Posted by Kimberly Rex
Transforming Stress: The Heart-Mind Connection
Your heart-mind connection contributes to transforming stress. Stress is a natural occurrence in your daily life. However, when chronic stress takes over by rumination, anxiety, worry, obsessive negative emotional states this creates confusion in your life.
On the physical level, science shows that in these instances, your heart beat and function change. Your digestion of food becomes more of a challenge. Your breath rate and blood pressure shift. Your Nervous System moves from the Parasympathetic or rest, digest and heal state into the Sympathetic state of preparation for danger and escape.
This escape mechanism when not interrupted or addressed can lead to a perpetual loop of worry, fear, anxiety, and need for numbing the overwhelm. You might be able to identify an experience in your life where you have experienced this chain reaction. And, even if you have tried different ways to calm the stress cycle with food, drink, running or moving away from a stressful situation, taking on a person or situation that you have no power to change, or shutting down and isolating, the loop is still there. It can attempt to serve you with anger, criticism of yourself or others, hate, jealousy, and even isolation. However, this can lead to a deep sense of hopelessness and energy depletion.
The loop still presides because there is a direct connection between your body and mind, your heart and your thinking. When negative emotions, thoughts, and beliefs have been cast into neural pathways in your mind, your beliefs, thoughts, and feelings are directly related to how your body responds to what life presents to you in any given moment even when you attempt to suppress them. They return.
If you have followed articles from this website, you know that the Fire Element in Chinese Medicine and your heart give you the opportunity to love, experience joy, warmth and connection with the ability to discern between what is energetically beneficial and what is not life-energizing. The Institute of HeartMath in San Diego has done research on the impact on the electrical field around the heart and brain in varied states. When the heart is stressed, the electromagnetic field is smaller than when the heart is focused on love, gratitude, joy, or appreciation. This created calm and coherence. This pattern turns out to correlate with the electromagnetic field of the brain. There is a synergy between the function and coherence of your heart and mind.
Transforming Stress with Your Heart
For example, if your mind is racing, it is an opportunity to ask the question is, “What is in your heart?” Stop for a moment to focus on your breath and tune into your heart. Get a reading of what you are experiencing in your heart area right now, what messages do you receive? Do you hear the stress or do you hear the connection to life-enhancing calm? Acceptance of where you are right now will support your entire body-mind system to register what is happening and influence your next steps.
,There is a healing relationship between what your survival and early emotional brain and your heart’s wisdom has to offer in addressing unconscious material stress responses. Bringing awareness and acceptance and tending to the origin of these habitual or automatic stress responses, your heart is capable of updating your long term memory. This allows you to experience more and more what you would like to experience in your life related to the values you would truly like to live today.
There is no day where you experience 100% happiness or sadness. There will be days that you experience stressful situations, and some more than others. Yet, within these days are the possibilities for noticing what is helpful, beautiful, joyful, and meaningful. The way to get more choice in your day is to allow your values to lead by accessing your heart’s reach into your mind to observe with kindness and connection what is happening. By seeing the stressful feelings, thoughts, and beliefs as the observer, you then offer an off ramp from the intensity and stress aligned with your values.
“When you stand with yourself in a self-compassionate, kind, loving way, life opens up and then you can turn toward meaning and purpose, and how you bring love, participation, beauty, and contributions into the lives of others.” ~Steven C. Hayes, founder of ACT Therapy
Transforming Stress with Your Mind
Here you can notice what is happening without being held captive. You can literally thank your mind for sharing. You can expand your flexibility of choice with each stress response by tuning into or just noticing your breath. You can detach or defuse from being tied to a negative a thought, belief or feeling to just notice or observe. A statement you might use is “I notice that I am having a thought that…,emotion of, or belief that…” This allows there to be a state of acceptance of what is happening right now. By letting it be, it is possible to give space to any underlying messages or needs, and this can calm your mind and your heart. This allows you to more coherently think, to feel, and then to act.
The pathway to unity between these healing agents creates greater wholeness. It creates room for your heart, mind, and emotions to function more optimally while restoring energy for your priorities.
This can happen with visualization, connecting to your true values for your day or longer term projects, meditation, and/or noticing what your mind believes is true through journaling. In this way, your commitment to wholeness is accessed through changing your breathing pattern, and noticing, with connection to your heart’s compassion. It allows an opportunity for calming your body-mind system and moving into greater flexibility, resilience, focused coherence, or the rest, digest and healing state.
This is an invitation to give yourself the opportunity to explore underlying material that needs your heart’s compassion, and to experience 10 natural modalities to use for creating calm for your mind and heart working together with your values for living life based on purpose.
You can take part in the Calming Your Mind and Heart Group Repatterning* on December 17, 2023 as a gift of self-care to transform the stress in your life through the alignment between your heart and mind.
Get details here: https://www.windowstotheheart.net/calming-your-mind-and-heart-repatterning *You can take part in this repatterning process from any place on the planet.
To continue receiving life-enhancing modalities and experiences through Windows to the Heart Repatterning. Sign up for our FREE monthly newsletter here.
Kimberly Rex, MS is a Master Resonance Repatterning® practitioner, Master Wellness and Well-being Life Coach, and Person-Centered Expressive Therapist. She works with people all over the world by phone, Skype, and proxy.
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Posted by Kimberly Rex
12 Natural Ways to Absorb More Light for Wellness and Well-being
The dark months can create challenges for getting enough natural sunlight and Vitamin D3. Some issues associated with limited sunlight and Vitamin D3 deficiencies are associated with rheumatoid arthritis, thyroid issues, Seasonal Affective Disorder, depression, fatigue, and other disorders. That’s why full spectrum light and energizing your body for greater absorption of light is essential. As the winter months arrive, there’s no need to be afraid of the dark!
Whether it’s winter or just feeling dark, this article will give you some natural modalities to absorb more light!
Light is one of the major nutrients for the body-mind. It is food for creating energy for health and enhancing your mood. When you increase the amount of light you absorb through your eyes, the body-mind moves into a higher state of coherence. Even visualizing a color feeds your body-mind system including your emotional and mental attitude.
Here are 12 natural, easy, and fun ways to increase your energy, sense of well-being, and mood during the dark months.
1. Use colors to brighten up. The use of pink, yellow, and red stimulates the adrenal glands and produces dopamine. Wear these colors to give yourself a lift.
2. Brighten your space with flowers and scents. Gazing at flowers has been proven to enhance happiness. It is a wonderful way to bring the light processed through nature inside.
3. Use natural scents to pamper your five senses. Natural aromas that remind us of sweet foods set off endorphins that impact our sense of feeling good. Medical experiments have shown that vanilla fragrance reduces stress and anxiety and has an impact on the emotional brain. Rose and licorice scents help when you feel overwhelmed. Lemon is invigorating and refreshing. Orange is an anti-anxiety scent. Lavender helps with insomnia and helps you relax. Incorporate cinnamon or vanilla in your cooking. The sweetness we associate with these smells brings in Earth Element (summer), and are mood-altering in all their associations with sweetness. You can diffuse these oils or scents in a variety of ways.
4. Eat foods that support good moods. Include eating and drinking something citric in the morning. Vitamin C lowers the stress hormone, cortisol. Add lemon to your cup of green tea to increase the effects of the antioxidants. Mix red peppers into your salads.
- Eat violet foods. They contain Vitamin D. On the list are all kinds of berries including blueberries, elderberries, and blackberries. Eat eggplant and grapes. Eat whole foods around the color wheel for the full spectrum. * Color Code by James Joseph, et al details how to eat a full-spectrum diet.
- Munch on some crunchy foods. This could be the reason all the people I know LOVE to go to the movies on rainy days! You see the crunchiness of chewing popcorn stimulates a nerve that signals the brain to release some mood-enhancing chemicals. The mouth has more nerve ending localized in one area of the body. Eat a whole apple or snack on sunflower seeds to have more energy throughout your day!
5. Create an indoor garden of herbs for cooking. Not only will the smell and touch of these plants connect you to energizing fragrances, but will also create mood-enhancing serotonin* from touching the soil. Use herbs like peppermint and rosemary. Studies show that the scent of rosemary and rosemary oil improves mood. Mint is a mental stimulant, as well as a digestive one. Mint has also been shown to have anti-inflammatory powers.
6. Visualize yourself in a warm and sunny place. Imagining something is an internal process that connects you directly to the experience. Play some music that enhances the experience whether it is Caribbean, Hawaiian, or sounds of waves or nature. Visualization will create movement into relaxation on all levels.
7. Keep moving. Life is energy is motion. Find a way to experience the freedom you do have during the summer months for movement in some way. Take a salsa class, go to an indoor pool, or walk around the shopping mall with a friend. Meet a friend for a walk, good conversation, and cup of tea. Setting up time for movement in the morning triggers an increase in metabolism that lasts into the day. Walking and stretching improves your mood by releasing endorphins, your body’s natural opiates.
8. Listen to music that uplifts. You know the songs that make you want to move and get you singing along. Play Baroque music to support focus, learning and vitality. The interval of a fifth in Baroque music harmonizes and energizes! The Brainwave Symphony CD Collection is a wonderful option.*
9. Spend time with people and pet having fun! Petting your pet can create a soothing endorphin response. Make time to be with dear friends! Smiling supports your immune system. Work with the Inner Smile Meditation from the book, Free Your Breath, Free Your Life by Dennis Lewis. Think of reasons to smile. Use these memories when you need a pick-me-up of energy. A few moments go a long way to brighten your day!
10. Get a full night of sleep. Just an extra hour of sleep per night helps protect your heart and regulates your body’s need for homeostasis and stress relief.
11. Get out into natural or full-spectrum light 5-15 minutes a day. There are a number of products online that make it possible to bring full-spectrum light indoors. Take off your glasses when possible in natural light to drink in those rays. Get outdoors between 10 AM and noon. By doing so, you are feeding your spleen and its need for Vitamin D3.
12. It’s in your hands. Your hands are sub-chakras of the heart. Palming is an exercise that relieves stress in your eyes. Less stress= more light absorbed. It is also deeply relaxing mentally and emotionally. It is best to face natural light for this activity.
Here’s how:
- Rest you right hand over your right eye. Allow your fingers to rest over the fingers of your right hand diagonally across your forehead. Cup your left palm over your left eye. Allow your fingers to rest over your forehead diagonally over your other hand. No light should enter. Close your eyes. Relax deeply into the darkness.
- Say out loud or to yourself, “Love,” “Gratitude,” “Faith,” “Thank you,” “Trust” or other positive words.
- Open your eyes in the darkness. You can also take your palms away slightly. Open your eyes in the space and take in color, and then replace your palms to relax.
- When you are ready, slowly take your palms away. Slowly open your eyes to take in the light and beauty of the world around you.
*Serotonin and Dopamine are neurotransmitters associated with supporting a positive mood.
The article compilation includes Resonance Repatterning® modalities, material from The Role of Music in the 21st Century, Color Code, American Heart Association, Brainwave Symphony, and Free Your Breath, Free Your Life on the links page.
Article© by Kimberly Rex, MS from www.windowstotheheart.net
