21 Stress Reduction Tips from Neuroscience during COVID-19
What you'll learn
- Breathing and movement exercises scientifically verified to improve your health, a basic neuroscience framework for emotional intelligence, new perspectives on stress, how to develop resilience, content specific to the Coronavirus
Requirements
- A body to participate and a mind to learn!
Description
This class features a unique combination of stress reduction exercises and informative science to improve your health during the Coronavirus. Who doesn't want to learn while also relaxing and having fun? Voted my best neuroscience lecture because you learn while lowering your stress. This also means that you will retain the material better, (since "affect-loaded experiences have a greater likelihood of being retained by the brain than cognitive based material," [Beaudoin and Zimmerman, 2011, p.12]).
The class demonstrates 21 exercises to improve mood and immunity, (with the bonus exercise and handouts [located in the "Settling in" and "Tip #4" sections] the course includes a total of 40 exercises). The free preview ends discussing the definition of integration which is high differentiation and high linkage. In the relational neuroscience framework being taught, integration equals health and is what you need in order to become more resilient to stress. Every exercise you practice during this class involves differentiating (separating from) and linking in various ways. The more you differentiate and link, the more integrated you become; the higher the level of your integration, the more you experience positive emotions. This class is intending to both teach and give an experience of integration.
Many of these exercises highlight the breath because it is a tool to help merge the sympathetic nervous system (breathing in) and the parasympathetic nervous system (which comes more strongly online with long exhales). You're taught both practical exercises, (a more left hemispheric focus,) and visualization methods especially focused on kindness and self-compassion, (based on compassion researchers and educators like Dr. Kelly McGonical, Tara Brach, and Dr. Kristin Neff).
Immediately after the explanation on integration, you learn about how to widen what's called your "window of tolerance" or "optimal arousal zone," and how a wider window means an increased capacity to tolerate and manage stress. Since this is not intended to be a more in-depth class on relational neuroscience (interpersonal neurobiology,) the explanation is brief and quickly moves into more relaxation exercises. (Additional handouts are included for those who want more information.) The class focus is cultivating that rest and digest, parasympathetic state, then also educating the listener on the quickest and easiest ways according to science to get there and stay there.
Highlights: Getting you into a relaxed state, practicing together as you learn exercises that you can use throughout your life, an explanation for Dr. Dan Siegel's 3 Pillars of Mind Training especially kind intention and why kindness is the quickest path to achieving your brain's capacity for excellent executive function, a breathing technique from an ER physician to prepare for or fight COVID-19, a scientist's guided light meditation evoking the endorphin-producing capacities of the periaqueductal gray.
Who this course is for:
- Busy professionals who value neuroscience and mindfulness research, anyone needing some stress reduction now
Course content
- Preview02:20
- Preview01:56
- 01:091 min video about Heidi
- Preview01:17
- Preview01:18
- 00:19Description about Tip #4
- Preview01:21
- 00:24Description for the Next Video
- 05:08Stress as Nervous System Arousal and Relational Neuroscience Framework
- 00:27Description for Tip #5
- 02:00Tip #5
- 00:11Description for the Next Video
- 02:37Tip #7
- 00:16Description for the Next Video
- 01:23Tip #6
- 01:05Why the next video is the most important one in this series
- 14:41Tip #8 (It's important to do #8, #9, and #10 in a row)
- 05:09Tip #9
- Preview05:53
- 00:15Description for the Next Video
- 05:14Tip #11 Breathing exercise to help the lungs with COVID-19
- 02:13Tip #12
- 00:15Description for the Next Video
- 08:29Tip #13-19
- 00:03Description for the Next Video
- 06:20Tip #20 Amazing guided light meditation to boost endorphins and promote healing
- 00:36Description for the Next Video
- 02:37Tip #21
- 00:23Thank you and final resource
Instructor
Heidi Crockett is a relational neuroscience expert, a licensed psychotherapist and AASECT-certified in sex therapy and sexuality education. She is the author of two books: “Caregiver Stress: Neurobiology to the Rescue” and “The Neuroscience of Dating,” and has an educational blog on YouTube.
As a teacher, Crockett is known as an "Integrator" or nervous system magician, looking at what's called "arousal" or "emotional intensity," the life blood of the nervous system, and translating the seemingly complex world of neuroscience into simple equations to understand the interrelated domains of self, others and the world.