes, let go of your forehead, take a breath, and think again about your stress. Now re-evaluate it on a scale of 0-10.
This process re-sets your response to stress. You haven't changed your outer world, just your neurological response to it. So next time a stressful co-worker comes by, you won't feel as bothered by their immature, self-important, disagreeable antics. They haven't changed. What's different is how you feel and neurologically react to that stress.
List the things that stress you out
Ready to do something marvelous to change your life for the better? Make a list of 30 stressors. Practice this skill once a day for a month, spending just two minutes daily on one stress at a time. Can't wait a whole month? Do them sooner! Imagine how relieved and relax you'll feel at the end of the month. You have just learned one skill to debug and reboot your human bio-computer.
Not every stress will dramatically change. Some will change completely, others only marginally. You can always make a version 2.0 of any movie and reinforce your newfound composure. Re-watching the previous movies in fast mode will also reinforce the positive benefits.
Next time you notice stress coming on, try lightly touching your forehead again. Even without the movie, this will help you regain conscious, rational control and allow you to handle the stress better. Now when you watch the news on television notice how often people automatically and intuitively hold their foreheads while stressed. Unknowingly we have been using this hard-wired reset switch all along, but now you can choose when to activate it.
[One other hint: don't go holding your forehead in public or where you might be evaluated in a business situation. This is tool for you, but holding your forehead in, for example, a business meeting would show weakness. -- Ed.]
Larry Green is a certified kinesiology trainer and practitioner. He and his wife run the U.S. Kinesiology Training Institute in Chapel Hill, NC. You can learn more by visiting http://www.USkinesiology.com.