Biofeedback for Stress Relief

Biofeedback will enable you to harness the power of your mind, combined with technology, to manage your stress.

Unless you are a hermit on an island paradise, stress is very much a part of your daily life.

Excessive stress is one of the major epidemics of this century. Biofeedback can provide you with real-time feedback of your biological processes.

This helps you to become more aware of the subtle bodily changes and develop strategies to control them.

Being more aware the changes in your biological processes gives you more control on how stress affects you.

One of the advantages of this is that it makes you aware of any bodily changes and you can harness your mind to modify your stress symptoms.

In essence, biofeedback creates a mind/body connection for stress relief.

It does this by helping you to monitor and control the symptoms of stress.

Some of the symptoms of stress are:

• increased blood pressure and hypertension,
• tight shoulders and neck pain,
• sweaty palms and a dry mouth,
• tension headaches or migraine.

There are two reasons why providing feedback on your body processes is important for your stress management.

The first is that not all forms of stress are noticeable. One way to monitor your stress is to identify the causes of stress in your stress diary.

Over time we adapt to everyday stressors, treating them as an inevitable part of living.

However, this stress still creates wear and tear on your body with the subtle changes in your body going unheeded or unnoticed.

The second reason is that you can harness the power of your mind to control your biological processes in response to stress.

Using the advances of technology, psychology and physiology; you can observe and then control these subtle bodily changes to stress.

Biofeedback can develop your mind to manage your stress

There are different types of machines that can be used to monitor the different symptoms of stress on your body.

You can train yourself with Galvanic Skin Response (GSR).

A GSR measures your skin conductance which is related to sweat. This is the same method that is used in “lie detector” tests.

As you become stressed or emotionally excited, you activate your sympathetic nervous system, similar to the fight or flight response.

As this occurs you sweat more and this increases the skin’s electrical conductance, which is picked up by the GSR.

The information from the GSR can be used to monitor and control stress, anxiety and stuttering.

Alternatively, if you find that stress results in tension in the shoulders, neck and back; a worthwhile option may be to train yourself with an electromyogram (EMG) machine.

An EMG can help you to measure the tension in these muscles.

By using the EMG on a regular basis you will be able to recognize muscle tension early and learn to relax the muscles in the neck, shoulders and back.

Stress can also result in a drop in your temperature, and this can be monitored and controlled by temperature biofeedback.

The sensors are attached to your hands or feet. If you receive a low reading, this can alert you to start relaxation techniques.

Conclusion

Whichever option you choose, you will become more aware of your symptoms associated with stress.

Overtime, the regular use of biofeedback develops an ability to be able to control your stress symptoms and reduce stress-related health concerns.

Combined with relaxation techniques, this is a highly effective tool to reduce stress.

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