What’s Streaming through Your Mind?

Posted on | by HeartMath

How-To-Change Thought Streams That Don’t Serve Our Best Interests

We’re all streaming content these days, whether it be a movie on our computer, a podcast on our phone, or the ideas streaming through our heads. We can choose the external content we want to focus on. But what about the streaming content inside? Do we allow streaming conversations of self-doubt, worry, anger or blame to play on and own us?

Streaming negative self-talk is often a constant source of personal energy drain. Let’s take a deeper look and explore some suggestions that can help us take charge.

Most of us are conscious of the whisper thoughts and feelings constantly running through our awareness – whether at home, at work, sleeping, or riding in an Uber. Most of these thoughts move through quickly if we don’t feed them, yet occasionally a “downer” thought will snag our focus and begin to loop and grow in feeling. Downer thoughts can crash the effectiveness of a whole day or longer once they expand into anger, harsh judgments, hurt feelings, or guilt for feeling that way. Downer projections especially, can own us for hours and it’s humorous how we can be aware of this yet can’t seem to do much to manage it. (That is, until from our heart, we decide that we can.)

Renewing Heart Qualities Can Help Us Take Charge

On the positive side, some whisper thoughts and feelings renew us and support us being our best. We can benefit by creating a conscious habit of noticing and energizing renewing thoughts and feelings. It’s also helpful to take some time each day to engage in higher vibrational thoughts and actions, such as kindness, gratitude, compassion, helping others, etc. These uplifting heart qualities help to offset the stress accumulation from thought loops and feelings that drain our energy and strain our ability to reason and make comfortable choices.

So much is happening in shorter durations of time these days that our mind and emotions easily get overloaded. This often triggers anxiety, worry and fear projections. It’s helpful to practice shifting feelings of worry or fear into the attitude of managed concern. Managed concern is an emotionally balanced state of concern that connects us with a clearer view and effective reasoning. Worry and fear tend to overpower our access to effective reasoning and perception. They especially dim our heart’s intuitive suggestions and solutions, which can be critical at times. Excessive worry is one of the stealthiest ways we sabotage our well-being, and then we worry more because we can’t figure out what caused the problem.

How to Practice Managed Concern

Practice identifying some of your worries that stir fear or anxiety, then experiment with shifting them into the attitude of managed concern. The attitude of experimenting is a lighter approach which results in less self-judgment of your performance. Practice first with smaller issues to build your confidence. Before each practice, review the benefits of managed concern (intelligent concern) compared to the energy drain from excessive worry. Soon it will become an automatic reflex to make an attitude adjustment when you sense looping feelings and perceptions that destabilize your well-being.

Practicing managed concern along with engaging in renewing heart qualities, such as kindness, patience and compassion with ourselves and others can make a big difference in the vibrational quality of our day-to-day experience. We can feel under pressure at times, but eventually this presses us to finally realize that we have more power, in most cases, over how we choose to think, feel and respond to situations. We can take charge of streaming internal content once our heart’s commitment supports our mind’s intention. Positive results will follow genuine efforts. It’s up to each of us.

Solution for Overcoming Anxiety

Posted on | by HeartMath

Recognizing Anxiety

Originally published in 2010

Anxiety can be described as any or a combination of feelings that all have their roots in some type of fear, including unease, worry, apprehension, dread, powerlessness or a sense of impending danger – real or imagined. Symptoms can be wide-ranging: the mind goes blank or other cognitive functions are lost, obsessive thoughts, phobias, chronic worry, ongoing unease, sweaty palms, tension headaches, trembling, difficulty breathing, dizziness, panic attacks, increased heart rate and palpitations. Anxiety disorders such as panic attacks may result from certain physiological conditions, most notably heart arrhythmias, and anyone who experiences this should seek immediate advice to make sure the cause of the attacks is not physical.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 40 million American adults – that’s 18% of the population – have anxiety disorders, which often begin in childhood. Social phobia alone, when people become overwhelmingly anxious and excessively self-conscious in everyday social situations, affects 15 million adults, and specific phobias, an intense fear of something that poses little or no actual danger, affects 19.2 million adults in the U.S.

“Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”Arthur Somers Roche, American journalist, writer, 1883-1935.

Anxiety is a feeling, a type of emotion. Some anxiety such as fight or flight is encoded in our genetic makeup and is a normal human response to many of life’s uncertainties. Among them nervousness over an impending test or a sought-after job, uneasiness in a relationship or concern over the health of a loved one, speaking or performing in public, or worry in the workplace for a variety of reasons (the most common being the employee performance review). It is when anxiety becomes exaggerated that this otherwise natural human emotion can threaten our well-being

“As the turbulence of anxiety churns in the subconscious and plays out in your thoughts and actions … it can cause fatigue, sleep disorders, hormone imbalances, health problems and premature aging.”“Transforming Anxiety”, Childre, Rozman 2004.

Years of research by the HeartMath Institute has shown you can achieve a healthy balance in your emotions. Learn to stop feeding anxious feelings, create new emotional patterns and behaviors and replace the negative ones that have been draining your energy and spirit. HeartMath scientific research and controlled studies have shown your own “heart intelligence” holds the key to this transformation. By achieving coherence in your heart, mind and spirit you can maintain a calm, balanced, yet alert state at home, school, work and play.

A HeartMath TIP:

You’ll be amazed at how much calmer and relaxed you feel after trying these three quick steps adapted from the HeartMath Notice and Ease® tool, which has helped so many reduce their anxiety.

  • Notice and admit what you are feeling.
  • Try to name the feeling.
  • Tell yourself to e-a-s-e—as you gently focus in your heart, breathe a little slower and deeper than usual, and e-a-s-e the stress out.

Benefits of Reducing Anxiety

  • Stress hormones decrease, energy level increases, and you feel better
  • Stronger, more satisfying relationships
  • Quality of life and feeling of empowerment increases
  • Reduce “overwhelm” – time pressure, information and stimulation overload, mentally scattered feelings and impatience.
  • Decrease projections of worst-case scenarios, negative thinking
  • Improved memory, cognitive functions

How I Healed my Anxiety Naturally

Posted on | by HeartMath

If you watch my live show on Instagram called The Daily Vibe, chances are, you’ve heard me talk about HeartMath. I admit I have a slight obsession… or maybe you could say, they’ve captured my heart.

I actually stumbled upon them during a dark time in my life when I was experiencing obsessive anxiety. I would worry all day, every day. I had these thought patterns doing loops in my head, going round and round and it was effecting every part of my life.

At the time, I didn’t feel “safe” in my life. I didn’t feel a sense of security, so I worried all the time. When you don’t feel safe, it’s hard to relax because you’re in a constant state of fight or flight.

I was desperate to find something that could heal my anxiety because I couldn’t go on living like this any longer. I went to see a doctor who prescribed me an antidepressant. The pills ended up making me feel worse and when I returned to the doctor, she told me that these new “side effects” I was experiencing was my anxiety manifesting itself as new symptoms.

I was stunned. She was basically telling me that it was all in my head. She blamed the side effects on my anxiety but I knew in my heart it was from the medication. I stopped taking them and the side effects subsided but I was back to square one with racing thoughts and not having anything that could help me.

From there I started searching for natural and holistic remedies. I stumbled upon HeartMath one day, and when I tried their heart-breathing technique, I could immediately feel a difference. I closed my eyes and felt into my heart-space. I began to breathe slowly and feel a calmness begin to wash over me. Next, they ask you to activate “higher feelings” such as gratitude, compassion or appreciation. This brings your energy from a state of “dissonance” into a state of “coherence” which shifts your energy into harmony and balance. Learning this changed my life.

​Before Heart Coherence, I was living in a state of constant dissonance. Dissonance means imbalance or disharmony. When you’re in this state, you are most likely in a state of fight or flight, so your body can’t relax. Your body is busy trying to fight off a bad guy or get the heck outta there. So as you can imagine, daily anxiety can wreak havoc on your life and you mental, physical and emotional health as well.

When I look back on pictures of myself during that time for my life I am almost unrecognizable. I wasn’t healthy. My skin looked awful, I had bags and dark circles under my eyes, and my hair had thinned out and become brittle. All of the stress and anxiety was prematurely aging me and you could actually see sadness and distress in my eyes.

HeartMath was a game changer. In these quiet moments when I would channel my breath and tune into my heart… I had glimpses of relief. This was a start! I had finally found SOMETHING that could help me, and the best part was, it’s natural and FREE.

I began to make HeartMath a part of my day to day life.

Anytime I was feeling anxious, I would find a place where I could be quiet and still and focus on my breath. I would place my hand on my heart and tune into the heart-space. Next, I would take some slow, deep breaths and activate higher feelings. I would begin to think about my daughters and FEEL all the love and appreciation I had for them in my heart. I would think of all the ways that I am GRATEFUL for them and how happy I am to be their Mommy. Next, I would feel feelings of compassion for them and their journey on this planet… and after about 5 minutes I would notice myself feeling more calm, centered, harmonized and balanced.

I loved the way that felt so I kept it going to see how euphoric I could become. As you go deeper and deeper into a state of coherence, you feel better and better. But you have to remember to set aside time to practice this and be diligent about it every day, because this practice works best when you do it consistently.

Each day as you bring your energy into harmony and balance, your energy builds stronger and you gain a more powerful momentum. And eventually you UPLEVEL into a new higher state of vibration. Your “baseline” shifts, from a dominant low vibration into a higher vibration and your life starts to flow better. Each day as you bring yourself into harmony, you are operating from a state of alignment and when you are in alignment, everything you want starts to flow with ease. ​

​I am forever grateful that I found my way to HeartMath and eventually HeartMath found its way to me, too. I recently had the honor of taking HeartMath’s online course called “The Add Heart Facilitator Program.” In this course, you learn all about Heart Coherence and how the brain and heart interact and affect your energy in your day to day life. You are guided to journal about different ways you can “Add More Heart” to your life.

I can’t wait to share more ways that HeartMath and the Add Heart Facilitator have helped me and have been a blessing, so look for my next blog when I share with you real stories on how HeartMath and the Add Heart Facilitator Program is changing my life.

Special thanks to my friends at HeartMath for sending me the Add Heart Facilitator Course!

​Love, Light & Positive Energy,
​Shannon Nicole

Article used with permission from Vibe with Shannon

Women and Stress

Posted on | by HeartMath

It has often been shown that women are the worriers and often do not make time to manage their health and take care of themselves. The infographic below shows what effects stress can have on women and offers effective strategies that can help them reduce the negative effects of everyday stressors. 

How A Pause Can Save The Day

Posted on | by Doc Childre

Article updated March 2022, originally published, April, 2019

“To pause before responding to important matters and choices gives us one more chance to be in-charge, rather than be in-trouble.”- Doc Childre

Through hindsight, we often realize how much stress we could have prevented by pausing to reconsider our choices before taking action. Many of us have learned this lesson many times over: for example, sometimes our heart nudges us to take a pause before releasing an angered response to an e-mail and we don’t listen. We mechanically press send and often second-guess ourselves the minute we click the mouse.

Then we become compressed, foreseeing the predictable stress we’ll experience from the backlash, and we are usually right – sometimes its days before all is well in the building. Pausing to review our feelings could have prevented this energy depleting scenario. There are myriad situations where we sacrifice our wellbeing because we allow hurry to jam our intuitive nudges to pause before sensitive engagement.

Practicing Pause and Calm

Pausing to feel our heart’s suggestions can deter many energy-draining standoffs with others, often with people we care about the most. We can proactively avoid these repeating, uncomfortable situations and regrets. Practicing pause and calm is increasing in popularity as a respected self-care practice, especially in these sped-up times of change, uncertainty and pressurized choices.

Many of us learned the value of pause from parents and passed it on as wisdom to our children. However, as life’s demanding pace keeps increasing, the memory to pause often fades when we are under pressure for speedy choices and actions. Speed may quicken action but pausing to review can make the effective difference in where our actions land us.

This writing is not to reinvent the intelligence of pause and review; it’s to hopefully inspire a renewed connection, if needed, with this effective habit of preemptive wisdom through these chaotic, yet adventuresome times.

What Jams Your Inner Signal?

Hurry is one of the most popular reasons we miss our inner signals to pause when needed. Much stress is prevented by pausing at times to adjust our operational pace to the speed of flow. When we speed past flow – mentally, emotionally or physically – we become vulnerable to dilution of efficiency in our outcomes. Picture how trying to thread a needle too fast jams the process, creating many do-overs until we manifest the speed of flow that matches our level of skill and experience. When our mental and emotional energies jam from anxiety, frustration or overwhelm, it’s effective to pause and ask our heart’s intuition what attitude or perception would create the most flow for restoring inner balance and clear direction.

Suggestions Regarding Pause:

  1. Breathing in the feeling of calm while practicing pause deepens our discernment capacity.
  2. Calm vibrations help us preempt our toxic reaction with conscious responses.
  3. Pause to create a space for smarter choices and less stressful outcomes.
  4. Pause and ask what your heart would say. Feel what your heart would do. Step into it.
  5. To increase your memory to pause at times, make it a big issue for a week, even if you overdo it. This will entrain your intuition to alert you when pausing would be effective.
  6. Practicing pause quickly increases self-security from experiencing less mistakes, setbacks and do-overs. Self-security automatically increases our resilience.
  7. Pausing and listening to others from our heart helps to keep our friends, friendly.
  8. Pausing allows a more inclusive assessment of consequences before action – which is one of the biggest benefits from the practice.
  9. Make an intention not to keep learning the value of pause through hindsight and hard lessons. We are already good at that.
  10. Use pause and calm as a door opener for your higher reasoning capacity. That’s why we tell our children to use pause.

We hope this article helps you remember to refresh yourself with the value and many benefits of this tool, if needed.


Adapted with permission from the HeartMath Institute.

Written by Doc Childre

New Guided Heart Meditations

Posted on | by HeartMath

Enrich Your Inner Balance™ Practice

Headphones

New Audio & Video Guided Practices,
Meditations and Talks Are Now Available in the App

We have recently created some Guided Heart Meditations and Talks to enrich your practice. We have also created an Inner Balance video tour to introduce you to the features and functions on the Inner Balance.

The guided meditations make it easier to get heart, mind, and body in sync (coherent) and can add value to your meditation experience.

All of these live on the free Inner Balance app to use during your sessions, and we are adding more all the time.

Here’s a sampling of the new guides:

Download the Inner Balance App

Apple App Store
Google Play Store

Don’t have Inner Balance Sensor? BUY ONE HERE

Is it Possible to Care Too Much? Understanding How to Care Without It Becoming a Source of Your Stress

Posted on | by HeartMath

Our need to feel loved and cared for and to give love and care to others seems to be an innate human quality programmed into our DNA. Feeling loved and cared for gives us a feeling of security and self-worth. Caring for someone else gives us a sense of wholeness — it’s an extension of our love. As good as it feels to care for someone or something, for many people it can also become a source of stress and emotional chaos that leaves them feeling mentally and emotionally drained. Which arises the question, is it possible to care too much? In most dictionaries the first definition of care is a burdened state of mind; worry; concern. It takes several lines before some dictionaries get around to defining care as “to feel love for, to look after, provide for, attend to.” Many people feel that if they’re not worrying or obsessing over things it must mean that they’re not caring enough. This need to worry or obsess is an “emotional habit” that operates under the seemingly healthy guise of attention, sentiment and sympathy toward people or situations, but often can end up causing disharmony, depression and a spiral of destructive stress. Psychologist Deborah Rozman, co-author of Transforming Anxiety: The HeartMath Solution for Overcoming Fear and Worry and Creating Serenity, says, “Emotional habits keep people locked into a loop of anxiety and even depression. One of the habits most of us can relate to is called ‘overcare.’ Overcare is a common emotional habit that causes us anxiety, worry and stress.” The term “overcare” was coined by Doc Childre, founder of the HeartMath® system and co-author of numerous books, including Transforming Stress, Transforming Anxiety, Transforming Anger, and Transforming Depression. Doc describes overcare as that which happens when the mind and emotions cross the line of balanced care and get too attached to and bogged down with whomever or whatever you’re caring about. Once you become too entangled in another’s web and realize your energy is drained from overcare and overattachment, it’s easy to be seduced into blaming and resenting the people or issues you care about. Examples of overcare:

  • A mother who equates love with constant worry and fret about her children.
  • A citizen concerned about those affected by a natural disaster becomes inflamed and judgmental towards government or public agencies’ actions.
  • A spouse who wants to reassure their partner that they love them ends up stifling their partner with attention.
  • An employee fearful of possible layoffs feeds his anxiety with constant negative projections and assumptions about the future.
  • A son’s concern for his elderly father leads to continuous arguments with his siblings about how to best care for their father.

In all of these examples, what starts out as a genuine and balanced intention to care gets muddled with overattachment and over-identity and leads to overcare for the person or situation. The original caring intentions instead become emotionally draining to all parties and often can create a negative effect. Examples of the effects of overcare:

  • The mother’s children feel suffocated and distance themselves from her.
  • The concerned citizen drains personal energy by harboring these judgments, and her resentment toward the system prevents her from taking a proactive approach to helping the people affected.
  • The smothered spouse craves personal space and the couple separates or even divorces.
  • The employee’s constant anxiety prevents him from sleeping and jacks up his blood pressure, while his assumptions fuel rumors among colleagues, creating a toxic environment of angst and stress.
  • The family’s arguments put even more strain on them, making it more difficult to come to a family consensus, and causes the father to feel that he has become a burden.

Examples like these are all too common and happen more than we realize. It’s not that we care too much, but more that we don’t know how to manage our care. We think that somehow if we anguish over something enough we’ll get a creative solution or we’ll somehow conjure up the productive motivation we need to take action and resolve something. Worry and anxiety do not solve problems. It is when we finally release the worry, decide to sleep on it, or talk with a friend who helps us let the worry go that the answers finally come to us. Dr. Rozman says, “Balanced care is not some placid state that lacks drive and passion. It’s quite the opposite, actually. Balanced care is dynamic, it is a place in your heart that allows you to flex through stress and stay resilient under pressure.” 

Wendy Warner, MD, Founder and Medical Director of Medicine in Balance, LLC and President of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine, says: “Overcare is often disguised as angst, worry, concern, sympathy, or even sentiment, and can lead to stress-related health issues such as headaches, backaches, high blood pressure, digestive issues, and hormonal imbalances. Although both men and women can experience overcare and related physical complaints, our society tends to ‘train’ and expect women to be caregivers, so they tend to be more prone to overcaring about people or situations.” As we learn to recognize when we’re starting to get over-identified, over-attached, over-expectant or overzealous, we become more sensitive to our own inner signals. This sensitivity allows us to make internal adjustments and get back to that balanced place inside where the original care started. Personal Evaluation Dr. Rozman suggests trying this personal evaluation: “Listen to and watch your feelings as you consider these questions. Notice any changes in your feelings as you answer the questions.”

  • In what areas is care adding to your energy and reducing your stress? Why?
  • In what areas is care draining your energy and giving you stress? What do you overcare about in the situation?
  • Are you over-identified with someone or some issue?
  • Are you over-attached to a particular outcome?
  • Which of the common masks of overcare – sentiment, attachment, expectation, or sympathy – best describe what you experience?

Rozman says, “This evaluation will help you recognize where you have overcare. The first step to getting back to your balanced care is knowing when you’ve crossed over into a state of overcare.” In their book Transforming Anxiety, Deborah Rozman and Doc Childre provide tools and techniques that will show you how to release the anxiety and worry associated with emotional habits like overcare. Letting go of the overcare will give you the inner security and strength you need to get back to the balanced care where you can tap into your creativity and passion. Tools to Ease Your Overcare The following tools from HeartMath are designed to help ease out any stressful emotions and the emotional drain that result from overcare. Notice and Ease™ In order to shift out of overcare you first need to identify what you’re feeling. By slowing down the emotional energy running through your system, you’re better able to identify whether it’s worry, anxiety, hurt, etc.

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

Attitude Breathing® Attitude Breathing is a tool to help you shift out of an emotional draining state and back to a balance state of care. By practicing this you will learn to clear and replace the overcare with a more balance and positive emotion and gain a more intelligent perspective.

  1. Recognize an unwanted attitude: a feeling or attitude that you want to change. This could be overcare, anxiety, self-judgment, guilt, anger, anything.
  2. Identify and breathe a replacement attitude: Select a positive attitude, then breathe the feeling of that new attitude slowly and casually through your heart area. Do this for a while to anchor the new feeling.

Based on over 25 years of research, HeartMath has also developed unique technologies that give you objective feedback by measuring your heart rhythms. Using tools such as the Notice and Ease and Attitude Breathing in conjunction with the Inner Balance™ technology will give you the added benefit of real-time feedback – helping to quickly guide you back to a balanced mental and emotional state. 

“Wherever you go, go with all your heart” – Confucius

Posted on | by HeartMath

While world events are happening at a dizzying rate, more and more people are awakening to the need for positive change that represents the kindest aspects of humanity. The call to show up each day as our best self that expresses inclusive love and compassion is growing stronger. Perhaps this is what Confucius meant when he said, “Wherever you go, go with all your heart.”

Imagine the hopeful impact if we were to all commit to adding more heart wherever we go by increasing our care, compassion and tolerance of other’s viewpoints.

When we intentionally add heart wherever we go, we are positively impacting the energetic environment around us. With every kind word spoken and every compassionate or caring action, we contribute to co-creating a new world based on heart values that heal, and nurture others as well as our self. To illustrate beautifully what adding heart can accomplish, we want to share with you a couple stories about people who are dedicated to doing exactly that. These individuals were recently recognized by the HeartMath®Institute with the institute’s first Humanitarian Heart Awards. They were honored for their compassionate and caring heart work, giving aid, comfort, shelter and hope to many around the world.

These stories can inspire and remind us that wherever we go, the heart we add to each interaction and each situation truly matters.Majd KamAlmaz, Humanitarian Heart Award Recipient

syrian refugees adding heart

n 2012, Majd KamAlmaz, recognized a huge shortage of professionals to help Syrians fleeing their war-ravaged country, so he established refugee aid centers in Lebanon and Jordan.

KamAlmaz, who spent his childhood in Southern California, devoted many years helping people in need in various parts of the world, including war-torn Kosovo and Indonesia, following the devastating 2005 tsunami there. He said he was compelled to help Syrian refugees when their mass exodus became a humanitarian crisis. He has been providing stress-management education to refugee children and adults and helped to build intervention and field work teams among other efforts.Tammy M. Cunningham, Humanitarian Heart Award Recipient

ethiopian library project

It took five years for Tammy M. Cunningham to recover from the death of her 2½-year-old son and embark on a journey that led to co-founding a nonprofit foundation that has touched thousands of lives.

Cunningham was honored for her and her late husband’s efforts in establishing the nonprofit internationally recognized Cunningham Foundation when they were living in Colorado. The foundation partners with the people of Ethiopia in organizing and initiating sustainable development projects. These projects include the Hope Bracelet Project, Quarters for Kids, Kids Helping Kids and the Ethiopia Library Project.

Adding more heart qualities to all of our life’s interactions and the environment is something we can each do. It costs nothing, yet it is one of the most valuable contributions we can make for co-creating a world we want our children to live in.

It’s Time for Self-Care

Posted on | by Gaby Boehmer

True self-care is important for maintaining balance and well-being. More people are now recognizing that self-care is not a luxury — rather it is a necessity. Advertisements for self-care encourage eating healthy foods, treating oneself to a new beauty product, relaxing at an extended weekend get-away, and other nurturing and enjoyable activities. Yet lasting self-care requires something else.

Learning to prevent and reduce the stress from today’s speed of change and uncertainty, while maintaining emotional balance and poise, is moving to the top of the list of self-care necessities. Optimizing our mental and emotional energy expenditures is often an overlooked aspect. By learning how to plug emotional energy drains, we renew our resilience and self-security as we move through daily challenges and experiences.

Here are some typical mental and emotional energy drains where we can apply more self-care and experience numerous benefits right away.

Measuring and Comparing:

Whether in social media, during workplace conversations, or at social gatherings, we drain emotional energy when we measure our success or happiness based on someone else’s life. When comparing our life to others, we generally don’t get the whole picture anyway. We see what is outwardly presented but we don’t always see the inner struggles, worries, anxieties or insecurities in others. The energy we use on comparisons and self-criticism can be more effectively spent unlocking our own higher capacities. Comparisons are tempting but with genuine heart intention, we can guide ourselves around these energy sinkholes.

Applying self-care would be to first become mindful of our comparisons and self-critical thoughts. Then from our genuine heart, we can practice rising above these lower feelings and replacing them with self-respect for who we truly are – and this magically opens the door for inner guidance in becoming our best and happiest self. Our core self has the heart power to change all of the mental, emotional and physical habits that block us from the higher capacities that our spirit provides when we are ready. Our genuine heart’s commitment can quicken this readiness.

Forgiving and Moving Forward:

Forgiveness and moving forward without carrying old emotional luggage is essential to our well-being. It’s important to remember that forgiveness is a win-win situation where all parties come out. It’s one of our most intelligent acts of self-care. Maintaining grudges, resentments and separation creates a continuous drain of energy and, unknowingly, clouds our joy and compromises our health. A wise person once said that holding onto resentment is like allowing someone to live rent-free in your mind. It’s obvious that some issues will take longer to release than others so be patient and approach forgiveness from the heart with ease. Practice on smaller issues and then move on to the more challenging ones. This heart-intelligent practice will yield numerous self-care benefits for increasing mental and emotional happiness and physical health. Some of the hardest things to do in life turn out to bring the highest return on our investment.

Self-Compassion:

We often ask children to show compassion to one another, but rarely do we tell them to have self-compassion. In our society, extending compassion to oneself is often seen as self-centered, even self-indulgent, and to be avoided. Take for example, the countless occasions when a parent comforts, encourages and unconditionally loves the son or daughter who has disobeyed a rule, done poorly in school, gotten into a scrape or otherwise has shown poor judgment in something else. Where is it written that encouragement and compassion are reserved only for others?

Denying ourselves compassion when we fail to live up to our own or others’ expectations, deprives us of the healing power of this comforting feeling of self-care. Increasing our self-compassion by understanding and forgiving ourselves – following an angry outburst, failing to qualify for a job, overeating, or making a mistake – really is okay. It’s an act of heart intelligence which helps us to re-balance our system for quicker recoup.

Self-compassion is an advanced step in anyone’s self-care practices. It provides a regenerative energy that serves as a tonic for our cells and our overall operating system. Self-compassion also opens our heart to intuitive solutions and support for the best ways to handle life’s situations.

To practice self-compassion find a quiet place some where you won’t be disturbed for a few minutes. Then imagine breathing self-compassionate care into your mental/emotional nature and into your physical cells. Do this for a while—like you would radiate warm care to others whose energies were down. Most importantly, do this from the heart. As you become familiar with the practice, it will begin to feel as if you are interacting with a best friend who truly cares, understands and supports. If for no other reason, do it because is smart, like adding a warm heating pad to ease certain body pains. Self-Compassion is legal self-care.

Study reveals most caffeine-dependent professionals

Posted on | by HeartMath

Research from Duke University Medical Center has suggested that workers who rely on coffee or other caffeinated beverages may be exacerbating  workplace stress  with their choice of drink. The study revealed that caffeine’s effects can last throughout the day and intensify the physiological effects of anxiety.

A recent study by CareerBuilder reports that many professionals say they “need” coffee just to get through the day, and some fields appear to have a worse dependency than others.

According to the survey, lab technicians, scientists, marketing professionals, administrators in education, writers and editors reported the most significant need for coffee to carry out their daily responsibilities.

Additionally, about 61 percent of coffee drinkers reported consuming two cups per day, while 28 percent said they drink at least three.

Results of this study suggest that people in these professions may be in need of employee wellness programs that provide tools and techniques to reduce workplace stress in a healthy way. Research has shown that physical and mental wellness can influence optimal employee performance, without the use of stimulants.