Stress: What does Deepak Chopra know that you don't?

Stress is hazardous to our health.

I remember saying those words over and over, and after a period of years, I developed a physical illness due to stress. Since then, I’m always on alert for tips on how to reduce stress. Taking care of ourselves physically and emotionally should be first on our agenda, but with such busy schedules, we’re sometimes too busy to pay attention to our physical and emotional health. It’s not that we don’t want to. It’s just that we don’t have a lot of time. But of course, if we had a major heart attack and needed physical therapy, we would make time.

Stress is hazardous to our health. As I’ve been told, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Learning to de-stress is one way we can take care of our health, especially if it only takes a few minutes. Practiced twice a day, meditation is known to be one of the best ways to relieve stress.

In his new book, Super Brain, Deepak Chopra writes about the importance of meditation. On the daytime show, "Katie,” hosted by Katie Couric, he taught the studio audience a form of meditation that takes only a few minutes and works well with celebrities. He said, “If celebrities can do it with their stressful lives, anyone can do it.”  The steps to this process are as follows:

            1. Sit in the most comfortable position with arms comfortably open and          

 palms facing up.

            2.  Reflect. Ask yourself, “What am I grateful for?”

            3.  Reflect. Ask yourself, “Who am I?”

            4.  Ask yourself, “What do I want?”

            5.  Reflect and think of a great experience of love, now or in the past.

            6.  Bring the person’s image into your mind, into your heart and feel the         

feeling again (the heart throbbing, your heartbeat, the intensity).

            7.  Bring that awareness into your breath and breathe it for a minute.

            8.  Relax into your body for a few seconds.

            9.  Open your eyes.

          

          10.  Continue your day. 
(c) M.D. Johnson (2013)