Eat smart, exercise regularly and get the right amount of rest: Sound advice for anyone who wants to keep a good supply of energy on hand and live a healthy, happy life, right? Not always. Chances are, if you’re a tireless third-grader, a busy, hardworking sophomore in high school or college, or a dedicated teacher, counselor or other educator, you’re dealing some pretty elevated stress levels and emotional pressure these days. It’s simply a part of the educational scene of the 21st century and even those who routinely follow this sage advice find that they don’t always feel as well as they’d like to.
Negative Thoughts In, Energy Out
Students can feel bombarded with negative thoughts and emotions even before their day starts, and this mental and emotional churning burns up their energy. At times they may not even feel like dragging themselves out of bed because they dread the coming day: a pop quiz or a big test, unfinished homework, teachers or peers they’re having a tough time with. Perhaps a part-time job or whatever they’ve got coming up later in the day is causing anxiety, fear and stress.
"It is largely our "mental and emotional diet" that determines our energy levels, health and well-being. The quality of our thoughts and feelings are every bit as important as good food and exercise."
Teachers, administrators and others in the educational sector know well the pressures of trying to create the proper environment and most effective strategies for delivering quality education. Some days a lot of teachers wonder if that’s possible, if they’re the right people for the job. Are they truly appreciated and it is worth all the effort when you consider the regulations that handcuff them, budgets that limit them and working conditions that sometimes imperil them?
When a student feels negative emotions such as anger, anxiety, dislike or hate, or thinks negative thoughts such as "I hate school," "I don’t like so and so" or "I’ll never pass the test," stress levels elevate and energy reserves are redirected. Exasperated teachers who leave the campus each day questioning their commitment and why they entered the profession in the first place have embarked on a downward spiraling emotional pattern that burns valuable energy they need in the classroom.
It is energy consumption we can ill afford. The processes that break down the body’s energy stores for immediate use are activated to confront elevated levels of stress, instead redirecting vital energy that is normally reserved to repair, maintain and regenerate our physical systems to stress pathways.
"Every human being is the author of his (her) own health or disease."
—Buddha, 563-483 B.C.
Positive Thoughts Out, Energy In
We know from extensive research that the heart is a powerful and intelligent instrument with its own "brain," and learning to activate this power and intelligence by intentionally choosing to experience sincere feelings like appreciation, care and love, signals the hearts’ electrical energy to go to work for you. Now, energy reserves, instead of being summoned to pathways to fight harmful stress levels or to fuel anxiety, anger and other negative emotional responses, are able to continue feeding your body’s systems, which, when functioning properly, not only retain energy, but help build up future stores.
Rather than feeling like you have to drag yourself out of bed to face yet another day, you’ll feel more like, "OK, time to rise and shine!" Start your day consciously choosing these core heart feelings over negative feelings and you’ll soon discover that you’re far more capable of warding off stress and energy drain regardless of what your busy day throws your way.
As you become skilled at replacing negative emotions and responses to stressful situations in your life, you’re learning one of the key steps in achieving the most important psychophysiological state your body can experience: "Heart-rhythm coherence" is a highly beneficial state in which the rhythms of your heart are smooth and orderly and the optimal state for all of your body’s systems, including your immune system. That’s important because when your heart brain and head brain are functioning in the state of coherence, you’re at your positive best, where energy levels are high and anxiety levels are reduced – for those late-night studies before a test and for the following day during the test itself, or when you need to gently command the complete attention of a classroom full of fifth-graders on a Friday morning.
You can witness the changing pattern in your heart rhythms as you learn and practice the simple techniques for achieving and sustaining heart coherence using your home or school computer. See the emWave PC/Mac Stress Relief System below.
Immune System Health
The long hours high school and college students put in keeping pace in their classes, poring over books for homework assignments, essays and term papers and cramming for examinations, and teachers correcting papers, writing up lesson plans, talking to parents, talking to administrators and so much else is more than sufficient to wear them down by Friday afternoon, let alone the end of the school term. Add to all that part-time jobs, extra-curricular activities – that goes for educators, too – family life, social life and – fill in the blanks here for everything else going on in your own life or that of someone you know – and it’s pretty clear what can happen if you don’t take care of yourself mentally, physically and emotionally.
Remember when Mom or someone else in your world that cares about you said from time to time, "Keep up your strength," or "Keep up your resistance." What they were telling you, in other words, was to maintain a healthy immune system so you could maintain a your health.
It probably comes as no surprise that the long hours and intense schedules noted above are especially good at breaking down your immune system and that, of course, can leave you prey for a host of ailments, among them the common cold, flu, fatigue and much more. Here’s something you may not know: Over the last 2 ½ decades, researchers have established that emotions likely are as important or more so to the health of our immune systems, perhaps more so, than what we eat.
Rollin McCraty, now the Institute of HeartMath’s executive vice president and director of research, and a team went beyond the 1980s experiment of Harvard psychologist Dr. David McClelland, who showed a video about Mother Teresa to students and discovered that their immune-system functioning, as measured by IgA, or secretory immunoglobulin A levels, increased. What they hoped to learn in their study, The Physiological and Psychological Effects of Compassion and Anger, published in the Journal of Advancement in Medicine in 1995, is whether self-induced care would have the same effect as vicarious care.
They duplicated McClleland’s work and derived very similar results in their study. Test subjects learned IHM’s highly acclaimed Freeze-Frame® Technique and then were asked to intentionally feel care and compassion for five minutes. Several days later, they were asked to feel five minutes of self-induced anger by remembering a situation or experience that made them angry and trying to recapture the feeling they had at the time. In both cases, IgA samples were taken immediately after and then every hour for six hours.
Among the key findings were:
After five minutes of feeling care and compassion, the subjects had an immediate 41 percent average increase in their IgA levels.
After one hour, IgA levels returned to normal, but slowly increased over the next six hours.
In some individuals, IgA increased as much as 240 percent immediately after they performed the Freeze-Frame technique.
HeartMath’s science-based studies involving thousands of people – students, young children and adults of all ages – have established ample evidence that positive, heartfelt feelings fortify the body’s systems and nourish it at the cellular level with what we call "quantum nutrients." Learning to power up mentally, emotionally and physically by knowing how to utilize the heart’s intelligence can people, perform at their best and actually prolong for many years that wonderful youthful sense of well-being and resilience.
"Your emotions affect every cell in your body. Mind and body, mental and physical, are intertwined."
—Dr. Thomas Tutko, Father of Sports Psychology
Facts at a Glance:
Both positive and negative events can be stressful. Following are experiences that often activate the stress response. All of the items show up frequently on the student stress checklist, but many of them apply to educators as well.
Death of a loved one
Parents’ divorce
Encounter with legal system
Transfer to new school
New romantic relationship
Big argument with close friend
Increase in course load or difficulty
Change in family member’s health
First semester in college
Failing important test or course
Major personal injury or illness
Change in living conditions
Argument with instructor
Outstanding achievement
Recent relocation
Change in social life
Change in sleeping habits
Lower grades than expected
Relationship breakup
New job
Financial problems
Change in eating habits
Constant car trouble
Pregnancy
Long commute to school/work
Impending graduation
Argument with family member
Sexual concerns
Change in alcohol/drug use
Who Needs HeartMath Research-Based Programs?
Students of all ages
Teachers, administrators and other educators
Student counselors
Parents of students
How HeartMath Facilitates Health & Wellness/Stress Management
Researchers have found that we experience stress because of how we perceive issues and events, but the ability to successfully shift perceptions often seems difficult or impossible. This is where the Institute of HeartMath can help. More than 19 years of research underlie the tools, technologies and programs HeartMath has developed to help students manage stress, and they have helped transform the lives of thousands of people of all ages and walks of life the world over.
We take great pride in our success so far and our commitment to excellence in education. IHM’s Education Division is constantly expanding its extensive line of fine programs and products to meet the needs of students, parents, teachers, counselors and other educators. We’re gathering new evidence every day through studies conducted by IHM and independent researchers that supports our heart-based approach to creating environments that promote the kind of joyful and productive experience students and educators deserve. HeartMath is providing people of all ages programs, technology and easy-to-learn methods for managing stress, improving personal performance and living healthier, happier and more rewarding lives.
IHM Research Studies, Articles Related to Health & Wellness/Stress Management
TestEdge® National Demonstration Study, by Raymond Trevor Bradley, Ph.D., Rollin McCraty, Ph.D., Mike Atkinson, Lourdes Arguelles, Ph.D., Robert A. Rees, Ph.D. and Dana Tomasino. "(IHM) found consistent evidence of positive effects from the intervention on the students at the intervention school when their stress levels, emotional stability and the results of other measures were compared with those of students at the control school. Students in the experimental group had acquired the ability to self-activate the coherent state prior to taking an important test. This ability to self-activate coherence was associated with significant reductions in test anxiety and corresponding improvements in measures of emotional disposition." Learn more about the study.
The Impact of an Emotional Self-Management Skills Course on Psychosocial Functioning & Autonomic Recovery to Stress in Middle School Children, by Rollin McCraty, PhD, Mike Atkinson, Dana Tomasino, BA, Jeff Goelitz, MEd and Harvey N. Mayrovitz, MD. Key findings: Middle school who students enrolled in a HeartMath self-management skills course that included the widely acclaimed Freeze-Frame® Technique showed significant improvements in stress control, at-risk behavior, work management and focus and relationships with teachers, family and peers. Read more about the results.
Resilience Among Elementary Educators as Measured by the Personal and Organizational Quality Assessment-Revised and the Emotional Quotient Inventory, by Susan Lee Stockton, Ph.D. Dissertation, Graduate Faculty of Philosophy, Educational and Counseling Psychology, University of Missouri-Columbia, 2006. Stress perception among rural Missouri elementary educators was examined and HeartMath provided a resilience training protocol. Read the report.
The Physiological and Psychological Effects of Compassion and Anger: Based on this study’s findings, the common human emotions of compassion and anger apparently have considerable influence on the health of our immune system. Read the abstract.
Staff Resilience: Twenty key administrative leaders and 90 human resources representatives were trained in HeartMath techniques in the DeKalb County, Georgia School System. Read the training evaluation.
Products and Programs for Health & Wellness/Stress Management
emWave® PC/Mac Stress Relief System: HeartMath’s groundbreaking interactive learning system provides stress-management training in an engaging, experiential format students and educators will find friendly, fast and effective. As you practice smoothing out your heart rhythms and achieving heart coherence, you can immediately see your stress levels decrease.
With practice, you can begin feeling calmer and more relaxed in a very short time. Go to: emWave® PC Stress Relief System or emWave® Mac Stress Relief System.
emWave® Personal Stress Reliever: You and this remarkable handheld device that goes anywhere you go will be inseparable companions after you use it once or twice to manage stress and calm your emotions – within minutes – right before a big test, while you’re in the teacher’s lounge before first bell on the first day of school or anyplace else you need a quick boost of energy or a calming influence. No bigger than a cell phone, the emWave PSR has an easy-to-master system of running lights and soft tones to key you into the rhythm of your heart and actually direct you to that special place athletes, musicians and others refer to as The Zone.
Go to: emWave® Personal Stress Reliever.
TestEdge® Software: Here’s something designed especially for the student in middle school through college or any age group involved in a formal education program. The interactive, award-winning TestEdge learning programs on CDs help students understand the link between their feelings and academic performance. They can see how stress and emotions can interfere with learning, getting along with friends, family, teachers or colleagues, even with the enjoyment of life. Then TestEdge gives you several practical, easily learned stress-reducing techniques.
Video segments, online exercises and printable materials round out the range of resources you can use to start getting what you want out of school and enjoying it more. Go to: TestEdge® Software.
Qualified Instructor Program®/Resilient Educator®: The Qualified Instructor Program is a train-the-trainer program designed for professional trainers, educators and consultants to provide HeartMath skills to teachers, administrators and other school staff. Those who complete the course will be licensed to provide Institute of HeartMath workshops within educational settings in a cost-effective way.
The Resilient Educator, the first course offered under the program, is an engaging, activity-based, stress-management workshop for in-service staff development. It can be given in two-, four- or six-hour sessions. This highly relevant training program can help educators boost performance, improve school relationships and strengthen resiliency and purpose. Go to: Qualified Instructor® Program/Resilient Educator.
HeartMath Loves People, People Love HeartMath
(Excerpts of letters received by HeartMath.)
"Yes, their test scores went up, and their behavior improved. But, more important, these children are taking with them a solid platform and positive attitude for lifelong learning."
—Jill Farrell, special education, Sells, Ariz.
"HeartMath offers the most effective techniques for helping students overcome their math anxiety that I have ever seen. After seeing big improvements in math test scores, students’ ability to better understand new concepts, and students’ attitudes, I became real excited about the broader implications for these learning strategies. A real buzz has been created at our college campus and in surrounding schools. We look forward to a long relationship with HeartMath."
—Michael Vislocky, Ph.D., math department, University of Cincinnati Clermont College
"Words seem inadequate to describe the quality of support, caring, understanding and encouragement that IHM has and demonstrates for teachers and the teaching profession. It’s the ultimate anti-burnout prescription. The bonding and sharing of ideas and concerns is truly outstanding and helps to support confidence and hope as well as providing tools for taking care of yourself."
—Lynne Marsh, Teacher, Long Beach Unified
Funding Tips for Educators:
Click here for links to information about a variety of federal, state and private educational funding sources for schools and districts interested in purchasing programs and products from the Institute of HeartMath.
Click here for information about the IHM Heart-Based Education Sponsorship Fund and to learn how you can apply to be a recipient.
