Experience the Difference

Posted on | by HeartMath

Imagine being able to turn a bad day around or recover more quickly from an aggravating piece of news or a heated discussion.

Breakthrough research has found that we can intentionally change our emotional state to find inner balance and a feeling of ease which increases our resilience and allows us to bounce back more quickly from daily stressors.

The emotional state of inner balance is marked by a smooth heart rhythm pattern, called a coherent waveform.

With just a few minutes of daily practice with the Inner Balance™ Bluetooth sensor and app, you can watch your heart rhythm pattern become more coherent and feel the difference in your emotional balance, mental clarity and much more.

Inner Balance
EXPERIENCE THE DIFFERENCE

Using the Inner Balance app has numerous benefits such as:

  • Release and prevent overwhelm
  • Shift stress-producing emotional states
  • Experienceinner stillness
  • Enhance mental clarity
  • Access intuition for making better choices
  • Improve performance
  • Increase energy and resilience
  • Sleep better

I Choose Happiness

Posted on | by HeartMath

Happiness can range from a bubbly and buoyant feeling to a quiet and appreciative feeling and there are other variations of what one might call happiness.

One of the most important things we can do that supports our happiness is to build our self-awareness about what we are choosing to focus on? Is it the depleting thoughts such as pessimism or frustration? Can we give more focus and energy towards renewing emotions such as appreciation?

It’s worth noting that having a negative or depleting thought isn’t bad, and it would be idealistic to think we can rid ourselves of every draining thought. Yet as we build more awareness of where our thoughts go we also increase our opportunity to make more conscious choices about where we want to spend our energy. It takes a little practice but it’s well worth it as we start to increase the ratios of happiness that we feel.

Two simple practices that can help foster happiness

Practice building appreciation by writing it and saying it. Do it for your own health and happiness and for those around you. Having ways to exercise appreciation daily helps to support happiness by emphasizing the positive things in our life and it benefits our health by helping to reduce stress and feelings of overwhelm.

  1. Tried and true, this daily practice is simple and worth the minimal time it takes. Pick a quiet time to write down two things for which you are grateful. Keep it in a journal so you can add to it regularly and it’s helpful to look back on it for a little added motivation. Some days will be easier than others, but even on a bad day, we can usually note something we are grateful for (e.g., It’s a new day and a fresh start; the clouds were extra fluffy and pretty today.)
  2. Take gratitude a step further and make a regular practice to verbally express it more readily. Openly expressing our appreciation helps to expand this positive energy. It also helps us to increase our view of what is good in our life — and it uplifts others at the same time.

3 Ways To Enrich the Holiday Experience

Posted on | by HeartMath

It’s the holiday season and many of us are thinking about gifts that will be meaningful representations of our love and appreciation for the people in our lives. Gifts come in many forms, from things we give to experiences we share, to deeper connections with others.

Gifts can also be ways we care for ourselves. In the spirit of giving gifts, we offer these simple suggestions of gifts that we can each give to our self.

While they are acts of self-care – they’re also ways we can make the holiday season a little brighter.

#1 – The Gift of Change A unique holiday gift that will reap rewards now and help start a new year on the right footing is to replace something old with something new – inside our self. This can be making a forward moving commitment in doing something we have been inspired to do but haven’t yet done or changing an old habit that no longer serves us.

We can do this by asking our heart intuition to make us aware of an emotional habit, pattern or behavior that we would like to change. Here are some examples of old habits worth considering: putting off medical check-ups; negative self-talk; being too impatient, forgoing exercise, not getting enough sleep or any other habit that doesn’t support our overall wellbeing.

Once decided on what pattern we want to change; then write it down.

It’s important to not just notice these old attitudes, thoughts or habits but to also replace them. Having a replacement ready helps create a new pattern – one that supports us in a healthier, heart-centered way of living.

Write down the new replacement intention— such as replacing impatience with more patience. Bypass the stress by easing into your replacement. Approach it with the attitude of a fun experiment, not a struggle match. This can make a notable difference in your approach while making it much easier to succeed.

#2 – The Gift of Pause The holiday season often brings added busyness on top of our already full plate of responsibilities. To help reduce the frazzle, let’s give our self the gift of pause.

Here’s how we can do this. Commit to taking a few quiet moments to get calm and centered before holiday events and gatherings. Consider doing it each day as well. Making this part of a personal morning routine can increase our inner calm and brightness throughout the holidays. (Maybe it’ll become a healthy habit or ritual for the new year too!)

Use HeartMath’s Quick Coherence® Technique to get centered. This technique is also great for helping to put things in a proper perspective should situations or circumstances start to feel overwhelming or chaotic. If something catches us off guard and our feelings are disturbed, we can find a quiet place and use this technique to quickly regain our composure.

#3 The Gift of Choice Just like we choose the right outfit for any occasion, we can also choose the appropriate attitude for an event or gathering.

We can first use the gift of pause to tune in and ask what heart-attitude would be best for this event or gathering. Once we have the best attitude in our heart and mind, we can choose to focus on it and carry it with us.

The best attitude could be as simple as committing to deeper listening or practicing non-judgment or expressing more kindness, etc. To make a more genuine connection, we find it helpful to be more interested in how another person is doing than telling our story. During an event, maintaining the attitude of gratitude and appreciation adds a lift to the environment and interactions. Tune in to what is the most fitting for each event or gathering and its unique circumstances and choose that. See what happens.

These simple practices can be gifts to ourselves and others that add to our holiday experience by helping us stay more balanced and connected with who we truly are, and more deeply connected with the real meaning of the season.

How to Not Flip Out When Tensions Run High

Posted on | by HeartMath

Ticked off, impatient, short fused and irritated as heck. Lately it seems that tension is running higher than usual for a lot of people.

More than ever patience levels are being challenged for even the most composed individuals. From weather related events, to an unexpected health crisis, to job insecurity and financial turmoil, to shocking political antics and civil unrest, the list goes on. There is just no shortage of issues or circumstances that can and will test our emotional poise.

In our fast-paced world, life is often moving faster than our emotions can keep up with and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by emotions like frustration or anger. Our unsorted or unresolved feelings can start to stack and we end up having a blowout.

Emotions such as anger, fear and worry can and often do lead to unhealthy stress levels, knowing what to do to manage, or self-regulate our emotions can help to minimize the amount of stress we experience.

While we may experience some stress due to rush hour traffic or something we see on the evening news that makes us angry, that’s not necessarily unhealthy. The real health compromising effect of stress is when we dwell on that anger for an hour or two, or longer. That’s when stress begins to adversely affect our health.

Tools to help us connect with our heart and that help us slow down our inner speed can go a long way to prevent a stress build up and blow out.

To defuse frustration or anger, it’s important to become emotionally aware and acknowledge what we’re feeling. Taking a pause to identify what triggered our anger can actually help to slow down the emotional energy drain.

Once we identify the trigger we can ask our self what emotional belief is under that feeling of anger – e.g. Am I feeling disrespected? Am I feeling unfairly judged? Am I feeling uncared for? By asking our self these questions, we often can uncover a deeper belief underneath.

Runaway anger uses a lot of emotional energy. We can reduce the intensity of an anger reaction by simply breathing a little slower while focusing on our heart. Doing this smooths out the heart’s rhythm and sends a signal to the brain to ease up on the reaction, allowing us to regain some emotional poise. Learning to reset our emotional balance just takes some meaningful practice.

When feeling frustrated or like you’re gonna “flip” out, remembering to stop and take a moment to do an emotional reset can help prevent a lot of energy drain.

Try this tool as a way of resetting and do it for one minute or longer until there is a feeling that something is lightening up. Even if we don’t get to a complete release, a little ease can bring some relief. As more ease starts to filter in, quite often so will a more balanced perspective that can help to defuse emotional reactivity.

Use these simple steps for the HeartMath® tool called Notice and Ease™

Notice and Ease

Step 1: Notice and admit what you’re feeling.
Step 2: Try and name the feeling.
Step 3: Tell yourself to e-a-s-e as you gently focus your attention in the area of the heart, relax as you breathe, and e-a-s-e the stress out.

The HeartMath Notice and Ease tool helps us shift our energy to inner self-awareness and connect with our heart’s rhythmic power to de-escalate the reaction and get back to a place of balance where we can think more clearly and find a more balanced perspective.

For more tips about how to defuse anger, get the book Transforming Anger: The HeartMath Solution for Letting Go of Rage, Frustration, and Irritation (New Harbinger Publications) by Doc Childre and Deborah Rozman, Ph.D.

How to Disrupt Worry

Posted on | by HeartMath

Worry tries to convince the mind that it has some value, but in reality it has never solved anything.

To disrupt the worry habit you need to not only interrupt it, you need to replace it with something productive to establish a pattern change. Practice shifting your attention away from worry by using the Inner-Ease™ Technique.

Using a heart-focused practice like this is a kind and effective approach to escape the grip of worry. It also helps us align with our heart‘s intelligence so we can gain intuitive insight and answers about the issues concerning us. Try this simple technique to get started:

Disrupt Worry with Inner-Ease

An excellent tool to interrupt worry is HeartMath’s Inner-Ease Technique. Try these steps the next time you feel worry gaining ground.

#1: Heart-Focused Breathing

Focus your attention in 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.

Suggestion: Inhale 5 seconds, exhale 5 seconds (or whatever rhythm is comfortable).

#2: Draw in the feeling of inner ease

With each breath, draw in the feeling of inner ease to balance your mental and emotional energy.

#3: Anchor and maintain the feeling

Set a meaningful intent to anchor the feeling of inner ease as you engage in your projects, challenges or daily interactions.

Quick Steps:

  1. Heart-Focused Breathing
  2. Draw in the feeling of inner ease
  3. Anchor and maintain the feeling

 In the new book Heart Intelligence, you’ll gain even more understanding about how to care without worry and additional tools to help interrupt the emotional habits that suppress our happiness.

Get The Heart Intelligence Book Now >

Sleep Interrupted? 3 Tips to Reset Your Body’s Rhythm

Posted on | by HeartMath

It’s time to try a system reset so you can return to a healthy sleep rhythm. But first some abbreviated science.

Our heart beats in a rhythm. Research at the HeartMath Institute found that when we are over-stimulated, overwhelmed, stressed or worried this rhythm becomes irregular and incoherent.

Conversely, positive feelings, like love, care or appreciation can smooth out our heart rhythm into a harmonious coherent pattern and help prepare the body for sleep.

Reset with these three practical solutions:

Good Sleep

Sleep practices need to include what happens during the day not just once the sun goes down. Doing a few 1-2 minute Quick Coherence® Technique sessions during the day can minimize the build-up of stress. Accumulated stress is a common cause of disrupted sleep patterns.

Once in Bed

Close your eyes and tell yourself you aren’t going to over-dramatize anything that happened during the day or any concerns you may have about sleeping. Use the heart-focused technique we call Attitude Breathing™.

These steps can help you create a coherent heart rhythm that can facilitate deeper and more effective sleep:

  1. Recognize a feeling or attitude that you want to change and identify a replacement attitude.
  2. Focus your attention in 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.
    Suggestion: Inhale 5 seconds, exhale 5 seconds (or whatever rhythm is comfortable)
  3. Breathe the feeling of the new attitude slowly and casually through your heart area.

Practice the this exercise for a few minutes. Coherent heart rhythms help release beneficial hormones that reduce stress and restore your system.

Technology Can Help

Take out the mental figuring and use HeartMath’s emWave2® or Inner Balance™ technologies. Use these tech assistants combined with the above techniques to simplify the process as they guide you into a peaceful rhythm of heart coherence.

Just Sayin’… Stress Can Twist Our Words

Posted on | by HeartMath

Ashley walks in the door, “Hey babe, I didn’t hear from you so I went ahead and picked up some take-out in case you don’t want to cook tonight.” Jason snaps back, “What do you mean I don’t want to cook? Don’t I cook every night? You have no idea how many things I have going on. Perplexed, she replies, “I am trying to be helpful because you have been so busy.”

It’s likely that most of us have had the experience of being stressed and having our emotions spill out onto innocent bystanders – leaving us feeling awful later.

If we were to filter out the day’s accumulated stress, what Mark likely would have said is, “Sorry I didn’t get back with you, things got really hectic today, so this is perfect, thank you.” Being more connected in the heart he would have registered the caring gesture.

When stress has a chance to accumulate it can hang over us like a thick fog preventing us from thinking, perceiving and speaking from our authentic self. Without meaning to, the stored stress clouds our perceptions and twists words and actions into misunderstandings.

The science of being stressed-off goes something like this. Stress leads to chaos in the heart’s rhythms, which affects our body in a number of ways, including our brains ability to think clearly, make good decisions and communicate well.

When we’re overwhelmed what we say often reflects the stress build-up we’re feeling. It can carry over from earlier situations compromising our ability to genuinely connect with others. As a result our interactions become more mechanical and run low on care.

This explanation is attributed to the amazing research being conducted by our sister organization, the HeartMath Institute. The best part of this clinical look at stress is how positive emotions can reverse the unwanted effects of stress.

Emotions like care and appreciation create “coherence” in the heart’s rhythms, which is reflected by its ordered pattern. As the brain synchs to this rhythm, emotional stress is released. Coherence adds clarity to our mental performance and our communications. Even our intuitive sensitivities are keener – meaning we’re more likely to know when it’s time to pause to reset our coherence, and we’re less likely to utter regretful comments to others.

Another worthy note from the Institute’s work is how we can re-pattern trigger responses to stress with calmer, more poised responses as we practice building heart-coherence.

Experiment with these simple ideas. They take no more than a few moments to do and can help reduce the stress build-up:

  1. Schedule three heart-coherence breaks a day, making them 2 to 4 minute each. Use one break in the morning before the day starts. The next can be around mid-day. Use the third break towards end of the day to clear any lingering stress. (Be kind and gentle with yourself and avoid being self-critical.)
  2. Practice this 2-step Quick Coherence® Technique provided below. Use this for the coherence breaks. It helps release overwhelm and stress and builds a resilience reservoir to increase emotional flexibility.
  3. If overwhelm starts to creep in, refer back to the steps of the Quick Coherence Technique and reset. Remember to take the day in small segments. Focusing on one thing at a time rather than letting the mind run away with worry about all there is to do.
  4. Increase self-confidence as you build these skills by employing the Inner Balance™ or emWave2® technologies. They both help provide a solid sense of what coherence feels like. Satisfying both the mind and the heart, these tech tools allow us to see and feel our coherence progress.

Steps for Quick Coherence® Technique:

Step 1: Focus your attention in 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. Suggestion: Inhale 5 seconds, exhale 5 seconds (or whatever rhythm is comfortable)

Step 2: Make a sincere attempt to experience a regenerative feeling such as appreciation or care for someone or something in your life. Suggestion: Try to re-experience the feeling you have for someone you love, a pet, a special place, an accomplishment, etc. or focus on a feeling of calm or ease.

Can We Stop With the Self-Sabotage Already?

Posted on | by HeartMath

Self-sabotage. It sounds dramatic but let’s be honest, it’s pretty common. Most of us at one time or another have engaged in it. We set a goal or intention, we’re clear on what we want and then we sabotage ourselves by allowing doubts, negative thoughts and emotions to have far too much air-time in our head broadcasting insecurities and self-limiting beliefs.

Self-sabotage is generally an unconscious behavior and often driven by our insecurities and fears. It can be a tactic to protect us from being hurt or failing, or to avoid disappointment or feeling out of control.

Yet these undermining habits and self-critical attitudes prevent us from being happy and creating the life we want.

For example, let’s say you’re a habitual worrier. If you think about it, that is like saying, “If I worry about all the things that could go wrong, all of the time, then I won’t be caught off guard if they ever do.” It’s doubtful that this energy-consuming process has ever produced beneficial outcomes for any of us – yet we do it anyway.

Reversing self-sabotaging habits, like worrying or assuming the worst is really worth our care and attention. It promises to free up a lot of personal energy. It just requires a little self-reflection, staying aware of limiting attitudes and inner-conversations…and a little self-patience.

Some common ways we sabotage ourselves:

– Worrying constantly – Assuming we’re powerless – Ignoring personal needs for balance – Being over critical of our self and others – Mentally playing out worst-case scenarios – Having an attitude of being victimized by life – Negatively projecting what people think about us – Comparing and measuring our own success with others – Allowing undermining self-beliefs and attitudes to run on and on

There is so much right with us if we just stop and look at ourselves from a heart-centered belief. For example, we all have an inherent power that should be celebrated and used more often. This power is our heart intelligence, our heart truth – and it can help us reverse exhausting behaviors.

Using our heart intelligence we can compassionately re-tune our awareness towards how we use our personal energy. We can ask our self what thoughts, inner-talk and attitudes could I let go of and which ones help me?

Through heart-focused practices we can pinpoint effective counter responses to tired habits. We can identify new and supportive ways to interrupt the pattern of self-sabotage.

As we build personal coherence we increase our inner balance and alignment between the heart, mind and emotions. When we’re more anchored in our heart-center we‘re less likely to cave in to old insecurities, projected fears, worries, self-judgments and doubts.

Try playing with this simple exercise to reveal attitudes and thoughts you want to change:

  • Start with a 60-minute time period and tune your inner awareness towards old views so you can begin to catch them. Increase the duration or how often you do this, if you want.
  • During the designated time period, watch for inner-dialogue that inhibits you, for instance: “I hate going to parties, I never have anything interesting to say.” Or “I should just keep my ideas to myself, they’re probably stupid anyway.”
  • Watch for old habits that reinforce insecurities, such as over apologizing when things are already fine.
  • Once you identify something you want to change, center in the heart and ask yourself what would a positive replacement for this old belief or old habit?
  • For example, if your limiting belief is, “I should just keep my ideas to myself, they’re probably stupid anyway.” Stop the thought and instead say, “Great ideas can come from anywhere and anyone. Goodbye old thought!”

It’s important to not just notice the old attitudes, thoughts and habits but to also replace them. Doing this helps us to create a new pattern – one that supports us in a healthier, heart-centered way.

In the book Heart Intelligence, many strategies for tapping into our heart’s power are explained. These practices help us establish a clearer, high-definition view of who we really are and how to remove the obstacles that limit our self-beliefs.

New Book! Transforming Stress for Teens

Posted on | by HeartMath

A teen’s world can sometimes feel like a tsunami of emotions. Everything can seem intensified and for good reason.

Many factors play into their emotional swings from hormonal changes, to establishing independence, to pressure to perform in school or feeling overwhelmed from a heavy homework load – and let’s not forget the pains of social dramas that play out with texting and online.

Written for teens, the Transforming Stress for Teens book helps young readers understand how emotions and stress work. The book provides simple techniques to help them take charge of reactive emotions such as anger, frustration and impatience.

Transforming Stress for Teens helps young people build confidence as they learn and practice simple techniques for managing today’s unique pressures. Transforming Stress for Teens is an interactive guide with step by step strategies that can help teens minimize stress, exercise their inner strength and wisdom and become who they truly are.

Know the Signs of Teen Stress:

  • Emotional outbursts of anger, frustration and/or irritability
  • Increased levels of anxiety and overwhelm
  • Disconnected and or social withdrawal
  • Overeating or undereating
  • Frequent headaches
  • Poor quality sleep
  • Lack of motivation
  • Difficulty concentrating and focusing
Click Here to Get the Book:
Transforming Stress for Teens!