A Stress Counselor Reveals New Breakthroughs In Anxiety Management
By Lee Heather
In order to manage our stress and improve our health and gain more inner peace and a sense of control over our lives we must be willing to make a commitment to ourselves to manage our own stress levels because nobody else will monitor then for us. We may have to risk thinking and behaving in healthier and more empowering ways to live life optimally.
I would like to offer you one new way to manage stress. It is a relaxation technique but is quite different form the traditional progressive muscle relaxation method that is usually taught. This new technique will take you to a much deeper and more profound level of calmness than you believed was possible.
Now, obviously stress starts in the mind and it is to the stress producing structures in the brain we must first look to understand how this works. The brain is made up of three main areas, the reptilian brain (our most ancient part), the limbic system and the frontal brain or neocortex.
It is in the first two that the action takes place with regards to stress. This is the famous ‘fight or flight’ area that is very primitive in it’s nature. These two areas contain the glands and structures that react to stress and fear and fire us up and then keep us aroused. These main glands are the thalamus and the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland all of which are located in the limbic system.
In the reptilian brain, at the rear, is a small structure known as the locus ceruleus which is also part of the brains stress response equipment. Further into the body itself are the adrenal glands (just above the kidneys) which fire cortisol and adrenaline into your body when the afore mentioned structures notice stress looming. So in order to really reach a deep level of relaxation where our stress really is ‘turned off’ we have to switch off these structures somehow.
To do this we engage visualization principles by imagining that inside the thalamus is a small replica of you, and this person is holding a small ray gun. This may initially sound slightly unorthodox but the results will speak for themselves. You shoot white laser like light into the hypothalamus simply by imagining doing so and if you visualize the light as calming it starts very quickly to shut down the stress that that gland is responsible for producing. You move all the way around these structures firing this light for a few minutes at a time and it literally switches off the brains stress response and your body reacts by completely relaxing itself so deeply that your brainwaves actually change from high beta to low alpha and then on to the theta level which the majority of relaxation techniques around just do not allow a person to go. Its like your whole body just lets go. If you perform this twice a day or even once if your schedule does not permit twice you will have found a most profound and effective means to manage stress.
Lee Heather is a therapist specializing in anxiety issues and teaches clients stress management. His main approach is to show clients how to ’switch off’ the brain stress centers for the most profound sense of deep relaxation they’ve ever experienced.
The Ultimate Relaxation Technique Fully Explained
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