Mind Body Approaches Including Stress Management
Stress management techniques address the connection between mind and body using a variety of methods including simple relaxation and stress awareness exercises, and learning how stress expresses itself in the physical emotional and cognitive planes. These practices have been shown to reduce the harmful impact of chronic stress which can create and perpetuate many medical syndromes.
The Stress Management and Resiliency Training (SMART) program is an 8 week educational skills based program for groups. The program has been running in America for many years and was developed at the Harvard based Benson Henry Institute, presenting methods evolved from Dr Herbert Benson’s studies of the relaxation response first characterized in his research on blood pressure at Harvard in the 1970’s. Dr. Benson discovered that, just as we have a physiological mechanism for responding to stress, we also have a physiological mechanism which reduces the stress response. This mechanism can be elicited intentionally. Dr. Benson called this ‘eliciting the relaxation response’. The program teaches participants how to elicit and practice the relaxation response. Stress awareness is also learned, which helps to prevent escalation of stress in daily life.
The practice of these methods enables participants to create new habits and skill, which favor the reduction of stress. Many methods are presented so that individuals can find and practice the ones that best suit them.
I am offering this 8 week education program to groups. Elements of the program can also be taught to individuals in the clinical setting.
Medical hypnosis also has a place and similarly uses the elements of relaxation and concentration as well as personalized suggestions during the hypnosis session. Hypnosis can use the mind body connection in a therapeutic way, to reduce pain and many other physical symptoms that can be worsened by habitual worry and tension.
While the SMART program can be taught remotely through zoom, hypnosis treatment requires live clinic appointments
For questions and to make appointments, please contact me by sending an email to [email protected].