What is the best way to overcome your daily stress?  Perhaps you’ve never really thought about this question before.  You might be someone who feels stressed out and just assumes that it’s natural.

“Stress is a part of life, right?”  You might be saying.

Yes, we could say this.  We could assume that stress is so common that it is a part of modern living.  Yet, what many people don’t recognize is that stress can really affect not just our day to day activities, but it can impact our health and even our future.

Did you know that illness has now been proven to be caused by stress alone.  It’s true.  You can develop heart problems just because of stress.  Stress can aggravate asthma.  It can create stomach problems.  Anxiety, depression, migraine headaches, inflammatory bowel disease- stress can do all of this.  It can even lower your immune function.

Stress can also hinder your performance.  It can put you into a lower gear at work or in your professional life.  Even though stress is often considered a part of normal life we don’t have to let stress get in the way of reaching our goals.

So what’s the best way to overcome your daily stress?  Is there a best way or a better way to get stress relief?

Most methods for reducing or managing stress have you work at what I call the mind level.  They have you try to change your thinking about your life.  Or they try to get you to adjust your mind’s focus so that you push stress into the background of your life.

Now these methods can obviously work for reducing your stress, but it’s been my experience that they’re difficult to implement.  They take a long time to really work.  I’ve known people who have gone through years and years of counseling with talk therapy and never seem to be about to overcome their stress.

It’s been my experience that working at the heart level is quicker and works better.

I once worked with a woman who had been suffering with feelings of shame for over forty years.  She had been in psychotherapy for over thirty of those years without being about to through off these hurtful feelings.  Using a heart the centered methods that I teach, she was able to get relief in just two sessions.  Like magic her shame vanished.  Does this work for everyone so quickly? Of course not, I can’t give any guarantees.  I’ve just seen some amazing results.

You might be asking, “Why focus on Your heart for Stress Relief?  What’s so special about working there?”

My answer related to the nature of where stress is experienced.  Our feelings of being stressed out are felt in the center of our chest.  The vast majority of people experience sadness, grief, anxiety- in the heart region.  Research from the HeartMath Institute has shown that our hearts actually contain thousands of neurons, nerve cells.  Your heart is in fact a sensory organ.  Amazingly, your heart has more nerve cells than certain parts of your brain.  Your heart even makes decisions about your bodily functions independent of the brain.  In my comprehensive program of stress reduction, 5 Simple Steps for Overcoming Stress Now, I teach a process I call, Tuning Into Your Heart.  It’s a way of bringing our focus into the heart region and concentrating it like a laser.

Using this method, I’ve had dramatic success in helping people manage, reduce, or completely eliminate their feelings of stress.  Let me give you some quick tips for learning how to focus more on you heart to help you deal more effectively with the stress in your life.

#1 First, change your breathing. Research studies have shown that people who are experiencing a stressed out state have a rapid and shallow breathing pattern.  The first step for being able to focus on your heart is to slow down your breathing.  I recommend what I call, Power Breathing.  Power Breathing is a technique for inhaling three times in through the nose, pushing the abdomen out as you do.  It’s two short inhalations, followed by a longer inhalation that completely fills the lungs.   Next, breath out through the mouth in the same pattern.  Exhale two short exhalations and then finish with a longer exhalation that completely empty’s the lungs.  The abdomen should come in completely.

You’ll want to do three cycles of Power Breathing in this fashion- three inhalations, three exhalations, three in, three out, and three in follow by three out.  When you do this you’ll feel the breath begin to get deeper and slower.  The tension will begin to leave your body.

People who have used my program have done this alone and received substantial benefit.

Check out some testimonials on my upcoming Facebook site.  http://www.facebook.com/WholeHeartedCardiologist?ref=hl

#2 Second, Focus on Your Heart. The next part of getting stress relief is to focus on your heart.  Now I know you might be wondering how this is going to help reduce your stress, but it does indeed help.  Place your right hand over your heart.  Like you are saying the pledge of Allegiance.  Bring your focus, your awareness into your heart region just below your hand and allow yourself to feel what is happening at your heart level.  You’ll want to see if you can actually feel your heart’s beating.

Putting your focus on your heart can have a calming effect.

#3 Breath into Your Heart. Again this sounds a little strange, but give it a try.  After you have focused on your heart region, go back to Power Breathing,  While keeping your concentration on your heart area, breath in twice through the nose, then breath in a third time filling the lungs completely.  On the exhalation focus on breathing right into your heart.  It’s kind of like feeling that you are allowing your air to go right into that area where you know your heart resides.

Keep your focus on your heart and repeat this process.

#4:  Bring feelings of gratitude into your heart. Next,  you’ll want to bring feelings of gratitude into your heart. Think of something you feel grateful about in your life.  It could be that you are healthy, have a roof over your head, or still have a job.  Perhaps you feel thankful about your wife, children, or your pet.  Whatever it is that you feel grateful about allow to think about these things.  Feel these feelings in you heart area while you still have your focus there.  Let this feeling of gratefulness fill your heart.   The more powerful the feeling, the more calming effect it will have and the better it will reduce your feelings of stress.

Focusing on your heart in this manner can have a powerful effect on your stress levels.  It’s been my experience in working with hundreds of people that our hearts hold a wisdom that can dramatically alter our feelings of stress.

if we can learn to shift our focus to our heart- it can be a powerful vehicle for change.

Look for my new website http://overcomeyourdailystress.com/ in a month.

You’ll find some free video training for helping you get a better handle on your stress.

Remember:

Will Your Seek?  Will You Knock?  Will You Open the Door to Your Own Heart?