Newsletter Special Holiday Edition!

FIRST AID FOR STRESS

Hi folks,

I intended to send one newsletter per month (and still do!), but due to the holidays, I thought a special edition might be helpful, on “First Aid for Stress.” What I want to do here is give you a few tools that you can use yourself, *on the spot* where it really counts.

I could make a long list of stress-reduction methods, but I’ll bet that most readers of this newsletter are familiar with many as well. So I asked myself what can we actually put to use quickly in a stressed moment when our inner resources have been hijacked by tension and anxiety?

At one point it dawned on me that even though I’d studied and practiced many techniques, I still didn’t have skills
that I could draw on instantaneously to help me transform tough moments as they would arise *in real life situations*. In those stressed moments, most of what I knew had flown out the window.

So without further ado.. here are a few of the tools I’ve put together for my own toolkit, which you can put in motion on the spot to start breaking a stress pattern in seconds.

I’m presenting a few different methods only because different people have different inclinations. But you can pick just one that you like. Or if you like variety, try a different once each time. You might want to note them on an index card and put it up on the fridge, or some place where you can refer to it easily. (Under stress, memory can
turn to mush).

1. Inner Smile –

Think of someone you love, or even a pet, anyone/thing that you care about, and visualize them in front of you smiling with love in their heart. Visualize that smile coming into you and filling you up with love. If you know the chakra system, you can visualize the inner smile coming into your eye center and then each chakra in sequence going down, filling you up more and more. Experiment with whatever way you can make this work for you.

2. Polarity hold –

Put one hand on the back of your neck, and the other on your tailbone at the base of the spine, or just anywhere on
the sacrum. It’s comfortable to lie on your side like that for as long as you like, but wherever you happen to be, whatever position you happen to be in is fine.

Anytime you feel like you’re going into a stress mode, touch those points and visualize the stress draining out of you, from those points into the ground.

This is a powerful move from Polarity Therapy, which actually comes from Taoist energy healing, but it’s not necessary to know anything more about it to make use of it on the spot.

3. “Embryonic breathing” –

When stress strikes, change your breathing pattern and you can make a dramatic shift in your whole inner condition. To do this breathing, just sit in any comfortable way, or you can lie down. Just follow your normal breathing pattern, watching the breath as you inhale and exhale, and then suggest to yourself that your breathing can become smaller, slower and shallower.

Don’t force anything; just make this suggestion, and the breath will follow. You can put one hand on the belly to help you keep your attention there. The breath becomes small, fine, and slow.

You can do this up to 10 minutes at a time or however long it’s comfortable. This is a technique from Chi Kung which is a lot like the Russian Buteyko method. (See the article on Buteyko breathing in the Articles section of my website).

In the Chinese tradition it’s called Embryonic Breathing because it can restore your natural childlike spirit when practiced regularly. But you can also use it for “first aid” and it will help shift you out of the stress mode.

4. Boost –

Anytime you feel under psychic attack or in any way under the influence of “bad vibes,” however you experience that, you can send loving energy to the source of it. Simply visualize light emanating from your heart and reaching to the person involved.

A good way to get some power behind this is to think of your heart as a fire hydrant, and you’re opening the cap on
the hydrant so the water spurts out under a lot of pressure, but in a stream of energy that you can control. This involves the heart, so you’re sending energy from there and not angry energy.

If you’re consumed with anger, you can think of taking the great energy from the anger and bringing it to the heart.  Or just see the person bathed in this energy (white or violet light works well), receiving the benefit of loving energy.

Again, find the way that works best for you. These are just guidelines for you to develop your own methods as your personal experience guides you. But you can also use them “right out of the box” and they will help.

There’s a lot that could be said about stress and how to pull up the roots of it, but I wanted to present the things
that you can put in motion quickly.

Oher methods I’ve used with excellent results include EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and TAT (Tapas Acupressure
Technique), although those will require a bit more instruction. They’re very much worth taking a little time to learn, though, and I’ll cover them in future newsletters.

Beyond Techniques –

All the techniques are really just ways to get energy flowing in a way that was blocked before. You can start making this shift even just by recognizing your stress as a blockage, or that it’s like a drama being played out, and you can switch the channel.

Sometimes you don’t feel like you have that power. But in small ways, you can begin to gain a kind of perspective that shows you from your own experience that you can be okay in the eye of the storm no matter what winds might be
blowing around you.

It’s not all love and light all the time, and isn’t about denying what you feel, but transforming your experience. It can be part of a journey of personal development, but along the way you can get dramatic results in simple ways. When you have good leverage it doesn’t take a lot of force to accomplish something.

Wishing you inner smiles and heartfelt energy boosts for the holidays,

-Karen

A Guide for Self-Healing
http://www.guideforselfhealing.com

For back issues of this newsletter, see
http://www.guideforselfhealing.com/?cat=12

All information I provide is for education and research purposes. Please consult an appropriate health practitioner if you have particular health concerns.