For cardio responders, stress hormones elevate heart rate and constrict blood vessels—bit of which drive high blood pressure.

What results is not unlike what happens when you bend your garden hose and turn the faucet on more. Pressure builds up, and backs up putting strain on the faucet (ie your heart).

We’re learning that we’re all prone to elevations in blood pressure. New studies show that even mild stress can raise blood pressure and interfere with the mechanisms that regulate the cardiovascular system.

Inner Balance is achieved when the two components of our involuntary nervous system are in equilibrium. Mindbody fitness training develops our capacity to achieve and maintain Inner Balance. Inner Balance greatly supports our cardiovascular system health by allowing the mechanisms that control cardiovascular function to operate at best levels. This creates optimal heart rate variability which is an important signature of our heart’s ability to handle stress.

The Italian scientists assessed their subjects involuntary nervous system functioning found that participants in their study experienced inner imbalance and higher blood pressure on days they were stressed—particularly on days when they were to be tested.

Dr. James Lynch has done remarkable work demonstrating the power of the mind on blood pressure. See his book The Language of the Heart.

He discovered that people whose blood pressure was normal in their doctor’s office when they were silent, demonstrated marked increases in blood pressure when they spoke. Speaking involves the presentation of self. The more shaky and uncertain we are within ourselves, the greater the elevation in our blood pressure when we speak—even to just one other person.

Mind-side fitness includes freeing ourselves from the emotional confusion and past conditioning that causes self-doubt. The Stress Free State gives us a center of self-assurance and confidence, one based on a solid foundation that is unshakable.

When cardiovascular responders to stabilize their connection to the Stress Free State, they can lower their stress hormone levels and safely lower their blood pressure as well.

Here’s why: Stress and stress hormones contribute to heart disease, cancer, diabetes and many other serious illnesses. Stress hormones also drive anxiety, panic, depression, insomnia, weight gain, premature aging and infertility. Stress costs American’s over $300 billion dollars annually.

Reduce your stress levels whenever possible and set your sites on learning how to do two very important things:

1. learn how to shut down your stress hormone faucet and
2. learn how to flush stress hormones out of your blood and tissues.

If stress hormones linger too long in your cells—they’ll interfere with your body’s ability to efficiently take care of its housekeeping chores. Imagine taking your trash out each week and leaving one bag behind. At the end of a year—you’d have quite a mess to cope with.

If you want to learn how to do these two things to control the stress hormones running around in your body, then just let me know. You can do it in the privacy of your own home and office and when safe, even in your car.

The royal road to preventing stress hormone-driven weight problems is to train for the skills you need to do two thongs:

1. short-circuit the unnecessary release of stress hormones into your system and
2. flush stress hormones out of your blood, tissues and cells.

We now know the mechanisms that drive stress-induced weight gain. Here’s the nutshell story:

“Emotional stress triggers cortisol and cortisol triggers appetite for high calorie foods by influencing the hypothalamus, considered by many to be the main bridge that connects the mind and body”.

Once you become what I call “mind-side” fit, you’ll have the strength, resilience and flexibility you need for mindfulness and for “aware presence”. The capacity for “aware presence” will empower you to stop eating as a form of self-medication for stress.

We’ve found the very best solution to weight problems is to “be there” when your mouth opens to put food into it.

Beware of marketing hype infomercials selling simplistic solutions such as supplements to prevent cortisol related weight problems, including abdominal fat. Claims made for such products are unsubstantiated; they have no science behind them.

America has a sick care system, not a health care system.

We get sick first and then we get “treatment”. America spends 2+ trillion dollars a year on “sick care”, but less than 2% of that on preventing illnesses, including America’s #1 health problem—STRESS (World Health Organization=WHO).

The WHO has identified stress as the #1 health and quality of life problem in America. Stress isn’t about just feeling wired and tired. It’s about the release of powerful stress hormones into your body that can make your mind miserable and your body ill.

More than 75% of visits to physicians and untold numbers of hospitalizations are stress-hormone driven.

And according to a landmark study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, doctors and hospitals are the third leading cause of death in America.

Not good news. It may be safer joining a motorcycle gang than it is to get stressed out and sick in America. So don’t be casual about your health.

Don’t Be Passive or Assume Your Doctor Understands Wellness

Don’t be passive assuming that your doctor will take care of things. Learning how to be healthy and live well is one of the best investments you can make.

Read, learn, experiment…work to understand what it takes to get and stay healthy. Reduce your stress hormones. There are many sources of reliable health and quality of life information. Here’s a few to try on the internet:

• Medline Plus http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/
• Health Gov http://www.health.gov/
• Toll Free #’s for health info http://www.health.gov/nhic/pubs/tollfree.htm
• Alternative medicine http://www.altmedicine.com/

Best to be an open skeptic when reviewing health information. Make sure it’s reliable and valid—before you invest your time and money buying things or following a program.

Build a good health and quality of life team. For example, a medical physician you can trust, an acupuncturist, a therapist/mindbody expert, a massage therapist, meditation/yoga/conditioning consultants—etc.

Develop a regular “practice”—let it become part of your daily life.

There’s an art and a science to cultivating “A Sound Mind in a Healthy Body”.  It’s worth the effort. It’s the cornerstone of crafting a truly “good life”.

The last third of life is meant to be the best part. But not if we’re ill. It’s no fun feeling weak, tired and depleted.

Research shows that to devlopop a Sound Mind in a Healthy Body, and so greatly increase your chances of a robust health and resilience throughout your lifespan, then you must do these two things regularly:

1) lower your stress hormone levels and

2) flush stress hormones from your blood and tissues

If you want access to some proven and powerful methods to do these two critical things, then let me know.

Family is important no doubt. But while most families share important bonds, they also share a history of strain and limitation. A history often not recognized clearly, let alone talked about.

And since there is no time in the unconscious mind, some of our raw childhood experiences and difficulties can subtly surface when we’re around family.

Woody Allen commented nicely on this when he said: “Families are wonderful, if they live 3 or 4 states away”.

Having a meaningful conversation from the heart with a dear friend is a powerful experience that’s good for the soul. And it moves our mind into well-being and our heart rate and blood pressure into optimal states.

It’s worth working on being a good friend to others so they’ll feel cared for and respected. Then others can respond to you in kind.

Keep your eyes wide open in choosing friends, but half closed once you make them. Friendships take work and patience.

For example, the flood of stress hormones that come with the holidays can put us at risk for anxiety, depression and insomnia, and it puts special strain on our heart. Let’s face it, the family, financial and energy demands of holiday season can leave us worn out and weary.

Add to this, the soulless commercialization of this time of year, including sporting events with commercials every other minute for Viagra etc., and things can feel even more stressful. The dirty little secret about holiday stress is that it leaves many of us feeling empty and alienated, as if the meaning has drained out of our lives.

We need to rejuvenate ourselves during and after the holidays. We can use our mind and our imagination to refresh and restore ourselves. This will allow us to put things into perspective and lower our stress hormone levels. Knowing how to do this is like having access to an umbrella in a rainstorm. It’s still raining, but we’re able to stay dry.

Think of the “Inner Smile” method described below as a great psychological umbrella. The Inner Smile is an ancient yogic practice that’s very powerful. It’s easy to learn and use and it can be a great antidote to the poisonous affects of holiday stress.

The Inner Smile will allow you to enter a calm and relaxed state of mind. Think of it as a healing form of loving attention and acknowledgement—from yourself to yourself.  The practice directs a form of energy that carries deep appreciation and gratitude right into your heart.

Consider this: Our heart is like a loyal friend, a friend who works diligently 24 7 to keep us alive. We too often take this friend for granted. We rarely, if ever, acknowledge or communicate our appreciation for the fact that our heart works so hard for us.

It beats an average of 100,000 times every day, and each day it pumps more than 4,300 gallons of blood throughout our entire body. Yet we seldom acknowledge or even recognize our heart does all this, or that when we’re stressed out, our heart has to work much harder.

The Inner Smile practice is rooted in deep appreciation and love for our heart. We send it a form of energy that will clear out stress hormones and relax its cells on an energetic level.

Here’s how to do it. Read the brief instructions below over once. Get a clear picture of the practice, then do it. Once you do it a few times—you’ll have it down.

1. Start by sitting comfortably.
2. Then, close your eyes and take three deep breaths.
3. Then relax and send gentle caring and love to your eyes. Note how good this feels to your eyes—and how it deepens your experience of well-being. Let your eyes be bathed in the experience of an Inner Smile.
4. Then, keeping your eyes closed and relaxed, let your eyes become energized by the Inner Smile so that they can now direct the energy of love and appreciation, like two beams of light, one from each eye.
5. Now smile down from the back of your eyes into your heart. Visualize these two beams of light going down from your eyes—through your internal body—into your heart sitting at the center of your chest.

Note that in a yogic or meditation practice, “visualize” doesn’t have to mean seeing—if you can’t “see” this—just “feel” it. It’s the feeling that counts.

Keep the energy of your Inner Smile beaming from your eyes down into your heart.  Beam down love and deep and tender appreciation. Notice how good your heart feels. Be aware of the shift in its energy. Notice your heart being energized by your Inner Smile. FEEL it.

As your blood enters your heart, let it be energized by your Inner Smile and FEEL this energy from your Inner Smile travel throughout your body. Feel this deeply. Continue to pour forth an Inner Smile into your heart and from your heart let the light energy enter your blood and spread through your body and radiate into all of your cells.

The more you train with the Inner Smile practice, the more you’ll enjoy its benefits. In time, you’ll be able to do it quickly, pretty much anywhere and anytime, even at holiday family gatherings. It can also double as an awareness and mindfulness practice.

And remember keep your sense of humor intact. The holidays too shall pass. And don’t be down on yourself for being stressed out at family gatherings. As Woody Allen said: “Family is one of the greatest treasures in the world, if they live a few states away.”

As a consequence we have a river of stress hormones running around in our system, hormones that should not be there. Yes we need to do whatever we can to lower our stress hormone levels.

Among the things we need to do is break free from our work lives and ordinary routine for a few days at a time. And do something that connects us with a deeper part of ourselves.

A few possibilities:

• Meditation/ contemplation retreat
• Reading and or writing workshop or seminar
• Surfing (winter too)
• Bird watching
• Travel
• What we really want and love to do

Anything that will reset our relationship with ourselves and pull the plug on chronic stress so we can recalibrate our autonomic nervous system so it’s not in chronic stress mode.

To learn more about stress hormones, download FREE my Little Black Book of Stress Relief Secrets just to the left of this post. If you want to learn how to lower your stress hormone levels and flush stress hormones out of your blood and tissues fast–Let Me Know.

Think of it as your Brain Rest Activity Cycle, also know as BRAC.

Siesta cultures are tuned to this at some level.

Observe yourself.

When you have the urge to pour yourself another cup of tea or coffee, or eat something again or move into sexual fantasies—just take 2-3 deep breaths and make yourself comfortable.

Close your eyes. And just REST for a few minutes. Even 2-3 will help. Let your mind go wherever it wants. Whatever happens is fine.

You might take a short nap but even if you don’t you will be taking care of your brain. And you’ll feel refreshed and energized.

Do this now and then and you’ll notice your stress levels will go down and you will feel more even throughout your day.

That’s a painful dilemma to be in-and you’re not alone, many couples share your problem. These couples should be able to conceive a child, but again and again, they fail to do so, even with the help of a good infertility clinic.

What most couples will never learn from their infertility clinic is that the real culprit is STRESS hormones. Studies show that healthy people with fertility problems have high levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their blood. When you’re stressed cortisol releases into your blood and cortisol interferes with conception.

And it doesn’t help that the frustration of your not being able to get pregnant creates more and more stress for you and your partner. You’ll need to solve the stress/infertility problem on your own, because most infertility clinics don’t understand or account for it adequately, if at all.

Unfortunately, infertility doctors and staff often underestimate how stressful infertility can be. Consider what Dr. Alice Domar, professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology at Harvard Medical School has had to say.

When asked “How stressful is infertility?” Dr. Domar replied:

“In a word: very. Research has shown that women with infertility have the same levels of anxiety and depression as do women with cancer, heart disease, and HIV+ status. Infertility can be very lonely.”

Stress hormones like cortisol do three things that prevent conception. They interfere with ovulation, egg implantation and sperm production. Consider the following:

1. Ovulation- stress hormones mess up the timing of a woman’s ovulation. For example, a woman will have difficulty getting pregnant, if she ovulates too close to her period.
2. Egg implantation-a woman may successfully create a fertilized egg, but stress hormones can prevent that egg from implanting properly.
3. Sperm production-stress hormones interfere with a man’s testosterone production, which causes his sperm count to plummet to levels that prevent conception.

To break the stress/infertility connection you need to lower your stress hormone levels and flush stress hormones out of your blood and tissues. If you and your partner want help doing these two things easily in the privacy and comfort of your own home, then just let me know.

“Stress can cause some of our most common killers – cancer, heart disease, and cerebrovascular disease. Stress-related diseases include depression, ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome, reproductive dysfunction, and the worsening of diabetes.”

Stress Hormones Are the Culprit

Stopping the release of stress chemicals into your system and flushing them out of your blood and tissues will give you stress relief fast, including relief from the anxiety and depression that a stress hormone called CRH (Corticotropin Releasing Hormone) triggers.

And it will also increase your chances of staying healthy so you can enjoy a long, well-lived life. That’s what you want, right?

Use This Image as a Reminder

We all need reminders sometimes. You may want to remind yourself about stress by using a simple image to represent what you now know. Then it will be easy for you to remember the damage stress chemicals do to your mind and body. So you can take action to stop it.

Many people find that the image of a leaky faucet dripping stress hormones works well.

You may want to remember this image so that when you feel stressed, it comes to mind.

Then you’ll be in a better position to act to lower your stress hormone levels and flush them out of your system.

You can use the MESICS Free Release Breathing Method to start doing that right away.

In one study, University of Pittsburgh researchers studied 500 middle-aged women and found that women in high stress marriages, when compared with this in low stress and more satisfying marriages, were at greater risk for heart attacks and strokes because they were more likely to have blockages in the main artery of their hearts and in their carotid artery. Stress hormones drive such problems.

STRESS IS LIKE SECOND HAND SMOKE

Stress is like second hand smoke, it can poison and ruin a marriage and an entire family over time.

Stress is not just about feeling tense, wired and tired. Stress is about the release of toxic hormones into our system, hormones that are part of our survival hard-wiring known as the “fight or flight response”.

This hard-wired survival response is meant for a time that is long gone and so it often triggers in error. As a result, our “stress hormone faucet” gets turned on too often and it stays on too long. Stress hormones then seep into our blood and tissues where they can damage both our body and mind.

STRESS HORMONES

Chronic relationship stress releases hormones that drive anxiety and depression as well as elevated heart rate, increased constriction of blood vessels, increased cholesterol and decreased heart rate variability, a heart risk factor.

Low stress levels and success in a marriage, or a long-term committed relationship, depends on our ability to maintain a good supply of love and friendship.  All relationships go through periods of heightened stress and dissatisfaction, such stress and strain represent important challenges that can lead to growth and happiness.

RISK TO LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP

But chronic high stress squeezes love and friendship out of our relationship and kills it a little bit every day.  It’s the long term relationship stress and dissatisfaction that causes harm to our health and well being. No wonder we face stress in our relationships. Most of us never really learned what a relationship truly is and how to be in one.

What sets up conditions for long-term toxic stress in our committed relationship? One core problem is that we don’t see our partner accurately, but we think we do. We unconsciously imagine our partner instead—according to our own past relationship conflicts and wounds, including what we went through and observed in our family.

But life can also be hard, at times very hard.  To live well we cannot deny how hard and how stressful life can be.

Emotional confusion and mistaken assumptions about the nature of reality leave us too often lying on a psychological bed of nails.

Then there’s losing those we love, becoming ill and having to die ourselves.

That’s why Jesus said: “Be as Passersby” and why Buddha said “Don’t be attached.”

Not easy—but possible.

We can deepen our lives and live with intent and love if we face life’s hard times.

The foundation for doing so is to give ourselves a break and offer ourselves true friendship and tender-hearted generosity. Then the stress, fear and frustration will melt down.

AND life can then be great and wonderful—pretty edgy at times, but great and wonderful nevertheless. We can realize that, though very hard at times, this life is a mystery sourced from an even more remarkable mystery–and we’re part of it.

Spiritual stress results from being disconnected from who we most truly are. When we’re caught in a spiders web of family and cultural conditioning something deep within in us feels as if it’s in exile.

Pay attention to your inner life. That’s where you’ll find deeper levels of who you really are. No need to become a “true believer” in anything—except in yourself.

Consider doing some inner work or some meditation, yoga or heart based prayer.

The more connected you are to your “true address”,

• the less stress you’ll experience,
• the happier you’ll be and
• the longer you’ll live.

Learn how to free yourself from the clutches of a conditioned identity that’s too small for you who really are. Dive deep—the view can be  grand. It’s  a view that relieves so much stress because it puts life on a much larger canvas.

• unwind and flush stress hormones out of your blood and tissues
• recharge your batteries
• be more effective when you return to work
• live longer

So–if you can afford it, make sure to take as many vacations as possible. The more the better. Don’t waste vacation days by not using them.

So—are you ready to plan a really great vacation right now? Often times if we say YES to a great vacation idea—and then book it—we’ll get the great benefits. If we hesitate—then our vacations plans go into the manana manana file.

Can you see yourself at the Grand Canyon? How about Vermont, Maui or Rome?

Strapped for cash? Then take a good “Staycation”. Just pull the plug in your daily routine and take days trips to the museum, theater, nature preserve and so on.

Do it!

Here’s a method called MESICS “Free Release Breathing”.  It is a wonderful stress busting practice that’s easy to do, yet powerful. You will get results-fast.

You can do it pretty much anywhere and it doesn’t take long. And the more you do it, the more you will strengthen your “stress fighting muscle”.

MESICS Free Release Breathing is an important part of many of the advanced stress solution methods in our Fast Acting Stress Relief Pack.  You can also use it as a standalone practice.

Here’s how.

Read the brief instructions below over once. Get a clear picture of the practice, then return right here and do it.

Take three Free Release Breaths as follows:

1. On your “in breath”-breathe in through your nose into your diaphragm * (see footnote)
2. On your “out breath”-breathe from your diaphragm out through your mouth. Just completely let go.
3. Don’t walk your breath out-just let it go completely “hhhaaaa”
4. On the out breath sigh if you are not in public- “hhhaaa”.
5. If you are in public-do it quietly or silently
6. Then tune yourself briefly to the calm, clear state at the end of your out breath. Rest there for about 7 seconds. Do not follow your thoughts.
7. Then repeat twice more.
8. Each time LET GO of any stressful thoughts that you’re distracted by and identified with.
9. As you practice and train, try to maintain your connection to the calm state at the end of your out breath for as long as possible
10. This will give you a taste of the “Stress Free State”

“Free Release Breathing” is so powerful because it promotes the activation of what’s called the “parasympathetic” component of your Involuntary Nervous System. Forget the strange words and think of it this way. When this part of your nervous system is in charge, your Stress Faucet turns off and stress chemicals stop leaking into your body.

That’s good, very good. It will ease your stress and your stress-hormone driven, anxiety and depression.

Again, at the end of your out breath, you will feel at ease, calm and clear. Tune yourself to this experience. Train, train, train with this method. Once you are familiar with it, you can use one or a few MESICS Free Release Breaths to reconnect to this calm, relaxed state of mind.

Then, when you’re in a stressful situation, you will be more resilient.

With repeated use, you will be able to find this relaxed state of mind more quickly and you will be able to stay connected to it longer and longer.

Studies show that heart attack victims with pets had 28% higher survival rates than those who didn’t. And petting an animal affectionately improves the heart rate of both you and the animal.

Consider adopting an animal friend, or at least spending some quality time with an animal, an animal who’ll enjoy your affection and give some lovin back to you.

I have two dogs and a cat who often rescue me from taking myself too seriously. And there’s a horse up the street from where I live—a painted horse with one blue eye—who I call Blue Eye.

I visit him and feed him apples or carrots and the boy in me comes to life with pure joy.

Ask yourself: Do I believe that my own actions determine what goes on in my life?

If your answer is no, then consider this.

If you believe that what happens to you depends—not on what you DO—but on luck, fate, chance or strong and powerful others—then you’ll have more stress in your life.

Even strong and powerful animals stress out, quickly weaken, and even die when they feel they can no longer control the events in their life.

By the way, we all unconsciously download our attitudes about control from our parents. We wind up seeing the world as they did or do. Do your beliefs about what controls your life—sound like either or both of your parent’s?

Don’t stay stuck in a bad dream. You can learn how to change negative beliefs and expectations.

Train to not worry about things you have no control over, especially repetitive thought based story lines that keep knocking on your door.

These story lines can become like bullies that torment us. Telling us we’re not enough. Or we’re bad or wrong. Or that no one loves, accepts or respects us. And more.

In the same way that you’re careful about what people you spend your time with—you can also choose wisely what thoughts you hang out with.

You’ll have fewer toxic stress hormones running around in your body, if you learn how to control what you think and feel. And you’ll feel more self-assured, satisfied, and energized.

Job stress is dangerous over the long haul. Real dangerous.

Studies show that it contributes heavily to heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, diabetes and more.

Many things drive job stress. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Is your job insecure?
• Do you have a lot of responsibility, with too little authority?
• Do you work long hours without fair compensation?
• Do you get a fair amount of vacation time to unwind and play?
• Are your boss and co-workers nasty?
• Do you work in unsafe and threatening work conditions
• And most importantly—do you like what you do for work?

If you answered yes to some of these, you should check in on your job  stress. Can you make any changes at work that will improve things? If not, can you get busy putting together a plan to move on?

Get help doing so if you need. It doesn’t pay to stay in a stressful job.

The best of all possible worlds is to be working at something you really “want and love” to do.  Instead of something you feel you “should or must” do.

The study shows increased risk for breast cancer and breast cancer mortality for women taking long-term estrogen-plus-progestin, or combined hormone therapy, not estrogen alone.

Many physicians and health care providers feel that this study is the long-awaited nail in the HRT coffin. Menopause has been marketed to women as a “medical condition” when in fact it is a life stage.

Many of the problems women have associated with menopause, such as hot flashes, insomnia, depression and weight gain, are due to hormone imbalance. But few women understand that hormone imbalance is NOT a natural condition of menopause.

Far Eastern women have little problems during menopause because their adrenals are not depleted and so they can function, as designed, to assist restoring a woman to hormone balance. But most Western women have depleted adrenals because of protracted  stress. The adrenal glands play an important role in the fight or flight response and chronic stress simply wears them out.

The “New Menopause Mindset” empowers women to stop thinking of menopause as a medical condition and to learn how to use safe and effective methods to reduce their stress levels and escape a vicious cycle of hormone imbalance.

Menopause is a natural part of midlife, a critically important life stage often misunderstood because of cultural biases against aging. These biases leave women misinformed and burdened by the false assumption that life is all downhill after menopause.

The fact is that the second half of a women’s life is where the adventure really begins.