A Powerful, Drug-Free Approach to High Blood Pressure High blood pressure is a national epidemic. It's a condition that affects one in four Americans, most of whom have no idea they are at higher risk for heart disease, stroke, and other life-threatening problems. Conventional treatments for hypertension involve drugs, and these can have considerable side effects and may not ultimately succeed in getting those numbers down. Fortunately, the Institute of HeartMath has researched techniques for managing stress and hypertension for more than fifteen years. Now, at last, their highly effective strategies for regulating blood pressure safely and effectively are available to you. Using a series of unique techniques like the Freeze-Frame ® and the Heart Lock-In ®, this book will help you literally regulate your blood pressure at the source-the heart level-and reduce the stress that causes high blood pressure. In as little as ninety days, you can 'reset' your baroreceptor systems and lower your blood pressure. The approach is drug-free, safe, effective, and clinically validated.
It's the quintessential buzz word of modern life. It hangs on everyone's lips from the first miles of the morning commute until the screeching alarm clock starts yet another day. Countless articles and studies tell the same story: lives controlled by unmanaged stress end early and none too well. This book describes a simple, straightforward method readers can learn and practice to literally transform stress by shifting the heart's own rhythms. At the core of the HeartMath method of emotional regulation is the idea that, by focusing on positive feelings such as appreciation, care, or compassion, anyone can create dramatic changes in his or her heart rhythms. These changes precipitate a series of neural, hormonal, and biochemical events that dissipate stress and anger and lead to greater well-being. The benefits from using this system are remarkable and far-reaching: blood pressure drops, stress hormone levels fall, immune system activity increases, and anti-aging hormone levels rise. Through its interactive learning system, this book teaches readers to use the HeartMath method, enabling them to see and experience in real time how thoughts and emotions affect their heart rhythms. It teaches them how to engage their hearts to bring emotion, body, and mind into balance, and helps them stay in a zone of focused clarity, optimal health, and high performance. Changes brought about through this method are fast-acting and long-lasting, the perfect antidote to our chaotic and fast-paced lives. HeartMath is a registered trademark of the Institute of HeartMath.
The Perfect Antidote to Anxiety Feelings of anxiety can sap your energy, joy, and vitality. But now the scientists at the Institute of HeartMath® have adapted their revolutionary techniques into a fast and simple program that you can use to break free from anxiety once and for all. At the core of the HeartMath method is the idea that our thoughts and emotions affect our heart rhythms. By focusing on positive feelings such as appreciation, care, or compassion, you can create coherence in these rhythms-with amazing results. Using the HeartMath method, you'll learn to engage your heart to bring your emotions, body, and mind into balance. Relief from anxiety, optimal health, and high performance all day long will follow. (HeartMath® is a registered trademark of the Institute of HeartMath.)
"Doc Childre's writing is eloquent, his wisdom is profound, and his easy way of communicating makes this book a treasure. His colleagues present the energy of the heart in the safety of a scientific context that invites us again and again to move beyond it." -- Gary Zukav, author The Seat of the Soul and The Dancing Wu Li Masters Heart Intelligence, Connecting with the Intuitive Guidance of the Heart provides readers with a new, high definition picture of the energetic heart as a unifying, creative, intuitive intelligence that we can learn to draw on for moment to moment guidance. Heart Intelligence links the physical heart to the spiritual (energetic) heart. Through its extensive communication with the brain and body, the heart is intimately involved in how we think, feel, and respond to the world. Expanding on their breakthrough book, The HeartMath Solution, the authors offer heart-based techniques and guidelines for living from the heart, which connects the puzzle pieces of our purpose and fulfillment. The book provides information and simple practices for accessing our heart's intuitive guidance to connect with our highest choices for better outcomes. Our choices are especially important through these changing times because they constantly create or disrupt our peace, happiness and self-security. Our thoughts and feelings influence the chemistry that regulates much of our health -- how we feel, for better or worse. Our thoughts, feelings, emotions and attitudes are just frequencies that we can learn to change -- once we put our heart into our intention. Heart Intelligence provides practices to replace fear with the attitude of intelligent concern (managed concern) which leaves us in charge and more attuned to intuitive direction. We learn the benefits of practicing simple coherence techniques a few times a day for boosting resilience and emotional balance; making appropriate choices; and clearing our mind from anxiety or overwhelm when needed. It is through deepening our heart intelligence, coherence and connection that humanity will be able to shift from separation to cooperation resulting in higher solutions to our personal and global problems
The development of a new tool, analytic device, or approach frequently facilitates rapid growth in scientific understanding, although the process is seldom linear. The study of heart rate variability (HRV) defined as the extent to which beat-to-beat variation in heart rate varies, is a rapidly maturing paradigm that integrates health and wellness observations across a wide variety of biomedical and psychosocial phenomena and illustrates this nonlinear path of development. The utility of HRV as an analytic and interventive technique goes far beyond its original application as a robust predictor of sudden cardiac death. This Research Topic aims to provide a conceptual framework to use in exploring the utility of HRV as a robust parameter of health status, using a broad and inclusive definition of ‘health’ and ‘well-being’. From the broadest perspective, current biomedical science emerged from shamanistic and religious healing practices and empirically observed interventions made as humans emerged from other hominins. The exponential growth of physics, chemistry and biology provided scientific support for the model emphasizing pathology and disorders. Even before the momentous discovery of germ theory, sanitation and other preventive strategies brought about great declines in mortality and morbidity. The revolution that is currently expanding the biomedical model is an integrative approach that includes the wide variety of non-physio/chemical factors that contribute to health. In the integrative approach, health is understood to be more than the absence of disease and emphasis is placed on optimal overall functioning, within the ecological niche occupied by the organism. This approach also includes not just interventive techniques and procedures, but also those social and cultural structures that provide access to safe and effective caring for sufferers. Beyond the typical drug and surgical interventions - which many identify with the Western biomedical model that currently enjoys an unstable hegemony - such factors also include cognitive-behavioral, social and cultural practices such as have been shown to be major contributors to the prevention and treatment of disease and the promotion of health and optimal functioning. This Integrative Model of Health and Well-being also derives additional conceptual power by recognizing the role played by evolutionary processes in which conserved, adaptive human traits and response tendencies are not congruent with current industrial and postindustrial global environmental demands and characteristics. This mismatch contributes to an increasing incidence of chronic conditions related to lifestyle and health behavior. Such a comprehensive model will make possible a truly personalized approach to health and well-being, including and going far beyond the current emphasis on genomic analysis, which has promised more that it has currently delivered. HRV offers an inexpensive and easily obtained measure of neurovisceral functioning which has been found to relate to the occurrence and severity of numerous physical disease states, as well as many cognitive-behavioral health disorders. This use of the term neurovisceral refers to the relationships between the nervous system and the viscera, providing a more focused and specific conceptual alternative to the now nearly archaic “mind-body” distinction. This awareness has led to the recent and growing use of HRV as a health biomarker or health status measure of neurovisceral functioning. It facilitates studying the complex two way interaction between the central nervous system and other key systems such as the cardiac, gastroenterological, pulmonary and immune systems. The utility of HRV as a broad spectrum health indicator with possible application both clinically and to population health has only begun to be explored. Interventions based on HRV have been demonstrated to be effective evidence-based interventions, with HRV biofeedback treatment for PTSD representing an empirically supported modality for this complex and highly visible affliction. As an integral measure of stress, HRV can be used to objectively assess the functioning of the central, enteric and cardiac nervous systems, all of which are largely mediated by the vagal nervous complex. HRV has also been found to be a measure of central neurobiological concepts such as executive functioning and cognitive load. The relatively simple and inexpensive acquisition of HRV data and its ease of network transmission and analysis make possible a promising digital epidemiology which can facilitate objective population health studies, as well as web based clinical applications. An intriguing example is the use of HRV data obtained at motor vehicle crash sites in decision support regarding life flight evacuations to improve triage to critical care facilities. This Research Topic critically addresses the issues of appropriate scientific and analytic methods to capture the concept of the Integrative Health and Well-being Model. The true nature of this approach can be appreciated only by using both traditional linear quantitative statistics and nonlinear systems dynamics metrics, which tend to be qualitative. The Research Topic also provides support for further development of new and robust methods for evaluating the safety and effectiveness of interventions and practices, going beyond the sometimes tepid and misleading “gold standard” randomized controlled clinical trial.
THE WILEY-BLACKWELL HANDBOOK OF Transpersonal Psychology "The new Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology is a necessity today. Many transpersonal psychologists and psychotherapists have been waiting for such a comprehensive work. Congratulations to Harris Friedman and Glenn Hartelius. May this book contribute to an increasingly adventurous, creative, and vibrant universe." —Ingo B. Jahrsetz, President, The European Transpersonal Association "The Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology is an outstanding, comprehensive overview of the field. It is a valuable resource for professional transpersonal practitioners, and an excellent introduction for those who are new to this wide-ranging discipline." —Frances Vaughan, PhD. Psychologist, author of Shadows of the Sacred: Seeing Through Spiritual Illusions "Finally, the vast literature on transpersonal psychology has been collected in what is clearly the essential handbook for psychologists and others who have either too apologetically endorsed or too critically rejected what undoubtedly will define psychology in the future. If you are not a transpersonal psychologist now, you will be after exploring this handbook. No longer can one dismiss the range of topics confronted by transpersonal psychologists nor demand methodological restraints that refuse to confront the realities transpersonal psychologists explore. This is a marvelous handbook—critical, expansive, and like much of what transpersonal psychologists study, sublime." —Ralph W. Hood Jr., University of Tennessee, Chattanooga With contributions from more than fifty scholars, this is the most inclusive resource yet published on transpersonal psychology, which advocates a rounded approach to human well-being, integrating ancient beliefs and modern knowledge. Proponents view the field as encompassing Jungian principles, psychotherapeutic techniques such as Holotropic Breathwork, and the meditative practices found in Hinduism and Buddhism. Alongside the core commentary on transpersonal theories—including holotropic states; science, with chapters on neurobiology and psychometrics; and relevance to feminism or concepts of social justice—the volume includes sections describing transpersonal experiences, accounts of differing approaches to healing, wellness, and personal development, and material addressing the emerging field of transpersonal studies. Chapters on shamanism and psychedelic therapies evoke the multifarious interests of the transpersonal psychology community. The result is a richly flavored distillation of the underlying principles and active ingredients in the field.
A practical guide to the clinical use of biofeedback, integrating powerful mindfulness techniques. A definitive desk reference for the use of peripheral biofeedback techniques in psychotherapeutic settings, backed by a wealth of clinical research Introduces mindfulness and acceptance techniques and shows how these methods can be incorporated into biofeedback practice Step-by-step instructions provide everything a clinician needs to integrate biofeedback and mindfulness including protocols, exemplar logs for tracking symptoms, and sample scripts for mindfulness exercises Includes scientifically robust treatment protocols for a range of common problems including headaches, hypertension and chronic pain
