Is Depression and Stress Controlling Your Life?

Did you know that major Depression affects 15% of Americans at one point or another during their lives? That's a heck of a lot of people! Studies suggest that 50 - 75 percent of all visits to the doctor are primarily related to stress and, interestingly enough, stress poses a greater health risk than tobacco use! Eight out of ten of the most commonly used medications in the U.S. are intended to treat problems directly related to stress!

Is modern medicine our only choice to help deal with the stress and depression that seems to be so prevalent in our society? Are there other alternatives?

Dr. David Servan-Schrieber believes we have many alternatives, which he outlines in his book, "The Instinct to Heal: Curing Depression, Anxiety and Stress Without Drugs and Without Talk Therapy." Dr. Servan-Schrieber believes that there are Seven Natural treatment approaches that all capitalize on the mind and brain's own healing mechanisms for recovery from depression, anxiety and stress.

Essentially Dr. Servan-Schrieber believes that we have two brains, the emotional brain and the cognitive brain. These two brains are either in harmony and are working together or they are in competition causing stress and disharmony in our bodies.

"To live in harmony in human society, we need to find and sustain a balance between our instinctive emotional reactions (emotional brain) and the rational responses (cognitive brain) that preserve our social ties over the long term." Dr. Servan-Schrieber believes that when these two systems cooperate, our thoughts, decisions, and movements blend and flow naturally. It seems that at every moment we know what choice we should make. We pursue our objectives effortlessly, with natural concentration, because our actions are in harmony with our values. This state of well-being is known as Emotional Intelligence and it is what we continue to aspire to. "Emotional Intelligence is the sign of perfect harmony between the emotional brain, supplying energy and guidance, and the cognitive brain, bringing it to fruition."

"We experience emotions in our body, not our head. In fact, only recently was it discovered that the digestive system and the heart have their own network of tens of thousands of neurons that act like "small brains" in the body. The relationship between the emotional brain and the "small brain" in the heart is one of the keys to emotional mastery. By learning how to control our heart, we learn how to gain mastery of our emotional brain, and vice versa."

Dr. Servan-Schreiber's book, "The Instinct to Heal: Curing Depression, Anxiety and Stress Without Drugs and Without Talk Therapy." goes quite in-depth in explaining the relationship between the two brains and systems which are affected. As well as the need to train ourselves to control our heart coherence to help gain mastery over our emotional health.

This approach is similar to what I used in order to successfully help start my own healing process. The technique I used, and still use today, is Biofeedback; a very effective way to assist in learning heart coherence, which is the key to creating coherence between the brains. You can read more about my experience in my article Biofeedback the Path to Healing.

Dr. Seven-Schrieber goes on to describe other techniques that, used in conjunction with heart coherence, can help create harmony and emotional health. They include Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Maximize Omega-3's, get high on exercise, wake up to the sun, tap into your meridians and seek a larger connection.

Dr. Germano, a psychiatrist on the cutting edge of combining alternative with traditional treatments to help heal our emotional disharmony, wrote an article explaining the connection between our mental health and Omega-3. You can read his article "Is Your Brain Fat Enough" to learn more about the importance of Omega-3's in our emotional health and well-being.

For other articles related to a healthy mind and overall emotional wellbeing read all the articles I have on my Healthy Mind Page.

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