| Why Minding Matters? |
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One of the easiest ways to moderate the stress response is to change our awareness and depth of our breathing. In order to pay attention to how we breathe we must be present in the action of each breath. When the body is deprived of oxygen it has only minutes of survival left. For many of us who live in the west our lifestyle reflects a state of being that makes deep breathing counterintuitive: we don’t stop, have limited time to accomplish numerous tasks, attempt to swallow and suppress our emotions, and hold our stomachs in. All of these are impediments to efficient breathing and can also contribute to the inadequate reflection of thoughts and the processing of emotions. The following is a good site for introductory breathing-awareness exercies: http://breathmastery.com/bet.htm Research conducted by Herbert Benson (Associate Professor of Medicine Harvard Medical School) Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin and John Kabat-Zin, founding executive director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine has demonstrated how we think about something effects how our body’s physiological sub-systems react perhaps making our immune systems vulnerable to illness and our bodies less effective at combating disease. For more information on these researchers follow the links provided below. Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine
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During my early work as a physical therapist I discovered that physical healing was significantly impacted by an individual’s emotional and mental wellbeing and that knee injuries that looked the same on x-ray did not simply recover the same way in rehabilitation. I became interested in why some people took much longer to recover than others and was also encouraged by the ways in which listening, touching, and simple kindness seemed to be as important as traditional treatment modalities. When I began work in the neonatal intensive care nursery I had to rely very heavily on my ability to observe and listen to a baby’s behavioral stress signals as their only method of communicating their needs. Recognizing those needs prior to deterioration in physiological stability is critical to infants whose fragile brains and bodies are vulnerable to constant fluctuations in blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing. Although adults’ nervous systems are not as physiologically fragile as pre-term infants they also undergo a stress response. Get more information about the stress and relaxation response by using the following links: