Welcome to the 51BLUE Stress Self-Help Neurotraining course, aimed to guide you towards greater mental resilience and well-being.
The following eight practices are designed to encourage slowing down, activate your parasympathetic nervous system, and foster a state of restful and calming stillness.
The eight practices begin and end in a similar manner. However, the middle section of each focuses on strengthening a different skill necessary for the process of slowing down and finding rest.
For this program to be effective, follow the practices in the order presented. Establish a minimum of three practices per day, ideally at regular times.
Once you have completed the eight practices, return to the beginning, and start again. Once you have repeated the eight practices several times and have become familiar with the entire program, you can change the order to suit your preferences and focus on specific skills by choosing the relevant practice.
Each practice contains an audio-recording and written explanation. Some people prefer to read the explanations before they engage with the practice. Others like to start with the practice and then continue to the written explanation. Either approach is fine.
The process of slowing yourself down, both physically and mentally, to enter a state of restful stillness is accumulative and depends on repeated practice. You may not feel instant changes as soon as you start practicing rest. However, with each practice, you strengthen the wiring in your brain, literally creating new anatomical structures in support of physical and mental slow down, and the establishing of the state of stillness.
Through the practice, my spoken instructions are followed by periods of silences. Each practice includes two recordings, that differ in the length of the silences between the instructions. I have carefully considered the length of these silences, which are meant to facilitate the implementation and integration of the given instructions. You might initially find some of the longer silences between the instructions a little unsettling. However, as you keep repeating the practices, these quiet spaces of practice will become helpful. In fact, as you progress through this training you might find that you need more time between the instructions. If so, press pause during the silences, and when you are ready to continue, press play.
I hope these 8 practices will support you in reducing your stress and help you start cultivating the calmness and inner balance needed to face life’s challenges with greater resilience.