I can keep you calm during the lockdown

Day 1 of a vital series for you & your family

In this time of crisis, it’s understandable people are anxious. TV’s Paul McKenna has invaluable advice on how to cope. Over the next three days he will provide techniques and guidance on dealing with stress, sleeping and relationships.

CONTROLLING STRESS AND REDUCING ANXIETY Stress is caused by the fight or flight mechanism, which we inherited from our ancestors and was there to fight a wild animal or run away.

Unfortunately, this gets triggered any time we perceive a threat and with everything that’s going on in the world right now, it’s easy to become anxious about our health, the health of our loved ones, the economy and our future.

The point of fear-based emotions such as stress is to prepare us for emergencies, which is positive. However, when we trigger the stress response many times a day, we begin to live in a world of stress with too much adrenaline and lactic acid, which make us feel fatigued and weakens our immune system.

So, positive stress is being prepared for emergencies and negative stress is when we overprepare and weaken ourselves. The following techniques when practised regularly can significantly reduce our stress levels for better health and well-being. HeartMath

The Institute of HeartMath was set up in the early 1990s to further study the role of the physical heart in health and well-being. Their work and its applications have become so successful that their stress management programmes have been taken up around the world, including by all four branches of the US military.

What they discovered was that focusing on the physical heart measurably reduced the presence of stress hormones, increased DHEA and other anti-aging hormone levels, and enabled peak performance in a variety of situations. The basic idea is that when you shift your attention from your head to your heart, your body relaxes, your mind gets clearer, and your brain releases the positive chemical changes of natural relaxation.

You can use the following exercise any time you are experiencing a stressful feeling in your body or an overly busy mind. It will help you to feel better almost immediately – usually in less than a minute. In addition, you may get insights into actions you can take to make things more the way you want them...

The more you practise this exercise, the easier it becomes to interrupt the stress response, even in the midst of the chaos of daily life. It will help you to reconnect with a feeling of relaxed alertness and emotional equilibrium by getting you out of your head and in touch with your common sense and deeper wisdom.

From Head to Heart

1

Become aware you are having a stressful feeling in your body or that your mind is racing. 2

Put your hand on your heart and focus your energy into this area. Take at least three s low and gentle breaths into your heart, maintaining your focus on the feeling of your hand in the centre of your chest. 3

Now, recall a time when you felt really, really good - a time you felt love, joy, or real happiness! Return to that memory as if you are back there again right now. See what you saw, hear what you heard, and feel how good you felt. 4

As you feel this good feeling in your body, imagine your heart could speak to you.

Ask your heart how you could take better care of yourself in this moment and in this situation. 5

Listen to what your heart says in answer to your question and act on it as soon as you can.

Havening Therapy

Havening Therapy was created by my friend Dr Ronald Ruden. Scientific studies have shown that it is amazingly effective at relieving sadness and reducing stress, trauma and compulsion. Havening has been hailed as a remarkable breakthrough and recently Justin Bieber has endorsed it.

Patterns of repeated touch to parts of the body combined with specific eye movements and visualisations have a rapid, reliable and predictable effect on our feelings. Years of research have created a significant advance in what is known as “psychosensory therapy”.

The patterns of touch used in

Havening are what enable a mother to comfort her baby and they are hardwired into every infant. Havening combines these deep-rooted patterns of reassurance and comfort with sequences to break down the associations that triggered unhappy feelings. We can now reduce the intensity of an emotion or feeling and establish calm, robust relaxation.

Studies have shown that when we use the Havening technique, we reduce stress chemicals in our body and produce states of relaxation and calm.

Over time, we can also change the way our brain processes thoughts and feelings.

A SAFE HAVEN

You should practise this sequence of eye movements, body touches and visualisations several times until you know it off by heart. Then you will be able to use it anytime you need to get rid of unhappy feelings.

1

Notice how much unhappiness or sadness you feel and rate it on a scale of 1-10. This is important as it lets you measure how much you reduce it. 2

Now clear your mind, or just think about something nice.

3

Now cross your arms, place your hands on the tops of your

shoulders and close your eyes.

4

Now stroke your hands down the sides of your arms from your shoulders to your elbows, down and up, again and again.

5

As you carry on stroking the sides of your arms imagine you are walking on a beautiful beach, with each footstep in the sand count out loud from 1 to 20 with each step that you take.

6

Now, keep stroking the sides of your arms and open your eyes, but keep your head still.

7

Now, while you keep stroking your arms, move your eyes laterally to

the left and laterally to the right, 10 times.

8

Close your eyes and stroke the sides of your arms while you imagine walking down a flight of stairs and count out loud with each footstep. 9

Now open your eyes and check, on your scale from 1 to 10, the number of the feeling now. If it is way down the bottom, congratulations - you have personally changed your own feeling state. If you think that the unhappy feeling is not yet reduced enough, just repeat the Havening sequence until it is reduced as far as you want.

An Attitude of Gratitude

Whenever I am feeling a bit overwhelmed, I try to remind myself that joy and beauty are always present – and the more you train your brain to spot them, the more joy you will begin to experience in your own life.

Perhaps the most powerful tool in our attempt to reboot our natural joy system is also the simplest – making a daily list of all the things which we appreciate, are grateful for, or bring us joy.

This list can include both big and small things – absolutely anything you appreciate

and/or are grateful for in your life. For example:

■ Thinking about my family ■ The first coffee of the day ■ Walking my dog ■ Watching a TV series I enjoy The benefits are dramatic, including fewer physical symptoms, greater optimism, higher goal achievement, and increased levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness and energy.

The Joy List

■ Get a notebook or open a file on your computer where you can begin keeping track of the many experiences of joy and gratitude you experience throughout the day. ■ Each day, add at least five things to the list.

Any time you need a boost, read what you have written. Your levels of gratitude, joy and appreciation will rise, taking your feelings back up to a higher level of consciousness.