Stress Management

Stress is a part of life. It can lead to all sorts of 'problems' including sleeplessness, lack of focus, and even disease.

Some people deal with stress by using drugs or alcohol to numb themselves. Some release the stress in the form of anger or violence.

In order to be truly effective in our lives, we need to be able to deal with stress in a healthy way.

Learning to calm your mind - and body - is a very valuable skill to develop, as it will allow you to deal with the stresses of life in a more adaptive way.

Meditation & biofeedback are both ways we can learn to have more control over our minds and bodies.

Meditation is nothing new - it's been around for millennia, and takes a variety of forms.

Biofeedback is a somewhat more recent development than meditation, but it too has been around for a while.

What's newer still is the readily available technology to assist in the development of the ability to relax deeply, to enter deep states of meditation, and to learn to control your mind and body more consciously.

I'm listing here some of the tools I've used - and recommended to others - to de-stress and to increase my ability to control my mind. As I discover more, I will add them. If you know of some that you think I might like to try out and recommend to others, please let me know.

The Institute of HeartMath

The Institute of HeartMath offers a variety of products and services, focusing largely on bio-feedback and education. It's some pretty cool stuff.

From the HeartMath.org site:

The Institute of HeartMath is an internationally recognized nonprofit research and education organization dedicated to helping people reduce stress, self-regulate emotions and build energy and resilience for healthy, happy lives. HeartMath tools, technology and training teach people to rely on the intelligence of their hearts in concert with their minds at home, school, work and play.

Visit the Institute of HeartMath website to learn more.

pzizz

I've been using pzizz myself for several years.

Now, you may be asking yourself - What the heck is a pzizz?

Think 'zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'

pzizz is an application that can be used to help you get to sleep if you have insomnia (those of us with active minds sometimes have trouble 'shutting off' at night). It can also be used to help fight fatigue and mind fog during the day by inducing short power naps.

Wild Divine

Wild Divine is a computer software and hardware system that helps you train your brain through bio-feedback. Through learning to control your respiration and heart rate, you can greatly reduce stress, not to mention increase overall awareness.

I first discovered this a few years ago at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association where they had a display for the Journey to Wild Divine. It's sort of like a video game, except that you 'control' the game play through your state of mind (and body), wearing sensors on your fingertips to pickup heart rate, etc.