Day 10
While I was doing my training, a colleague shared a story about her five-year-old, who had misbehaved. She sat down with him to discuss his actions.
At the end of their conversation, he apologized, "I'm sorry, Mommy, I acted from my head, not my heart."
Even a child can understand that he acts from a higher place when he uses his heart.
Your heart is the strongest organ in the body and you can use it to help you undress your stress.
Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is the beat-to-beat changes in heart rate. In other words, it is the measure of how your heart speeds up or slows down. Studies have shown that the more erratic this change, the more compromised your health becomes. Negative emotions such as fear, anger or worry contribute to a change in HRV.
You do have an influence over your HRV. When you see the pattern that unfolds when you are stressed versus when you are non-stressed, it is a powerful agent of change.
On a daily basis, I practice improving my HRV, even if I'm not stressed. Then, it becomes an exercise in building resilience - it's like filling a cushion, so that if stress should come calling and knock me down, I'll have something soft upon which to land.
The physiological changes that take place during stress not only affect how you think, but also how you feel and subsequently, how you do.
Right now, point to yourself. Where are your pointing? This is the essence of who you are. How are you honouring your heart and ultimately, you?
If you'd like to know more about the devices I use to see and improve my HRV, please contact me. See this post to see what my heart rhythm pattern looks like.
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