Never heard of eustress? That is the good stress, the kind
we have that helps us learn new skills and tools and apply
them in our lives. Distress is the too strong stress
response that can move us into a flight of fight chemistry
where we have three behavioral options, run, fight, or
freeze, none of which are appropriate to the office or the
living room, unless perhaps you work at the Post Office.

And most of us think that stress will be less of a factor in
our lives when we get the outside world organized in the way
we want it.

Unfortunately the stress we feel follows our thoughts about
the outside world, and the only place I can think about the
outside world is in my head.

So stress relief management really means I have to change my
thinking in order to feel stress relief.

Most of us can do that, the problem comes in sustaining a
stress relief thought, because I can go a gratitude thought,
but if I do not keep that thought going for a bit, the
powerful stress chemistry will pull me back to my stress
thoughts, and the stress chemistry comes back immediately,
well, perhaps in 1/18th second, which is about twice as fast
as I can blink my eyes.

So stress relief management is going to require that I
become aware of and manage my thinking and perhaps my
breathing and attend to those processes like I attend to the
position of my vehicle on the road when I drive.

Not only attend to the position of my thinking and my
breathing, but make it a habit to keep those processes
moving in a eustress rather than a distress direction.

Ever leave work and drive home safely and realize that you
do not remember any of the drive home?

Well, that happens because safe driving is a habit that your
cells have learned and they use that memory while your
thoughts may wander all over the place, and I want to manage
stress relief in my body like that, have my gratitude
thoughts or my breathing technique handy in the background
to call up on a moments notice so that I sustain eustress
rather than distress.

The tool that has worked the best for me in that regard is
heart rate variability biofeedback.

Heart rate variability biofeedback is a biofeedback tool
that gives me real time feedback about the time between my
heart beats, or the coherence of my heart beats.

So I can look at a computer monitor and see and hear
feedback about how my thinking and breathing impacts this
usually unconscious physiological process, and most folks I
have taught this too are quite surprised to see their
physiology change even as they sit quietly because they have
created a stressful thought.

Just as surprising is the change in the opposite direction
when folks follow the directions of the the Coaching
tutorial included with the program, breathing with the coach
and attending to thoughts of gratitude.

It took me about 6 one half hour practices to sustain the
coherent heart beat for up to 20 minutes, which leaves one
feeling really contented and relaxed, but I think the really
great aspect of the emWave heart rate variability tool is
that with practice I can recognize much more quickly when my
heart beat is incoherent, and move it back to coherence.

That one tool makes me a much better parent, for example,
and it certainly helps in my marriage too. Now to get the
cats to trained.

About the Author:

Michael S. Logan is a brain fitness expert, counselor, a
student of Chi Gong, and a licensed one on one HeartMath
provider. I enjoy the spiritual, the mythological, and
psychological, and I am a late life father to Shane, 10, and
Hannah Marie, 4, whose brains are so amazing.
http://www.askmikethecounselor2.com