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Four Stress Management Tips for Holistic Practitioners
Tuesday, January 11, 2022, 02:50 PM
Last month we shared how Trager® and other holistic modalities can help reduce stress and its negative impacts — such as poor sleep, weight gain, headaches, and depression — on the mind and body.
This month, we wanted to know how therapists and healers care for themselves. To learn more about practitioner self-care, we reached out to Denise Cambiotti, BioEnergetic Wellness Facilitator and course developer and trainer for Muscle Tuners International Inc.
"I have experienced how my body responds to unresolved stress," says Denise. "I had frequent infections, blood sugar imbalances, and for a while, I wasn't a very nice person to spend time with. As a wellness facilitator, I observe similar challenges in many of my clients."
Denise works with holistic health care practitioners across the country. She shares that by not effectively dealing with stress, her clients have experienced unwanted weight gain, anxiety, high blood pressure, and interpersonal conflicts that seem to have no resolution.
How Can Health Care Practitioners Reduce Stress?
Holistic health practitioners devote themselves to caring for others and deal with everything from insomnia, migraines, and chronic pain to improving chemotherapy side effects, boosting fertility, and treating injury.
All health practitioners are vital to our health care system, but working in service to others can be physically, mentally, and emotionally draining. Practitioners must be diligent in caring for their physical and mental health, otherwise they risk burnout and other stress-related symptoms.
Burnout is a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion caused by the inability to cope with our environment as a result of ongoing demands of daily life. Setting personal and professional boundaries (like the number of clients you take or how many days you work) is important to reducing the risk of burnout.
Denise shares four wellness tips she incorporates into her own life to help deal with stress.
Practice Breathwork
"My first tip is simply to breathe deeply and focus on your breath. Imagine it surrounding your heart while you think of something or someone you hold deep appreciation and love for," says Denise. "This is a technique I learned from a Heart Math® facilitator and helps me maintain a resilient state."
Breathwork has been used for centuries and is often associated with practices like meditation, yoga, Tai Chi, and qigong. Today, numerous types of breathwork exist and are beneficial for people who suffer from anxiety, chronic pain, depression, and post-traumatic stress.
Connect with Others
"To keep me grounded, I make sure to set aside time to connect with others, maybe over lunch, a long walk, or a board game," says Denise.
Research has shown that lack of human connection can be more harmful to your health than obesity, smoking, or high blood pressure, and factors like technology and the COVID-19 pandemic increase these feelings of isolation.
The benefits of social connection include:
- decreased anxiety and depression
- increased self-esteem and empathy toward others
- increased physical and psychological health
Seek Professional Support
"I meet with a clinical counsellor every four-to-six weeks, whether I need to or not," says Denise. She shares that having a relationship with a professional listener has numerous benefits, including:
- discussing emotions without burdening friends or family
- learning strategies to cope with past trauma and effectively move forward in life
- noticing how conversations change over time, reflecting emotional growth
In addition to dealing with trauma and other personal issues, seeing a therapist can help practitioners:
- set healthy professional boundaries
- deal with financial stress related to being an entrepreneur
- gain a new perspective on other peoples' behaviour
- improve communication skills
Practice Emotional Stress Relief
Drawn from Touch for Health®, Emotional Stress Relief (ESR) is a method of opening pressure relief valves specific to emotional stress.
When we are in a stressful situation, our bodies go into "flight or fight" response, which causes increased heart rate, breathing rate, and blood pressure. ESR redirects the focus to the forebrain, so you can think rationally instead of making decisions while in survival mode.
"The Emotional Stress Relief technique is a simple yet powerful way to release emotional blockages so you can move forward in your life," says Denise. "Your stress may be about something you anticipate will happen in the near future, or about something that is unsettling from the past."
To practice the ESR technique, take the following steps:
- Find a comfortable, safe place. You can practice ESR sitting or lying down.
- Activate the ESR points by touching gently mid-forehead, just above the eyebrows. You can use your thumbon one point and pointer finger and middle finger on the other point, or lightly cover the entire forehead with your palm.
- Think about your stress in as much detail as possible and ignite your senses while pressing the points. In your mind's eye, try to 'see' the pictures your stress makes, notice where your emotions sit in your body, and 'hear' the sounds you associate with your stress.
- Breathe deeply throughout the process. ESR can take anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes; you are finished when you feel calm and steady or take a sudden deeper breath.
Managing stress is essential for health care practitioners to maintain long-term physical and mental wellness.
"Working with methods that demonstrate measurable improvements is invaluable for wellness and reducing stress," explains Denise. "If we want to thrive rather than simply survive in our daily lives, the most fundamental thing we can do is regularly manage our stress levels in a healthy way."
About Denise
Denise Cambiotti trains and mentors Muscle Tuner® Specialists to hack the nervous system in order to eradicate 75–100% of chronic pain in 90% of clients via an online program she created. She has a wide breadth of experience and several international certifications to teach basic to advanced programs that utilize biofeedback in the form of energetic muscle testing. Denise lives in Coquitlam, BC, and invites you to follow her on LinkedIn and Facebook.