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Manage Stress with the Waterfall Technique

Stress is a powerful influence on how we feel, emotionally, mentally and physically. This powerful technique can be used anywhere to help you relieve stress and relax. All you need is two minutes and a quiet place where you can close your eyes.

You're stressed out admit it. Everywhere you go, you are subjected to stress. Your boss at work, standing in line at Starbucks while the lady in front of you tries to make up her mind (how can she not know what a mocha is?), and sitting in traffic during rush hour. That's enough to get anybody's blood boiling!

Why do we get so stressed out? Are we really in that much of a hurry? Are we that worried that we are going to look bad? Are we overstimulated? Are we too busy trying to cram everything into our lives that "somebody" thinks we should be doing?

That's part of it. But realize that much stress is related to events from your past. Emotional stress from the past plays a big part in your blood pressure readings. Here's why.

Your subconscious mind is the part of you that manages your emotions. It creates them and then you feel them in your body and your mind. But what happens when you don't feel the emotions what if you don't process them? For instance, if you have a lot of emotion all at once, and you still have to take care of life events like when someone close to you dies, or you get into a car accident you don't have time to process all the sadness, grief, fear, shock, guilt, anger and other emotions that might be present. So what happens to them? We've all heard of stuffing emotions, right?

Your subconscious mind will be kind enough to store the emotions for you. It's just doing it's job protecting you from being overwhelmed. So it might store the emotions along with the memory that created them. It's easy to tell if this is the case when you access that memory, or think about what happened, you will feel the emotion even though it may have happened years before. Or the subconscious might store that energy in your body somewhere in effect blocking other energy and possibly causing physical issues. Especially excessive stress.

So, here's a technique you can use, pretty much anywhere you are. It's a visual exercise, but don't worry if you are not visual. Just imagine or pretend it works just as well.

Find a place where you won't be disturbed for a couple of minutes. After a little practice, it will only take you seconds to do the exercise, but for now give yourself plenty of time.

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