Peace of mind is the key to healing. Worry, anxiety, fear, and depression interfere with the normal functioning of the heart, lungs, stomach, and intestines. When you feel physically and mentally disturbed, the best thing you can do is to let go, relax, and calm your thought processes. Progressive Relaxation, The Relaxation Response, Breathing Exercises, Self-hypnosis, Imagery and other techniques are taught so that you can be in control of your thoughts, emotions, and have body awareness at all times, regardless of what circumstance you are dealing with. These powerful tools will work for you so that you can remain optimistic, peaceful and maintain healthy thinking.

Progressive Relaxation: Relaxation is an antidote to the taxing effects of unrelieved stress, a significant factor in most modern illnesses. This procedure will familiarize you with the muscles in your body that are most commonly tense. Learning to relax is fundamental to self-healing and allows your body to channel its energy into repair and restoration and provides respite from habitual patterns of tension. Through repetitive practice you quickly learn to recognize and distinguish the associated feelings of a tensed muscle and a completely relaxed muscle. With this simple knowledge, you can then induce physical muscular relaxation at the first signs of the tension that accompanies anxiety. With physical relaxation comes mental calmness in any situation.

The Relaxation Response: In the late 1960s, Harvard Medical School's Mind/Body Medical Institute President, Herbert Benson, M.D. found that there was a counterbalancing mechanism to the fight-or-flight response. The Relaxation Response is a physical state of deep rest that changes the physical and emotional responses to stress (e.g., decrease in heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle tension). If practiced regularly, it can have lasting effects when encountering stress throughout the day and can improve health. Mental focusing techniques that elicit the relaxation response quiet the mind and the body to a more substantial degree and with greater speed than any other means. Learning the Relaxation Response can work more directly on the damaging hormonal effects of stress while also providing clients with a sense of control over their lives and thoughts.

Breathing Exercises: When we are in a constant state of stress our sympathetic nervous systems takes over which causes the heart to beat faster, blood pressure to rise, blood sugar to rise, blood flow to shift away from the surface of the body to the core (causing cold extremities) and digestion to slow or stop. It also raises cortisol levels. Chronic over-stimulation by the sympathetic nervous system can cause a multitude of diseases from cardiac arrhythmias and hypertension to imbalances of the immunity, and gastrointestinal ailments, and is associated with anxiety. When the parasympathetic nervous system is dominant (a person is relaxed physically and mentally) the heart rate slows, blood pressure falls, circulation is balanced throughout, digestive organs work smoothly and metabolism and immunity are optimal. Breathing techniques become a very powerful means of eliciting the Relaxation Response that gets more effective over time.

Self-hypnosis or Self-relaxation: Self-hypnosis/relaxation is a wonderful way to start creating helpful changes in your life. Learning self-hypnosis lets you deeply relax – anytime, anywhere. This powerful technique allows for different perspectives on problems and for you to change unhelpful and outdated beliefs in your subconscious mind in order to reduce pain, discomfort, stress and anxiety. Altering negative self talk while in a deep relaxed state and replacing it with healthy thinking can greatly enhance your WellBeing.

Imagery: The brain does not distinguish between what is real and what is imagined - imagery can be used to empower outcomes. Imagery is said to be the language of the brain. In order to effectively deliver messages to the brain we must use the language that our brain understands the best. Long before language was invented, human beings used images, sounds, feelings, smells and tastes to form their abstract thoughts. These modes of thinking are known as our 'representational systems' and help us to send strong messages to the subconscious mind which are far more powerful than words.

Additional Tools: We have some remarkable new techniques that can bring down stress, reduce fear, and transform powerlessness much more quickly than we could in the past. They’re really state-of-the-art. Some of the tools that may be included in the session are Emotional Freedom Techniques, Applied Kinesiology, Bach Remedies, Energy Work and Spirituality. Remember, every individual is different and it is the client’s choice which tools to pick up and practice.

Emotional Freedom Technique “EFT”: A clinically proven method which has been used in thousands of documented cases to relieve stress, trauma, anxiety, pain, and numerous other health related conditions. Tens of thousands of people worldwide are now using EFT to reduce stress and create a calm sense of confidence. EFT is a natural “finger tapping” and thought altering method derived from the ancient healing method of acupressure. It is based on the principal, “the cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system.” When you tap on certain acupressure points and say out loud a selected Key Phrase, it is like pressing the "Delete" key on your computer. It allows you to "reboot" and install the affirmative emotions and beliefs that you really want - these will be ideas and phrases that naturally support your healing.

Applied Kinesiology: Current research suggests that memory does not just live in the brain. It lives in every cell of the body. Therefore when we experience an upsetting event a block can occur in the body’s energy system. We feel the event and the harmful emotions become stuck in our body (the same principal that E.F.T. uses). The key is to release this hidden emotion in the brain/body is using manual movements that can restore the normal, unstressed flow of energy and brain/body messaging, with the goal of strengthening the immune system.

Therapeutic Touch - Quantum Touch - Energy Work: Two decades ago, Delores Kreiger introduced Therapeutic Touch which is being widely used by nurses in hospitals today. Life-force energy is considered the blueprint, the communication, the invisible foundation for the health of your body. This life-force has been acknowledged and utilized by numerous cultures around the world for thousands of years. The Chinese call it ”Chi”, the Japanese call it “Ki” (as in Reiki). Your body is made of energy pathways and energy centers that are in an active relationship with your cells, organs, moods, and thoughts. These energies include electromagnetic impulses, such as those that can be recorded by an MRI or EEG. When you shift these energies, you can influence your health, emotions, to invoke a calm, relaxed state of mind and body.

Bach Flower Remedies: Since our bodies are affected by emotions, using flower essences, either alone or in combination with other forms of treatment, can correct the emotional imbalance so that the body can heal itself. The purpose of Bach Remedies is to support people dealing with fears, illness or pain by addressing emotional factors like depression, anxiety and hopelessness. The Remedies are a gentle means of restoring balance to the being as a whole. They focus on your personality and emotions and not on any disease or physical complaint, as Dr. Bach believed the key to recovery was a positive frame of mind. The remedies specifically work on the current emotional conditions of the person (e.g. low self esteem, anxiousness, overwhelmed, depressed, impatient, etc.) The effect is not to suppress negative attitudes, but to transform them into positive ones. The positive side of impatience, for example, would be being less hasty in thought and action, coping calmly and diplomatically with irritating problems, and adopting a more relaxed pace.

They are one hundred per cent safe and can be used by anyone. Overdose is impossible and they are not habit forming. All the remedies are made from flowers of nature – only energized water from the plants is used; all physical material is removed and they are preserved in a minuscule amount of brandy. The Bach Remedies are compatible, and will not interfere with, any other medicines, herbs, or treatments. The remedies are helpful to people who feel generally unwell or overwhelmed. They are used ideally during times of anxiety, depression and stress. The remedies work by flooding out negative feelings and emotions and are known for their powerful healing powers.

Spirituality: A good deal of research shows that a strong spiritual belief system has many advantages for health and WellBeing. The imagination can be divided into mental processes (thoughts, memories, ideas, learning) and spiritual processes (intuition, gut feelings, answers to prayers, messages received during times of contemplation). Through various exercises a person can learn to communicate with their inner wisdom, inner guides, and their own personal higher power to enhance healing.

Movement: Various physical poses, stretches, and exercises help in a variety of ways to heal and relax the body.